Netflix’s Fool Me Once’s Ending, Explained

Fool Me Once has more than a few twists, but its final episode is a real shocker. So, if you’re trying to make heads or tails of what’s going on, here’s an explainer for Netflix’s Fool Me Once‘s ending.

Netflix’s Fool Me Once’s Ending, Explained

Fool Me Once is, at first, a story about Maya trying to get to the bottom of her husband’s “death” and apparent return from the dead. She attends his funeral, only to find him captured on her home’s hidden nanny cam. So what’s going on?

It’s an awful lot, as it turns out, but it requires some suspension of disbelief. And with so many revelations jam-packed into the final episode, it’s simpler to start with the big questions.

Who Killed Joe?

As we discovered in the last episode, the video Maya saw was a deepfake. Joe is dead, and the person who killed him is… Maya. She shot him in the park and then faked being robbed. Why? It all has to do with the answer to this next question.

Who Killed Claire?

Joe killed Claire because she was uncovering the truth about Burkett Pharmaceuticals and their faulty drugs. She wasn’t Joe’s only victim, and while Maya has also done some messed-up things (killing civilians), Joe was even more unhinged. He might have been “protecting” his family’s empire, but he absolutely got a kick out of it.

Who Dies?

Flashbacks aside, there is only one death in this episode, and it’s Maya’s. But she gets her revenge from beyond the grave.

Who Takes the Fall in Fool Me Once’s Ending?

As revealed in previous episodes, the Burkett family is into some very shady stuff, making a fortune with drugs that are untested, unapproved, faulty, and so on. That includes Joe, Maya’s late husband, who killed her sister Claire to prevent her from blowing the whistle. With friend Sean’s help, Maya figures out that Joe killed Claire, and as she reveals to Detective Sergeant Kierce, she killed Joe, faking the robbery.

With that confession, it seems as if Maya is going straight to jail. But instead, she sets something up with Kierce to bring the Burketts down. She goes to the Burketts and threatens them with what she knows. Mother-in-law Judith Burkett already suspects Maya of murdering Joe, and that’s why, as revealed in the previous episode, she got Maya’s nanny to help gaslight her with a deepfake of Joe.

Judith tries to talk “sense” into her, but brother-in-law Nick shoots her three times, intending to claim it was self-defense. But as Maya lays there, dead, the Burketts realize the whole conversation has been live-streamed via Corey’s site.

Corey had previously uncovered Maya’s war crimes (killing innocent civilians in the name of a cover-up), and with the evidence all over the internet, the Burketts are arrested and essentially ruined. Well, that’s the way the show paints it. Nick wouldn’t get away with murder, but I suspect that, in real life, Judith would have enough money to wiggle out of it.

This wasn’t Maya’s plan going badly wrong – she intended to die and goaded Nick into shooting her. “She killed Joe. She killed all those civilians. She knew there was only one way for this to end,” explained Corey.

The episode jumps forward 18 years, and we see Maya’s daughter Lily with her daughter, whom she’s called Maya. After her mother’s death, Lily was raised by Eddie, Claire’s husband, alongside Eddie and Claire’s own kids. Kierce is well and has his own son, though we don’t get to find out how his career has gone.

It’s a bittersweet ending, but everyone, minus the Burketts, who hopefully are in jail or ruined, are happy. It does pull the wool over your eyes a little as far as Maya’s motivations go – that much is true. But ultimately, she halfway atones for her past misdeeds, brings down the bad guys, and goes out in a blaze of live-streamed glory.

Is Netflix’s Fool Me Once Getting a Season 2?

Will we get a season 2 of Fool Me Once? No. This ties things up neatly, and there’s no cliffhanger, no glaring loose end. The book the series is based on is a standalone novel, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix adapts more of author Harlen Coben’s work, but Fool Me Once is a self-contained miniseries.

That’s Netflix’s Fool Me Once’s ending explained.

If you’re wondering if Shaun (who also shows up during the flash forward) is a bad guy, here’s what you need to know.