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The murder mystery at the heart of His & Hers appears to be solved by the halfway mark of the dramatic finale. Protagonists Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson) and Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal) both know that the Atlanta TV anchor known as Lexy Jones (Rebecca Rittenhouse) is actually Catherine Kelly, the unpopular girl who was on the periphery of Anna’s high school friend group. It seems it was Lexy who’s been killing her now-adult high-school tormentors in their hometown of Dahlonega, Georgia — with Anna as her next target. Thanks to the quick shooting skills of Priya (Sunita Mani), Jack’s partner on the police force, Anna’s life is saved and Lexy’s apparent homicidal schemes are foiled.
But one year later, Anna learns Lexy was never the murderer. After reading a letter from her mother, Alice (Crystal Fox), Anna realizes that Alice had been the killer all along.
“I never suspected Alice,” Thompson tells Tudum. Her onscreen husband, Bernthal, agrees, saying, “I really didn’t think so.”
In fact, the co-stars initially suspected each other as the murderer. “Once the other murders happen … I thought it was possible that Anna could have been the killer,” Bernthal admits. It’s an understandable assumption — one that anyone could make. Director, executive producer, and writer William Oldroyd’s adaptation of Alice Feeney’s novel is like a high-wire act that keeps viewers guessing.
“There’s so much happening all at once,” says Thompson, who also executive produced His & Hers. “I was struck by how well [Oldroyd] constructed it. I felt like, ‘Oh, this is such a wild ride for an audience.’ ”
So buckle in as Thompson, Bernthal, and Oldroyd explain all the final twists and turns — from Alice’s motives to the truth about Lexy.
Who is the killer in His & Hers?
In the final 16 minutes of Episode 6, Alice admits she’s the murderer in a confessional letter addressed to Anna. In it, Alice acknowledges killing each of Anna’s former high school friends. First came Rachel (Jamie Tisdale), whom Alice murdered in the woods, not long after Anna discovered that Rachel was sleeping with Jack. Then Alice killed Anna’s former friends Helen (Poppy Liu) and Zoe (Marin Ireland), before framing Lexy as the murderer by planting evidence at her home.
Does the series His & Hers have the same ending as the book?
Anna’s mom is also the killer in His & Hers by Alice Feeney, the book that inspired the series. Oldroyd says the novel’s shocking ending is what drew him to the project. “Because I had not seen that twist coming. And I feel I’m pretty good at being able to tell what the twists and turns will be,” he says. “To encounter a twist like that and then for it to be totally believable and merited and moving? I thought that was worth exploring as a TV series.”
Oldroyd thinks of his adaptation of His & Hers as a “love letter” to the lifetime of support he’s received from his own mom. “I feel like not only were Alice’s motives and actions justified, but that this idea of a mother’s love — everyone will understand and hopefully everyone will support her,” he says.
Why did Alice kill Rachel, Helen, and Zoe? And why did she frame Lexy?
Alice sees the murders — and the framing — as justice. Throughout His & Hers, there are allusions to something horrible that happened on the night of Anna’s 16th birthday party. This was during a time when Anna, Rachel, Helen, and Zoe were inseparable. Teen Anna (Kristen Maxwell) — already dreaming of a future in media — took videos of everything that happened to her, good and bad.
Years after that fateful birthday, Anna suffers unimaginable loss when her baby, whose father is Jack, suddenly dies while in Alice’s care. Anna disappears to grieve, and Alice watches Anna’s old tapes to feel close to her daughter and to revisit a more innocent time.
This nostalgic journey comes to an abrupt halt when Alice watches the final tape, which reveals that Anna was sexually assaulted on her birthday. Teenage Rachel (Isabelle Kusman), Helen (Tiffany Ho), and Zoe (Leah Merritt) orchestrated the attack, and then watched it happen. Teen Lexy, aka Catherine Kelly (Astrid Rotenberry), ran away after being assaulted herself, leaving Anna alone and vulnerable. Alice vows revenge against everyone involved.
