All about the big twist in the series

Warning: The perfect couple spoilers follow!

Netflix- The perfect couple is a perfect whodunnit that keeps the viewer in suspense until the end.

The six-episode miniseries based on Elin Hilderbrand’s New York Times The best-selling novel of the same name opens as Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson) is set to marry Benji Winbury (Billy Howle), a member of one of the wealthiest families on Nantucket, Mass. But their lavish wedding plans are disrupted when Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy), Amelia’s best friend and maid of honor, is found dead on the shore of the Winbury estate, Summerland — just hours before Amelia and Benji are to say “I do.”

Suddenly, everyone in the Winbury family is a suspect in Merritt’s murder. As detectives Dan Carter (Michael Beach) and Nikki Henry (Donna Lynn Champlin) try to figure out who drowned the social media influencer and why, the investigation turns to Tag Winbury (Liev Schreiber) — Benji’s father, who had an affair with Merritt and got her pregnant — and Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman), the family matriarch and famed murder mystery author.

Tag is ultimately eliminated as a suspect thanks to his smartwatch data, which reveals he was asleep at the time of Merritt’s murder. But Greer, well aware of her husband’s indiscretions and future love child, remains a prime suspect — and Detectives Carter and Henry believe they’ve uncovered the damning evidence to prove their case in the season finale.

But The perfect couple finale takes more twists and turns before Merritt’s killer and their motive are revealed. Keep reading for The perfect coupleThe ending explained — from the identity of the killer to how the finale differed from Hilderbrand’s book.

What’s happening in The perfect couple end?

As the season finale opens, Detectives Henry and Carter believe they have Merritt’s killer — Winbury family matriarch Greer. The police’s working theory is that Greer hired Broderick Graham, a known criminal with ties to the Turkish mob, to kill her husband’s pregnant mistress. Their proof? A $300,000 wire transfer from family friend Shooter Dival to Broderick, which Carter and Henry suspect Greer requested because of Shooter’s diplomatic immunity.

That theory is debunked, however, when Greer explains that Broderick is actually her brother and that the $300,000 wire transfer was a loan to pay off his gambling debts. The revelations continue when the brother-sister duo returns to Summerland, where the family is currently meeting with Greer’s PR team to address Tag’s public meltdown at her book party. Greer introduces her secret brother to the rest of the Winburys — and reveals that she and Tag first met when she was working as an escort and he was a paying client.

Aside from the Winbury family drama, Carter and Henry continue to work on solving Merritt’s murder. After Amelia tells her parents that Merritt was found with barbiturates in her system at the time of her death, her cancer-stricken mother, Karen, discovers that one of her three pentobarbital pills (which she had obtained for euthanasia purposes) is missing. Now all fingers point to the eldest Winbury son, Thomas (Jack Reynor), who is known for stealing pills to play “prescription roulette.”

While Tom admits to stealing Karen’s pill, he insists to police that he didn’t give it to Merritt. Instead, he proposes an alternate theory: that his mistress, family friend Isabel (Isabelle Adjani), poisoned Merritt. He explains that he owes Isabel $2.5 million and that he planned to pay her back when he could access his trust fund, which happens when the youngest Winbury child turns 18. Their youngest brother, Will (Sam Nivola), was supposed to turn 18 at the end of the summer — but with Merritt pregnant, the trust fund clock would be set back another 18 years.

Isabel may have had motive and opportunity — she’s one of the last people seen with Merritt — but she also had an alibi. Video footage from a cab driver shows her leaving Summerland with Tom to go to her hotel, eliminating her as a potential suspect.

Who killed Merritt in The perfect couple?

Tom may have wrongly accused Isabel of Merritt’s murder, but his interview with Detectives Carter and Henry indirectly leads them to the killer. The person responsible for Merritt’s murder is Tom’s pregnant wife, Abby Winbury (played by Dakota Fanning).

After questioning Tom, Carter and Henry realize that Abby had been lying to them all along about Tom’s whereabouts the night of the murder. (She claimed that he had woken her up when he went to bed that night, but the taxi footage proved otherwise.) Detective Henry also remembers that Abby was frantically washing a glass the morning after the murder and acted nervous when she was questioned. While the police are unable to test the glass for traces of pentobarbital, they are able to match the traces of sebum found in Merritt’s hair to the skin care products Abby uses. With this evidence in hand, the detectives arrive in Summerland to arrest Abby for Merritt’s murder.

“I can’t go to jail, I’m pregnant,” she insists as she is handcuffed while the rest of the Winbury family hangs out by the pool.

