'The Perfect Couple' Is Netflix's Latest Rich-People-Behaving-Badly Hit—With a Twist You Won't See Coming
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This story includes heavy spoilers for all six episodes of The Perfect Couple. At this point, there’s a whole subgenre of murder-mystery series revolving around someone who dies while in the company of a bunch of rich people. Since Big Little Lies became a runaway hit, several must-watch TV shows, like The Undoing and The White Lotus—and many predictable, missable titles—have followed suit. Netflix’s latest rich-white-people-behaving-badly series, The Perfect Couple, hit streaming on September 5, 2024.
The show, based on Elin Hilderbrand's novel of the same name, follows a formula many will be familiar with and is even notably helmed by The Undoing director Susanne Bier and features alum from both The Undoing and The White Lotus(!). Starring an A-list cast led by Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber as the matriarch and patriarch of the Winburys, an elite family of old-money WASPs on Nantucket, The Perfect Couple sees their family unravel when someone dies the night before their son Benji’s (Billy Howle) wedding. The wedding had already been tense among the Winburys, particularly famed author Greer Garrison Winbury (Kidman) who disapproved of her son tying the knot with the more working-class zoologist Amelia (Eve Hewson). So when Amelia’s longtime best friend and maid of honor Merritt (Meghann Fahy) is found dead, floating along the shoreline outside of the Winbury’s estate known as Summerland, even more melodrama ensues.
As Nantucket police immediately suspect foul play was involved with Merritt’s death and begin questioning people in the Winburys’ orbit, who killed Merritt becomes the central mystery of The Perfect Couple. By the end of the six-episode miniseries created by Jenna Lamia, the investigation into her death is solved, but not without a few twists being revealed. Below, find a breakdown of the ending of The Perfect Couple.
What is the truth about Greer Garrison Winbury’s past in 'The Perfect Couple?'
Throughout The Perfect Couple, Greer is obsessed with her image, from planning pristine wedding celebrations to booking PEOPLE features that paint her and her husband Tag (Schreiber), the heir to the Winbury dynasty, as nothing short of idyllic. The end of the show proves that she’s not only obsessed with her and her family’s image but covering up her past. In the finale when Greer is seen as a suspect—and assumed to have hired a man named Broderick Graham, an affiliate of the Turkish mafia, as a hitman—she opens up about her real history to clear her name.
When the police question Greer, they bring Broderick into the investigation room to try to break the two of them together, and Greer admits that he’s her brother. She explains that the $300K she asked her son Benji’s friend Shooter Dival (Ishaan Khattar) for and wired to Broderick was to pay back his debts. She tells the detectives that he is a fixer for the Turkish mafia, but she has been paying off his debts for years.
Greer later comes clean to her entire family. After being let go by the police, she confesses to her sons Benji, Will (Sam Nivola), Thomas (Jack Reynor), as well as his wife Abby (Dakota Fanning), Amelia, and her publicists, that she used to be an escort. She reveals that she has always lied about meeting Tag at a gallery, and instead, he paid for her services as a high-level escort on several occasions, and her brother set her up with clients. “And now I pay for everything,” she sneers at her husband. “I’m done living your goddamn mess. I’m not cleaning everything up for you. I’m done with your ego. I’m done with your bullshit. I am done. Done. I’m not taking care of everything for everyone anymore. I’m done. I’m done with living the lie.”
Who killed Merritt in 'The Perfect Couple?'
From the beginning of The Perfect Couple, Greer seems set up to be the killer. Even in the first episode, she suspects her husband is having an affair when a jeweler comments on a bracelet he purchased, which she never received but finds the receipt for. When Merritt arrives at the Winbury’s ahead of the wedding, Greer sees the bracelet on her wrist and realizes instantly that she must be seeing Tag.
As the series unfolds, it’s interspersed with flashbacks from Benji and Amelia’s engagement and wedding festivities over the past year, giving insight into Merritt and Tag’s secret relationship. Then in the lead-up to the wedding, Merritt tells Tag she’s pregnant.
Merritt also tells Amelia (who is not so innocent throughout the show herself, as she’s been having an affair with her fiancé’s friend Shooter), leading to an argument. The night before the wedding, Merritt also has an impassioned conversation with Tag about her pregnancy and how she wants him to leave his wife. Someone overhears their dramatic exchange, because shortly after Tag leaves Merritt alone on the beach, she pleasantly says, “Hello,” to someone who approaches her—presumably the killer.