Oldroyd is thankful for the creative team who helped him unpack this story. “We wanted to make sure that it felt not only tastefully and sensitively done, but also that it would provide a clear motive for the audience,” he explains. “So when they see it, they think, ‘Well, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind. I think they should all die, too.’ ”
Are there any clues that Alice is the killer?
There are clues if you look hard enough, but, as Alice explains in her letter to Anna, nobody really suspects a woman — let alone an old woman — of such violence. In a way, Alice got away with the murders by exploiting ageism and misogyny to her advantage. She made sure to be seen walking around nude in public after the first killing, and she did things like putting eggshells in breakfast so that everyone around her would think she had dementia and wasn’t in control of herself.
Oldroyd and his team did plant some seeds along the way that point to Alice’s culpability. “We didn’t want to deny an audience the satisfaction of being able to work it out if they had just looked in the right place,” he says. “But we didn’t want those seeds to be so obvious they would give it away.”
The writer’s favorite clue is Alice’s bare feet after Rachel’s murder, which aligned with the bare footprints discovered at the crime scene. “What I love is that the police think they’re looking for a boot print of a Timberland shoe, because the victim was barefoot when she’s found dead,” Oldroyd says. “So they mistake two different sets of bare footprints for one.”
What happens to Anna after she’s assaulted in the woods?
Thompson took great care in portraying adult Anna’s experience as a survivor of sexual assault. “I unfortunately know those stories, and I’m really close to people who are survivors. I have seen the ways in which it can animate someone and energize them and also completely leave them stilted and incapable of moving forward,” she says.
Anna has chosen to cope by running, Thompson explains. “She ran toward ambition, work, and feeling in control. That reaction has really served her,” she says. “When that all sort of falls apart and she doesn’t have [those distractions] anymore, all that’s left is herself. It’s really painful, but it’s also really, really beautiful.”
But Anna never confides in anyone about what happened. “It’s a secret. Anna has never told anybody. Her mother, her husband, no one,” Oldroyd says. “That probably gets to the very heart of the matter of His & Hers, which is that with these sorts of abuses, there’s so much stigma attached and so much shame that people can’t tell anyone.”
Thompson hopes Anna’s story will make survivors feel recognized and possibly open up the lines of communication. “Maybe it’s not for everybody, but I think just being able to talk about it [is beneficial]. Because it’s not something that should be stigmatized at all,” she says. “Maybe there will be people who will think about having a conversation that they couldn’t imagine having before.”
Who is Lexy really, and what did she do to her sister?
Lexy is Catherine Alexis Kelly, who was an outcast at St. Hilary’s, the all-girls high school. Rachel was the queen bee at St. Hilary’s, and Helen and Zoe were her loyal acolytes. Anna transferred to the posh school — where her mother worked on the cleaning staff — but despite not having the same social standing as the other students, she was allowed into Rachel’s inner circle. Unbeknownst to Anna, however, Rachel’s apparent friendliness had treacherous motivations.
Catherine was not only bullied at school, she was also bullied at home by her sister, Andrea (Savanna Gann). But while she struggled to stand up to Rachel and crew, she took matters into her own hands with her sister. One fateful day at their lake house, just before the Kelly family was about to go for a boat ride, Andrea taunted Catherine for eating “junk food,” saying she would “tip the boat.” Seeking retribution, Catherine secretly pumped Andrea’s inhaler until it was empty before they went out on the family boat. In the middle of the water, Andrea had a respiratory emergency — and with no working inhaler, she died.
Did Catherine intend to kill her sister? “Sometimes we do things and don’t consider the consequences. So you may think at the moment, ‘Yeah, I’m going to expire her inhaler,’ ” Oldroyd says. “You don’t think on that day she’s going to have an asthma attack out in a lake where she can’t get rescued and then die. It’s unfortunate. But I don’t think it’s any more malicious than some of the spiteful things we do to our siblings when they really piss us off.”
