Secrets We Keep Ending Explained: Who Killed Ruby?

Netflix’s ‘Secrets We Keep’ (aka, ‘Reservatet’) presents a frayed portrait of two families that are forever changed after one of their au pairs goes missing. The story focuses on Mike and Cecilie Winther-Jensen, who have an au pair called Angel who takes care of their children, Viggo and Vera. They are neighbours and friends to Kat and Rasmus Hoffman, who have an au pair called Ruby who is supposed to take care of their 15-year-old son, Oscar. One night, Cecilie, Angel, Viggo, Oscar, and Ruby have dinner, after which Ruby tries to talk to Cecilie about her desire to leave the Hoffmans’ employ. Hesitant about interfering in the private affairs of her friends, Cecilie advises the au pair to talk to her employers about whatever problems she is facing.

The next morning, Ruby is nowhere to be found, and because Cecilie refused to help her the previous night, she feels an obligation towards the girl to find and save her. The first and most obvious suspects are the Hoffmans, who claim that they don’t know anything about where Ruby may have gone and what may or may not have happened to her. Things take a darker turn when Cecilie suspects that Ruby may have been pregnant. This means that either she was having an affair or she was raped. Because Rasmus has a reputation for being handsy with the help, he seems to be the culprit, but suspicion also turns towards Mike when his secret chats with Ruby are revealed.

Amidst this, a silent battle rages in young Viggo’s heart and mind. With Oscar, he is made part of a group where young boys share pornographic videos of women that they themselves have made. In some cases, the boys secretly film their au pairs or maids. In other cases, they harass girls to make videos of them. Viggo is also pushed to share such videos, but he doesn’t want to. However, the peer pressure does not allow him to leave the group either, and the more he stays with them, the worse it gets for him. The situation gets dire when Oscar shows him a video that relates to a very important detail of Ruby’s case. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Did Kat Kill Ruby?

It takes about a week since Ruby’s disappearance to confirm that she is, in fact, dead. Her body is found floating at the docks. The autopsy confirms that she was, indeed, pregnant, and there is a blunt force trauma to her skull, but it cannot be ascertained whether she got it before or after she died. With the evidence in front of them, or lack thereof, the most obvious explanation is that Ruby killed herself. Her pregnancy points towards the fact that either she had an affair or she was raped, and when she tried to confront the father, he refused to acknowledge her. As a devout Christian, she couldn’t get an abortion, but at the same time, she couldn’t go back home to her fiancé either, so she broke up with him and killed herself.

However, Detective Aicha Petersen believes that Ruby couldn’t have killed herself for the same reason that she couldn’t get an abortion. She was too religiously inclined to do that. This means that someone killed her, and most likely, it was the father of her unborn child. When Mike and Rasmus are suspected, both willingly give their DNA to clear their names. But then, Rasmus’ DNA is found to be a match, but not because he is the father, but because he is the grandfather. It was Oscar who raped Ruby. However, he did not kill her.

Ruby took Cecilie’s advice the night of the dinner and talked to Kat, leading to an argument that Oscar overheard. He tells Cecilie about it on the day that she and Mike come to the Hoffmans’ to bid him goodbye. These details strike her as odd because all this time, Kat acted as if she knew nothing about Ruby, her pregnancy, and the reason for her to leave. The fact that she knew about it all along and kept it a secret even when Ruby went missing and was later found dead shows that Kat was hiding something. Moreover, her violent nature, especially when it comes to protecting her son, is not a secret. She hits Oscar’s teacher in front of everyone and becomes more and more deranged as the truth about her son’s actions comes to light.

Interestingly, she also keeps herself close enough to the investigation, through Cecilie, to know what is going on. She also joins the search party organised by Ruby’s friends, and even tells Cecilie that killers are known to go back to the scene of the crime. At the time, Cecilie doesn’t make much of it, but by the end, she has seen a very different side of her friend, and as Aicha tells her, she has no idea what her so-called friends could be capable of. Moreover, when she confronts her, Kat doesn’t exactly deny the accusation, unlike Mike and Rasmus, who not only expressed anger at being accused but even tried to clear their names in any way they could. Kat, however, is not fazed by the accusation, which shows that she did kill Ruby to save her son.

Will Oscar go to Prison?

Rasmus’s DNA test confirms that he is related to Ruby’s baby through his son, Oscar. While the cops make this discovery, Cecilie discovers that her son, Viggo, knew about the rape all along. He is shown the video of the same by Oscar, who threatens him to keep it a secret. Poor Viggo tries to tell his mom and Angel about it, but they are too busy with other stuff to pay attention to him. In the end, he is forced to get the attention of his teacher, who exposes the group chat to the parents. As soon as Cecilie finds out, she tells Aicha about it, but by then, Kat has already done her job. She removes the nanny cam from Ruby’s room, which has the video of Oscar raping her. She also goes through her son’s phone to delete the video, which fortunately for him, he hadn’t sent on the group chat, or he would definitely be done for.

The fact that there is no clear evidence of rape, especially with Ruby not being there to defend herself, the cops don’t have much to charge and prosecute Oscar. They have Viggo’s testimony, but it can be discredited as hearsay. They have the DNA test, but it only proves that Oscar and Ruby had sex, not that he raped her. In fact, with Ruby being the adult in this situation, the case can easily be reversed to show that she was the one who abused the minor Oscar. Thus, bringing that up in court would only assassinate her character and would do nothing to prove that Oscar is the guilty one here. While Aicha is convinced that someone killed Ruby, there is nothing she can do about continuing her investigation to find the murderer or even to have Oscar prosecuted for his crime.

His only punishment is that his parents send him off to a boarding school because his current school will not allow him to stay there after all the allegations and whatnot. Even without that, there is the group chat and the fact that Kat punched a teacher in the face, which is enough to have him expelled. This way, he walks scot-free, and so does his mother, who killed her innocent au pair instead of holding her son accountable. This is what Aicha knew would happen because Ruby is a poor, immigrant worker who no one cares about, while the Hoffmans are rich and powerful and have the resources to get away with anything they wish. She didn’t want the case to end like this, but this is exactly what happens. Ruby does not get the justice she deserves as her employers, including Cecilie, and the system, fail her tremendously.