After Abby is taken away by the police, a flashback scene reveals what really happened the night before the wedding. Abby, after watching Tom drunkenly leave with Isabel, crushes the pentobarbital pill in a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. She hands it to a visibly upset Merritt, and laments with her about how disappointing and unreliable men can be.

“You really can’t trust them to just get the job done,” Abby says sinisterly before convincing Merritt to join her for a late-night dive.

Then, as a visibly dizzy Merritt stumbles into the water, Abby forces her head beneath the surface until she drowns. Once she is dead, Abby calmly returns to the house—leaving Merritt’s lifeless body floating in the ocean.

Why did Abby kill Merritt?

Just as Tom suggested that Isabel killed Merritt for the trust fund money, Abby’s motive for murder is financially fueled. For Abby, nothing will threaten the lavish lifestyle she’s grown accustomed to as a Winbury—certainly not Tom’s debts or his infidelity. She pressures Tom to ask Tag for a loan so they can get a new apartment (in the Beresford, an iconic New York City building on Central Park), knowing that they’re only weeks away from Tom’s Winbury inheritance.

But when the hiccup of Merritt’s pregnancy surfaces (and has the potential to delay their cash flow for another 18 years), Tom tries to “just make it go away” by scaring her into having an abortion with his grandfather’s gun. But he doesn’t dare and instead drunkenly leaves with Isabel — which Abby witnesses from her balcony.

Abby then takes matters into her own hands to remove the threat to their inheritance money. “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,” she tells Merritt on the beach before killing her.

How does the ending differ from the book?

There are some key differences between the ending of the Netflix series and Hilderband’s novel. While Abby is responsible for Merritt’s death in both versions of the series, The perfect coupleIn the book there is talk of an accident and not murder.

In the novel, Abby slips a pill into the drink of Tom’s mistress (named Featherleigh, not Isabel)—hoping it will put her to sleep and stop her from messing with Tom all night. However, Merritt accidentally drinks the drink instead of Featherleigh, and subsequently cuts her foot while wandering the beach late at night. Merritt goes into the water alone to wash her foot, and is distracted by something shiny at the bottom of the water. She dives for it, and realizes it is a ring Tag gave her, but becomes drowsy from the pill and drowns.

Merritt’s death is ruled an accident by the police in the novel, and only Greer discovers the truth of what happened. But the decision to change Merritt’s death from an accidental drowning to a deliberate murder came from The perfect couple showrunner Jenna Lamia and producers Gail Berman and Hend Baghdady, according to Tudum.

“(We) all agreed at that time that there had to be a killer, and there had to be a motive for that murder,” Lamia told the outlet.

Where are Amelia and Benji?

By means of The perfect coupleAmelia and Benji’s relationship is a rollercoaster. In the first episode, Benji sheds a tear to his bride-to-be, declaring her his penguin (penguins mate for life). But in episode 4, their bond is on the rocks after Benji discovers Amelia and Shooter—his best man—kissing.

The couple briefly reconciles in the penultimate episode, with a drunken Benji and Amelia making out in the kitchen at Greer’s disastrous book party. But in the season finale, Benji bids farewell to Amelia following Abby’s arrest, sending her away in a cab while he stays behind.

“I was going to call you ‘the woman who lied to me,’ but the truth is you’re so many good things too,” Benji tells Amelia in one of their last conversations. “You’re ‘the woman who inspired me,’ ‘the woman who made me laugh so hard I choked on my beer,’ ‘the woman I really, really f—— loved.'”

Where do Tag and Greer stand?

Tag and Greer, the so-called perfect couple who inspired all of Greer’s novels, also call it quits in the season finale. After Abby’s arrest, Greer tells Tag he can stay in the house on Nantucket while she goes to New York to write her latest novel.

“It never occurred to me, not once, that you might leave me,” Tag tells his wife—despite all his indiscretions during their marriage.

How does it work The perfect couple end?

The last scene of The perfect couple jumps forward six months and moves from Nantucket to London.

There Greer tracks down Amelia, who works at London Zoo (in the penguin exhibit). Greer reveals that she has finished her latest novel and that instead of writing about her experiences as an escort, she has written about Amelia. Despite their previously strained relationship, Greer tells Amelia that she hopes she will read it and to call her when she has.

The dedication on the book, which bears the title Your movereads: “To absent friends, and hopefully to new ones” — referring to Amelia’s loss of her best friend, Merritt, and the prospect of a friendship between Amelia and Greer. Lamia, The perfect couple‘s showrunner, revealed that the shift in Greer’s writing style illustrates what the show — and the novel — are really about: friendships between women.

“That’s the truest love story on the whole show,” Lamia said Tudumreferring to Amelia and Merritt.