Following Andrea’s death and the events in the woods, Catherine fully rebrands herself as Lexy. She loses weight, transforms her style, and gets a new last name, thanks to her cameraman husband, Richard Jones (Pablo Schreiber). So Anna doesn’t recognize Lexy almost 20 years later when they become colleagues — but Alice does.
What happens to Lexy?
At the end of Episode 5, Richard brings Anna to Lexy’s lake house. As Anna looks at photos of Lexy, she realizes her true identity — and understandably deduces that Lexy must be the vengeful killer.
In Episode 6, a fight breaks out between Anna and Richard and then between Anna and Lexy. The women drop their pretenses, and things turn violent. Lexy goes to shoot Anna, but Jack jumps in front of his wife. At the same time, Priya — who also knows Lexy’s identity and assumes she’s the killer — fatally shoots Lexy. It seems like the case is solved, even though Richard, who’s arrested by police, maintains his late wife’s innocence.
What happens to Anna and Jack’s baby?
Anna and Jack’s marriage didn’t fall apart from lack of love. Instead, they could not weather the death of their baby, Charlotte Alice Harper. She died suddenly at Alice’s house a year prior to His & Hers; the murders begin on the anniversary of Charlotte’s death. While the drama may have its sultry moments and shocking twists, Bernthal explains that family and trauma are at the center of His & Hers.
“Ultimately, it really is about this broken relationship between Anna and Jack mending itself,” he says. “They realize the only way to truly mend is to come together. Then you really see how capable this couple can be.”
Do Anna and Jack get back together?
His & Hers flashes forward a year after Lexy/Catherine is shot by Priya at the Kelly lake house. Everything seems to be coming up roses for the Andrews-Harper clan. Anna and Jack are back together and have adopted Zoe’s orphaned daughter, Meg (Ellie Rose Sawyer). The couple move into the perfect house in Atlanta, Anna is pregnant and back in the anchor chair at her job, and Jack returns to the Atlanta police department. The family can even withstand the pain of visiting baby Charlotte’s grave together. Still, the past is lurking beneath all this joy.
“They all seem to be on top,” Oldroyd says. “But then underneath all this are the decayed corpses of these murders. They exist just below all of their happiness as a sort of charnel house.”
How does His & Hers end?
As Anna reads her mother’s letter, she comes to understand the murders were committed by Alice, but they were done for Anna. Not only did they wreak vengeance on the people who hurt Anna, but they brought her back home and united her family. In the final seconds of His & Hers, Anna and Alice share a wordless look. Oldroyd believes Anna absolutely has an appreciation for what her mother has done for her.
Thompson agrees. “It’s triumphant in some crazy, messed-up way. It’s also harrowing and twisted,” she says. “It’s grounded in this mother’s profound love for her daughter.” The actor likens Alice’s choices to a mom managing to lift a car for her endangered child.
“What women are capable of [doing] to protect their children is tremendous,” Thompson continues. “Obviously, this is an expanded version of that phenomenon, but I do love that the story is grounded in this mother’s searing love that makes her capable of violence.”
So are Anna and Jack totally honest with each other now?
No, not exactly. Don’t forget: Anna’s mother did stab and drown Jack’s sister. No matter how villainous Zoe may have been, that might be too much for any brother to forgive. “That would be quite a lot for Jack to stomach,” Oldroyd says. “I wouldn’t want to be around for the family Christmas when Jack finds out that his mother-in-law killed his sister. That’s difficult.”
Which is why Bernthal says, “I don’t want Jack to find out.”
And Thompson acknowledges, “Anna and Jack have another secret from each other.”
That’s the thing with a tale of his story and her story — someone’s always lying.
(Re)watch all the betrayals and surprises by streaming His & Hers on Netflix. And keep coming back to Tudum for more news out of Dahlonega.
Additional reporting by Olivia Harrison.
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