His & Hers Ending Explained: Who is the Killer?

In Netflix’s ‘His & Hers,’ a string of murders takes place in the small town of Dahlonega, Georgia. Over the course of six episodes, the secrets of the town’s residents come to light, bringing out several suspects with strong motivations, who had the means and the opportunity to commit those murders. The main storyline revolves around Anna, a native of Dahlonega, who moved to Atlanta to work as a news reporter and escape the small town she doesn’t exactly love. The other protagonist, and a strong suspect in the case, is Jack, Anna’s estranged husband and the police officer who is put in charge of the murder investigation. The couple has a lot to settle between them, on top of the suspicions they have for each other. In the end, the truth turns out to be stranger than either of them could have imagined. SPOILERS AHEAD.

His & Hers Plot Synopsis

Anna comes home one night with a flustered look and dirty boots. The next morning, a dead body is found in the woods of Dahlonega, and Detective Jack Harper is brought to the scene. He is accompanied by Detective Priya Patel, who has just moved to the town from Boston. She brings her keen insights into the case, especially the trampled-up crime scene, but Jack is dismissive and tells her not to jump to conclusions. Anna, who had been on an unofficial sabbatical for the past year, suddenly shows up at her workplace, demanding her old job back as the leading news anchor. However, her boss points out that she was gone for a year, and no one had any idea when she would return, so her job was given to her replacement, Lexy Jones.

Anna is told that she will have to work her way back up again, and she immediately presents an assignment she can work on. There has been a death in her hometown, and she wants to cover it. Her return to the town brings up some old memories, and she particularly starts to poke at Jack, her estranged husband. It’s as if she knows something about the murder. Turns out that Jack had been having an affair with the victim, Rachel, and now he is worried that someone will find out about it and he will be charged with murder. He doesn’t yet know that the reason Anna is poking at him is that she knows about the affair, since she was also there the night of the murder.

As the bodies start to drop, with Rachel’s best friend, Helen, and Jack’s friend, Zoe, getting killed, Anna starts to look into their past, which is connected to her own. At the same time, she and Jack are still grieving the loss of their infant daughter, who died about a year ago, and was the reason why Anna suddenly disappeared from everyone’s lives. Another cause of concern in their lives is the deteriorating health of Anna’s mother, Alice, who seems to be in the grips of early dementia. She has been found wandering naked and alone on the town’s roads in the middle of the night, and clearly, she needs help. While Anna thinks about ways to take care of her mother, she must come to terms with a tragic event that happened when she was sixteen.

What Happened on Anna’s 16th Birthday?

As the details about Anna’s past come to light, it is revealed that she used to be friends with Rachel, Helen, and Zoe. They went to the same private school, St. Hilary’s. Rachel, Helen, and Zoe were already a close-knit group, the mean girls of the school. They were also from wealthy families and looked down upon anyone who didn’t look like them or who didn’t have the same financial status as they did. Alice used to work as a cleaner at Rachel and Zoe’s home and also had the same job at the school, so the girls knew her. When Anna got admission in St. Hilary’s, Alice tried to get the girls to befriend her daughter, hoping that it would be good for her. However, Anna soon discovered that the trio, particularly Rachel, was not just mean but also outright cruel.

One of the girls that they liked to terrorise was Catherine. While Anna tried to be friendly to her, the trio would bully her. At one point, Rachel gives her a drink she had peed in. Later, however, she makes up with Catherine and invites her to join Anna’s 16th birthday party. They have planned a party in the woods, and while Anna is not so sure about it, she feels she has no option but to join them. In the woods, the girls get drinks, and things are alright until three boys show up. At first, Anna and Catherine are not comfortable with the idea, but they are forced to go along. Later, when Catherine gets drunk, the boys try to force themselves on her. She cries out for help, but Rachel, Helen, and Zoe do nothing.

Only Anna comes to her defence, but while Catherine runs away, the boys turn their attention towards Anna. They sexually assault her while the trio looks on and sings “Happy Birthday.” It turns out that this had been Rachel’s plan all along. She had lured Anna and Catherine into the woods to pimp them out to the boys, who gave her money for the same. This wasn’t the first time she had done such a thing, and Helen and Zoe had been aware of it all along. Unbeknownst to them, the whole incident is captured in Anna’s handycam, which she used to record herself, in preparation for working as a news anchor. However, she doesn’t tell anyone about it. She buries the tape in her stuff, breaks off from the group, and leaves the town after graduation.

Who Killed Rachel, Helen, and Zoe?

As the investigation into Rachel’s murder picks up pace, the first suspect is her husband, Clyde. Jack discovers that he was into BDSM, and the videos of his acts were in Rachel’s phone, which she had dropped in Jack’s car while they were having sex the night of her murder. The detective also goes through Rachel’s phone to discover that she and Helen had been blackmailing someone named C. Jack thinks it refers to Clyde and his BDSM videos, but the man points out that the C refers to someone else. When Helen dies as well, Zoe starts to wonder if she is next. She tries to tell Jack about what happened with Anna, believing that the latter is exacting revenge on them. But before she can do it, she is killed.

