Wow. Where to even start with this one? If you haven’t binged Netflix’s newest limited series thriller Behind Her Eyes yet, go do that before you keep reading — spoilers ahead! If you’ve already finished all 6 episodes, keep reading, and join the conversation in the comments at the end of the article.
First off, vibes. This show reminded me of something new every minute — Gone Girl, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Black Mirror, you name it — and it wove all these different vibes together seamlessly. I made it a point to know absolutely nothing beyond Netflix’s frustratingly vague, few-sentence blurb about the show before I watched, and I’m glad I did. This meant I didn’t know how to characterize the show at first — drama? Horror? Murder mystery? Romance? Psychological thriller? Something altogether new? I’d never even heard of the book.
So when the strange sci-fi/fantasy combo of astral projection entered the picture, needless to say I was a little confused.
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Behind Her Eyes starts out rather slow. Our main protagonist, Louise, meets David at a bar and they kiss, only for her to find out the next day that he’s her new boss…and married. Then, she (literally) bumps into his wife Adele, whom she starts a secret friendship with. And she starts having a secret affair with David, aka her new BFF Adele’s husband. Pretty standard drama, right? Except something seems rather…off about Adele. Oh, and Louise is having these weird night terrors, which Adele teaches her to control through strangely specific embodiment practices.
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I spent the entirety of the first 5 episodes wondering who to root for. Louise seems to be the obvious protagonist, except she kind of sucks. I mean honestly, did she just expect to be able to literally insert herself into this already rocky marriage with zero consequences? Come on girl, we know that never works. Meanwhile, there’s something obviously wrong with Adele, but it could genuinely just be her mental health. Is now a good time to mention that I was about to go off literally every second at this show for using the old women-are-mentally-unstable trope?
But interspersed in between all these strange relationship scenes, we get glimpses into Adele’s past, which she spent in a psych ward as she recovered from the trauma of losing her parents in a house fire. House fire? Mansion fire. Castle fire, maybe. They’re ultra rich. And we learn that while in treatment, Adele befriends a recovering drug addict named Rob, who’s obviously enamored with her. And at this point I tentatively guessed (correctly) at the twist ending. Maybe because I’d recently watched Bly Manor.
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Rob seems a tangential character, until we learn he died and David might have killed him. So wait, David is our antagonist now, and killed Rob in a fit of jealous rage. And Adele is in danger. I think? Louise thinks so, too — until she learns that Adele has the ability to astrally project her soul outside her body. And that she’s been using those abilities to spy on David and Louise’s raucous lovemaking.
I haven’t even mentioned Louise’s son Adam, or Adele’s creepy painting habits, or the forest and the well that Adele suspects Rob lays at the bottom of. Honestly, all of that seems rather dull after the whole astral projection reveal. We go on to learn that Adele taught Rob astral projection when he visited her at her estate after they were both discharged. And at this point, the big twist ending was honestly pretty clear to me.
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This show does admittedly have my favorite kind of ending — the one where you think you know what the twist is, and then there’s another one. Louise learns that Adele is attempting to kill herself in a house fire (#tbt to the one that killed her parents) and rushes over to save her. Instead of calling, you know, the professionals who are trained to put out fires. And of course, she astrally projects herself up to Adele’s room to try to save her (still don’t know how she was planning on doing that), at which point we learn that Adele has already projected out of her own body. Adele’s soul wanders outside and steals Louise’s body, Louise’s soul goes into Adele’s body, and Adele-in-Louise goes inside and makes Louise-in-Adele OD on heroin. Bye-bye, Louise.
But the fun doesn’t stop there! Nope. There’s one final twist — in a flashback, we learn that Rob theorized that if two souls astrally projected, they could switch bodies. So he tried it with Adele. And it was successful. And Rob-in-Adele made Adele-in-Rob OD on heroin before tossing his body down the well.
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So, yes, this whole time, Adele has actually been Rob. And now Louise is Rob. So Rob-in-Louise marries David, none the wiser, and takes over custody of Louise’s son Adam (poor Adam) who totally knows something’s up. And the show ends post-wedding, with a creepy Louise smile, a distraught child in the backseat, and an ever-oblivious David driving happily ever after away.
Overall, I enjoyed this show. I really did. A little predictable, sure, but it was done well — though, IMO, the show didn’t need six episodes to pull this one off. I’ll probably watch it again purely to see if there are any points that hint at Adele actually being Rob the whole time. I might even read the book (which you can buy on Amazon here). Yeah, the astral projection thing kind of came out of left field, but as a self-proclaimed spiritual mystic, I can dig it. Won’t be trying it anytime soon, though.
Have you binged Behind Her Eyes yet? What did you think of that twist ending? Let us know in the comments below!
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