(Warning: Major spoilers ahead.)
Marissa (Sarah Snook) is about to have the worst day of her life.
After a normal day at work, she heads to pick up her son, Milo (Duke McCloud), from a playdate. But when Marissa arrives at the house, a confused woman answers the door. Milo, or any other child, is nowhere to be found.
All Her Fault, the thrilling new Peacock limited series based on the novel by Andrea Mara, is chock full of surprises. Still, nothing will prepare viewers for the gobsmacking final scene in the show’s first episode.
Throughout the premiere, we get to know those closest to Marissa and her husband Peter (Jake Lacy).
There’s Peter’s brother Brian (Daniel Monks), who lives in the guest house, and his sister Lia (Abby Elliott), who has a strained relationship with Peter. There’s also Marissa’s work colleague and close friend Colin (Jay Ellis), who’s helping cover some of her accounts while she deals with this tragedy.
Also in the tangled web is Ana (Kartiah Vergara), Milo’s nanny, as well as Jenny (Dakota Fanning), the mother of the child Milo was supposed to be having a playdate with—something Jenny had no idea about, because someone was impersonating her while texting Marissa.
By the end of the premiere, we discover the person who’s taken Milo, and it’s the same person who impersonated Jenny: Jenny’s nanny Carrie (Sophia Lillis). The detectives reveal Carrie signed Milo out from school and has taken him—but we have no idea why, where they’re going, or what on Earth Carrie wants from Milo and his family.
The show’s executive producer, Nigel Marchant, was struck by this big reveal. “When viewers learn that Carrie has taken Milo, it takes them out of the ‘who’ and immediately into the ‘why.’ It really sets up the wild ride of twists that unfolds over the next seven episodes,” he says.
It’s the ‘why’ Marchant references that’s about to blow audience minds.
After the revelation that Carrie kidnapped Milo, the episode jumps ahead nearly a month in time, as on-screen text reveals we’re now “27 Days” into the investigation.
Detectives Alcaras (Michael Peña) and Greco (Johnny Carr) are in a boardroom, facing a wall with pictures of eight potential suspects. It’s everyone we’ve been introduced to so far: Marissa, Peter, Brian, Lia, Colin, Ana, Jenny, and Carrie.
While the investigators take these faces in, Greco says something that flips All Her Fault on its head. “My money says she talks,” Greco says about one of the women on the wall. “Milo’s kidnapping was an inside job—she knows that we know that.”
Excuse me?
It’s a line that had me reacting like Jennifer Lawrence in her episode of Hot Ones. What do you mean, an inside job?
The first 45 minutes of All Her Fault meticulously builds an almost unfathomable level of dread. Right before this stunning twist, you’re overwhelmed by sadness for this family as they experience something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. Sure, these kinds of shows program us to believe that everyone’s a suspect, but the first episode does such great work establishing who is guilty, and that’s Carrie. When we realize Carrie is the one responsible for kidnapping Milo, we feel awful for everyone else involved, especially parents Marissa andPeter, and also Jenny, who unwittingly hired Milo’s kidnapper as her own nanny.
But this reveal from Greco means that all these people we’ve felt sympathetic for could be not only undeserving of sympathy, but quite the opposite. What could be clumsy exposition on a lesser show is instead a purposeful declaration that shifts our understanding of everyone we’ve spent this time with.
The twist calls into question everything the viewer sees over the remainder of the eight-episode series. You’ll find yourself watching closer than before, observing every glance, blink, and breath to try and figure out which individual (or perhaps group) could possibly be involved in something so vile. The police use the pronoun she, so we know it has to be one of five women on the board, but that doesn’t mean a man wasn’t involved, too.
If that’s not enough, the police have one more doozy to drop:
“I honestly didn’t see this coming,” responds Alcaras. “These nice people…killing each other.”
Killing each other? So, not only is someone involved in Milo’s kidnapping someone close to him, but the family is killing each other over it? It’s an awful lot to take in—and the episode ends right there, so you’ve got time to process. But let’s be real. All Her Fault creates the perfect hook to keep you binging, and luckily, the entire series is available now. You’re going to press play on the next episode immediately.