It is when Clyde goes to the chief of police that it turns out that the C referred to Catherine, who has not been heard from for all these years. And then, Anna visits Lexy’s parents’ house by the river, where she sees pictures of Catherine, and realises that her old friend is her present nemesis, Lexy. Anna believes that Lexy, who has lost a lot of weight and basically changed her appearance, along with her name, is the killer, and her husband, Richard, who is also Anna’s cameraman, helped her with it. With Anna’s hotel booking getting cancelled and Richard taking her to Lexy’s house, she starts to wonder if she has been brought there to be killed. As she tries to run, a confrontation takes place between her and Lexy.

It ends with Jack arriving in time to help Anna, and Priya shooting at Lexy from a distance to neutralize her, realising later that the gun Lexy was holding didn’t have any rounds left. A search of Lexy’s house reveals Rachel’s fingernails, which confirms that she is the killer. Richard is arrested for helping her with the murders, even though he claims he has no idea what the cops are talking about. He also defends his dead wife, but the evidence is so overwhelming that no one thinks twice about it. Soon, the case is forgotten as everyone moves on with their lives. One year later, Anna, who is much happier now, comes home to visit her mother. She finds a letter for her in her room. It is a letter from Alice, and in its pages is her mother’s confession. It turns out that Richard was right. He and Lexy didn’t kill anyone. The killer had always been Alice.

Is Alice Caught? Did She Really Have Dementia?

In her confessional letter to Anna, Alice reveals the reason behind her killing spree. For her, Anna was the only person who mattered in the whole world, and to see her happy was all she wanted. So, when Anna got married to Jack and had a child, she was glad to see that her daughter had found her perfect life. But then, Anna’s daughter passed away due to crib death. Anna was devastated, and the grief led her to leave everyone and everything behind. With no sign of her, Alice only had Anna’s videotapes from her childhood and teenage years to remember her by. She watched all the tapes, and eventually landed on the one Anna had kept hidden all these years. Through it, she discovered what had happened to her daughter on her 16th birthday.

This discovery was made worse by the fact that Alice, who regularly visited her grandchild’s grave, noticed Jack and Rachel sneaking into and out of the woods. Then, on the child’s death anniversary, Anna visited the grave and, like her mother, saw Jack and Rachel together. Alice witnessed this too and was heartbroken to see that her daughter, who was already going through a tough time, would now lose her husband to Rachel, who had already committed a grievous crime against her. So, when Anna and Jack left, Alice punctured the tyres of Rachel’s car, leaving her stranded in the forest in the rain. Then, she stabbed her to death.

Since Rachel wasn’t the only one she needed to kill, Alice made a show of her dementia. She purposely walked naked and alone in the middle of the night, so that she would be seen as a frail old lady who was losing her senses. This act kept her out of suspicion, and she continued to behave as if she were sick through small acts, like leaving eggshells in the omelet she made for Anna and forgetting to put a teabag in the tea she made for Det. Priya. She used her knowledge of St. Hilary’s to enter the school after hours and kill Helen, and the access to Zoe’s house from her days as the cleaner to enter the house in the middle of the night and kill her in her bathtub. She was also the one who put Rachel’s fingernails in Lexy’s house to frame her, though she hadn’t intended to kill her. She didn’t count on Priya ending up on the scene and being a great shot.

Do Anna and Jack Get Back Together?

The only thing that Alice wanted to achieve through the murders was to make Anna happy again. It wasn’t just revenge to make Rachel, Helen, and Zoe pay for what they did all those years ago. Alice knew that a murder in her hometown would give Anna an opportunity to return to her career, which she had worked so hard for. And that’s exactly what happened. Rachel’s murder brought her back home. And then, when Helen died, it kept her in town long enough for things to get resolved between her and Jack, thanks to some prodding on Alice’s end. Zoe’s death not only brought them together for good, but also made them a family, especially as they adopted Zoe’s daughter, Meg.

Alice’s plan really did work out, because one year later, we find Anna at the top of her game. She is back to being the star of the show again. She is also pregnant and deeply happy in her relationship with Jack. While they still miss their firstborn, they are looking forward to the future. When they visit Alice, Anna finds the letter for her in her room, and having read it, she realizes how much her mother has done to ensure her happiness. She is shocked, not just because her mother knew about her sexual assault and Jack’s affair with Rachel, but also because of the violence it would have taken for her mother to do the things she has confessed to in the letter.

At the end of the day, Alice did all this for her, and despite knowing the truth, Anna is not going to give her mother up. Alice wrote the letter just so Anna could know how much she loves her and what it means to be a mother, especially now that she has another child on the way. This is a lesson from Alice to her daughter, preparing her for the challenges that motherhood brings, and showing her the lengths that a mother can go to ensure the happiness of their child. As they share knowing glances at the end, and Anna smiles at Alice, it becomes clear that this is going to be their secret, and Anna is never going to divulge it to anyone, not even Jack.