Breaking down all the twists and revelations in the ending of Netflix's 'Fool Me Once'

Detective Sami Kierce (Adeel Akhtar) is another of the show's lead characters. He's the one investigating Joe's murder and starts to figure out that Maya knows more about her husband's death than she's letting on. Throughout the season's eight episodes, Sami has unexplainable blackouts that are also paired with paralysis.

Although Kierce's arc is seemingly unconnected to the overall story, it's revealed by whistleblower Corey Rudzinski (Laurie Kynaston) that the blackouts are a side effect of the medication Kierce has been taking. That medication is manufactured by Burkett Pharmaceutical — a company run by Joe's mother, Judith (Joanna Lumley).

It turns out the Burkett family had been knowingly pushing out drugs that weren't safe for use due to their serious side effects, falsifying drug trials.

Maya's sister, Claire, also worked for the company, and the ending reveals that she discovered the family was withholding information about the dangers of their medications. We learn Claire had also been working with Corey, the whistleblower, to gather information on the company before her death — in exchange for Corey not releasing audio he had of Maya admitting to killing those civilians when she was deployed.

Viewers learn that Joe killed Claire to try and keep the company's name clean, and to protect the family's wealth.

Plot twist! It turns out that Maya was Joe's killer the whole time. In episode seven, she admits to Shane (Emmett J. Scanlan), who she once worked with in the military, that she killed her husband as revenge for her sister's death.

But how did Maya know Joe killed her sister? In flashbacks, we see that she starts to suspect Joe because of how cold he was following Claire's death. She found it odd considering they worked closely together.

But by calling in a favor from Shane, Maya had a bullet from her Glock 17 tested against the one that killed Claire. And bingo! It was a match, confirming for Maya that Joe snuck the gun out of their house to kill Claire.

In an ironic turn of events, Maya later used the same gun in the park to avenge her sister. Sounds like justice, especially because Claire was far from the first person Joe killed.

Flashbacks to 1996 show that Joe, his brother Andrew, and their friends killed a schoolmate named Theo Mara during a hazing. They got away with it by saying Theo's death was accidental.

Andrew later felt guilty about their part in the crime and wanted to confess, but Joe killed him during a confrontation on a yacht before he could. Years later, Joe also killed Tommy Dark, the captain of the yacht who witnessed Andrew's death, to keep his past crimes a secret.

Like any good Coben series, the answer to the mystery is never straightforward. At the show's start, Maya's nanny, Izabella (Natalia Kostrzewa), deletes the video of Joe in the family's home and then feigns ignorance about it to Maya.

But it's not until the end of episode seven that Izabella and her husband Luka (Frederick Szkoda) admit to a gun-toting Maya that they deepfaked the video.

Joe was never really there; it was Luka standing in for Maya's dead husband with some added technical wizardry over the top. But why go to all that effort? Well, it all comes down to Maya's frosty relationship with her mother-in-law, Judith.

Judith believed that Maya has something to do with her son's murder in the park, largely because she knew her own son was Claire's killer. To figure out what happened, she paid Izabella to make the video to try and destabilize Maya.

While Maya got justice for Claire's murder by killing Joe, she also wants to make sure her mother-in-law pays the price for being complicit in Claire's murder, as well as the damage caused by Burkett Pharmaceutical's dodgy medication. (Inexplicably, Detective Kierce let her go have this confrontation even after finding out Maya had killed Joe, instead of just arresting her.)

To do so, Maya confronts her in-laws at their home with a gun and gets them to confess everything. It's a triumphant moment for Maya, as she turns the tables on her entitled relatives.

Unfortunately, Joe's other brother, Neil (James Northcote), steals Maya's gun and shoots her several times in the chest, killing her.

But Maya has one final surprise: She'd set up a nanny cam livestreaming the whole confrontation to the world via Corey the Whistle. The Burketts effectively confess to all their wrongdoings, and they're left to face the consequences.

In the show's final few minutes, it skips ahead 18 years to show how Maya's daughter, Lily, was raised by her extended family to grow up happy and away from the drama of the past.

She even has a baby girl of her own who she names (you guessed it) Maya. Cute.