By the end of the finale, the investigators piece together that Abbi, the pregnant, wealth-and-status-obsessed wife of Thomas, murdered Merritt. Abbi is the culprit and had wanted to get rid of Merritt because of how the Winbury family trust fund, which would go to her husband and therefore her, is set up. The trust fund is planned to go out to all three Winbury sons once the youngest, Will, turns 18, and his birthday is just a few weeks away in the series. Should another Winbury son be born, though, the trust fund would reset—which is exactly what would happen if Merritt saw her pregnancy through.
So Abbi drugs Merritt and drowns her, in hopes she can still get the seven figures in the next couple of weeks that she’s expecting. Abbi takes a tip from her husband—who has a habit of stealing other people’s pills and abusing them—and takes the barbituates that he stole from Amelia’s mother with cancer. (Once it’s clear in the investigation that Merritt died with barbituates in her system and Thomas had stolen those same pills, Amelia’s mother reveals they are meant to assist euthanasia and she got them from a peer in her cancer support group.) The detectives realize Abbi must have been the one to slip the lethal dosage into Merritt’s drink when they recall how Winbury’s maid (Irina Dubova) told them during her questioning that she’s constantly bossed around and asked to wash dishes, especially by Abbi, but Abbi demanded she not help her wash a glass in one instance the morning after Merritt died. That glass, they infer, must have had drug residue and her fingerprints, which is why she was washing it clean herself.
A flashback reveals that Abbi approached Merritt on the beach after she argued with Tag and vented to her about how seedy and untrustworthy men can be. As it turns out, not only did Abbi want Thomas’ dividend of the trust fund for herself, but because of how much money he owed the family friend Isabel (Isabelle Adjani), who he had been having an affair and abusing substances with. Abbi suggests to Merritt they both go for a late-night cold swim to clear their heads, drowning Merritt when she gets into the water.
How does 'The Perfect Couple' end?
When the truth surfaces, Abbi is arrested and, even as she demands Thomas call their lawyer, is bound to go to prison while she’s still pregnant.
Benji and Amelia also call off their nuptials, with him saying he’s heartbroken over her affair but understands her moving on. A flash-forward reveals just how much she moves on from the Winburys, as the zoologist takes a job at a zoo in the U.K.
She’s not the only person who is over the Nantucky elites. Greer visits Amelia at work, saying that she tracked her down, is proud of her for doing well on her own and was inspired to do the same, wrote a new novel inspired by her, and hopes the two can reconnect. All along the two were more similar than different.
To tie it all together, though, the Netflix show couldn’t go out with one more replay(!) of the entire wedding party doing a choreographed dance to Meghan Trainor’s “Criminal” from the opening credits. Merritt’s murder may have been solved, but it’s still a mystery why this scene kicked off all six episodes and capped off the finale. (It may be time for the rich-people-behaving-badly subgenre to take a breather.)
How does 'The Perfect Couple' ending differ from the book?
The Perfect Couple doesn't have the same ending as its source material. In Hilderbrand's book, Merritt's death is officially ruled an accident, and only one character pieces together what happened.
Rather than Abigail killing Merritt in an attempt to ensure access to the family trust fund, she intends to drug her husband's mistress, a Brit with financial woes named Featherleigh Dale in the book, with sleeping pills. (According to Variety, the family friend character was tweaked to be the French expat Isabel in the Netflix series once Adjani came on board.) When Abigail learns of Thomas' affair, she slips a pill into Featherleigh's drink so she'll pass out and not spend the night with Thomas. However, Featherleigh gives the glass to Merritt when the two chat about their troubles with men. After Featherleigh leaves Merritt alone, she cuts her foot on loose glass on the beach and attempts to wash it off along the shore. The maid of honor then notices a ring Tag had given her in the water, reaches for it, and at that moment is hit by the sleeping pills, passes out, and drowns.
While the case is ruled a murder and ends up being closed in the Netflix adaptation, it's seen as an accident in the book—and only Greer realizes what happened. Instead of telling the authorities, she keeps the information to herself.
Showrunner Jenna Lamia opened up about the book-to-series changes in an interview with Variety, explaining that she wanted The Perfect Couple to "lead to a denouement that would feel utterly fair but also utterly surprising."
"I wanted a more overt and active motive, and I wanted someone to have meant to kill the person they kill," Lamia said, noting that the book is told from various characters' perspectives so readers can understand their motives more clearly.
The showrunner added, "The best kind of murder mystery leaves you with a feeling that the filmmakers have played fair with you, that you feel satisfied, that maybe you didn’t guess whodunit, but maybe you could have or should have, and maybe if you watch it again you’ll see little clues that were there that maybe you didn’t know were important the first time."