**Major spoilers for the ‘Fool Me Once’ finale below**
Harlan Coben has said he doubts whether any Fool Me Once viewers would have correctly guessed the show’s shock twist.
The author’s 2016 novel was adapted into a hit Netflix show starring Michelle Keegan and Richard Armitage, which landed on the platform earlier this month. The eight-part series follows a recently widowed mother Maya (Keegan), who sees her dead husband Joe on a nanny cam and begins searching for the truth behind what she saw.
At the same time, Maya’s niece Abby and nephew Daniel are investigating the murder of their mother Claire, drawing connections between the two cases.
In the end, it’s revealed that Maya herself killed Joe in retaliation for him murdering her sister, after getting confirmation that a gun that only the two of them had access to had been the weapon used in Claire’s killing.
Now, Coben has said that he didn’t expect viewers to guess the show’s eventual ending, but accepted that they may figure out that Maya had been Joe’s killer. He also said that Fool Me Once had likely the ‘biggest twist’ his work has contained to date.
“The biggest twist in one of our shows? It’s hard for me to choose, but I think the ending of Fool Me Once is probably the biggest twist we’ve done to date,” he told LadBible.
“Some people will claim that they guessed it, but when pressed, they admit they may have gotten the killer, but that’s not the big twist I’m talking about.
“I’m talking about how it all gets resolved.”
Towards the end of the series, Maya attempts to uncover the reason for Claire’s murder at the hands of Joe, tracing it to an anonymous whistleblower who had leaked footage of Maya killing civilians during her military combat service.
Claire attempted to help Maya by negotiating with the whistleblower, but ended up getting entangled in his investigation into Joe’s connections to a corrupt pharmaceutical company. Upon finding out about Claire’s dabbling, Joe decides he has to kill her to stop her from getting to the truth.
At the series’ conclusion, Maya goes to confront Joe’s family, the Burketts, headed up by matriarch Judith (Joanna Lumley) and tells them she’s figured it all out. They admit to what happened and offer to cover the whole thing up, blaming the already-dead Joe for everything else that they had done.
One of the Burketts then kills Maya with the gun she had brought, but it’s then revealed that she had brought her nanny-cam with her and set it up in the room on a livestream, capturing the Burkett’s confession – and her murder – live on camera.
Per Radio Times, the success of Fool Me Once has led to Netflix commissioning two other series based on Coben’s books. One of these is based on his novel Just One Look and is currently filming in Poland.
Michelle Keegan recently disclosed that she feared that playing the character of Maya on the show might be her last ever acting job.
“I will be doing a job and as soon as I wrap up on that job, I’m like ‘Right, I’m never going to work again’,” she said. “’You know, that was good while it lasted. That’s it, that’s me done’.”
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