In the writers' room for Lucky, showrunner Cassie Pappas kept coming back to Heat. The Apple TV miniseries bears little resemblance to Michael Mann’s 1995 crime drama, but its writers were gripped by the age-old game of cat-and-mouse: two people locked in a chase because they know nothing else.

“We've seen this idea of a person on the run and a dogged law enforcement chasing him,” Pappas tells Marie Claire over Zoom ahead of Lucky’s two-episode premiere. “Our show now has three women doing that. We have a female criminal (Anya Taylor-Joy), a female mob boss (Annette Bening), and a female FBI agent (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). How does that genre change when women are at the helm?”

Based Marissa Stapley’s novel, the series was first popularized as a Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club selection before landing with Pappas (Silo, Griselda) and co-showrunner Jonathan Tropper (Warrior, See). Taylor-Joy, who was attached to the project from the start, plays a grifter often underestimated for her size, age, and gender. “Nobody thinks that she's the smartest person in the room—when actually, every single time, she is,” Pappas says.

While Tropper was in New York filming another Apple TV title, Your Friends and Neighbors, Pappas ran the set for Lucky, which unfolds as an electrifying desert chase across seven episodes. As action-packed as the series is, it never strays from its emotional core: the relationship between Taylor-Joy’s character and her con-artist father (Timothy Olyphant). With Olyphant’s John in federal prison and Lucky unsure whom she can trust, she grapples with an identity crisis while on the run.

“I won't give anything away, but a big action sequence ends in her realizing, ‘My cons have real consequences,’” Pappas says. “We were always trying to have an emotional depth piece connected. If we're going to crash a car, we want it to also make you feel something deep about the character.”

With the first two episodes of Lucky streaming now, Pappas tells Marie Claire about writing a conscientious con artist, working with a star-studded cast, and crafting a “muscular, propulsive” thriller with Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter of Hello Sunshine.

Marie Claire: Tell me about adapting this novel. There are some big changes from page to screen. What were the thought processes behind some of those choices—or sticking points?

Cassie Pappas: Reese and Lauren from Hello Sunshine got the rights to the book [and were] extremely involved every step of the way. They were always on set. They give very detailed notes on scripts. They are the most hands-on producers that I've ever worked with. This was more muscular and more action-packed than some of the shows they had done in the past, and they were super eager to go there—and they were responsible for attaching Anya. Every single word we wrote with her in mind.

But the thing that we gravitated towards the most in the book was this dysfunctional father-daughter relationship. Tropper, having written something like This Is Where I Leave You, I know he does dysfunctional families very well, and if I were to tell you any of my family stories, you'd be like, “Oh, you're primed and ready to write that.” But what made the stakes higher is that theme of, How am I like my parents? What baggage have I inherited? What am I genetically predisposed to?

Her dad's a con artist. He's a criminal, and he's raised her exactly like him, to be an extension of him. She was born into a life of crime that she didn't choose, but she's really fucking good at it because he raised her in his likeness. As she's trying to get out of this life and come of age, there's this self-awareness theme. She's physically running from those external forces, but internally, I liked the conflict of, What if the thing I'm running from is in my blood? What if I can't outrun it? Can I be the author of my own life?

MC: How involved were you in the casting process?

CP: We had Anya, and then we knew the next person we needed to cast was Priscilla. Annette Bening was always our number one, but I don't know that any of us really thought we were going to be lucky enough to get her. When we sent her the script, she leaned in and wanted to hear more. When it became real, it almost feels like any other actor is like, “Yeah, I'd love to be on board.” The Tim piece came because Jonathan Tropper had worked with him before, and I know that Lauren had a relationship with him—but my understanding was that he had heard about the part and was very, very interested in it as well.

MC: The first thing that gripped me from episode 1 was the action. It's brutal; it's very engaging. How did you go about mapping and executing that, and what role did Anya play in the process?

CP: I think the reason [Hello Sunshine] went to Tropper first is because he had a more action-heavy background. The word that kept being used a lot was “muscular.” In television, everybody wants something bingeable, they want something propulsive, so those are the words that kept being thrown around.

The pilot is a full sprint with a huge action set piece at the end, which then allowed us in episode 2 to go, “Let's take a downbeat, let's have her hide, let's have her lick her wounds, let's have her figure out her next move.” You can really do character in that episode. It was about managing both, and we never wanted to do action for action's sake. We wanted it to always have emotional depth or truth to it.

MC: In the first episodes, she's much more mysterious as a character. I would love to know more about writing Lucky in those early stages—what you choose to reveal, to obscure, and what you want the audience to think.

CP: One of the things that I really connected to was this idea of deep down underneath all the masks, she has no idea who she is—and I think that terrifies her. I think she spent her whole life reading the room. If she's talking to a mark, she's going to reflect back to the mark what they want to hear, what they think, and then she's going to con them. It's not until after she leaves the room that the person will realize, "Oh my gosh, I was just taken.” As long as she's living in that space of wearing a mask, she's been confident.

But as she comes of age and as she physically runs, I think there's something about the physical distance that gives her space to go, “Well, who the hell am I really? If I'm not doing this to people, I actually don't know who I am.”

MC: There's so much betrayal in this show. At some point, I thought I should stop being surprised by it.

CP: We did a lot of research in the early days of the writers' room about the art of the con. I'd never worked on a show that dealt with a con artist, so that was the piece of the show that I felt the most insecure about. I was like, “I can do the father-daughter thing, I'm all good on the character stuff, but I really want to dig deep on this world of con artists.” There was this book that we read called The Confidence Game, and that was really insightful. Con artists are apparently in a constant cycle of trust and betrayal. They gain your trust, they get what they want, then they betray you, and something in this book said that there might be a connection to that in your past as a child. You might be working out childhood trauma of experiences of trust and then betrayal, and not realizing it.

MC: As you said, Lucky was born and raised into this lifestyle and doesn't want to be part of it—but how do you feel that she fits into it? How do you view her moral framing within this?

CP: It lives in that space of nature versus nurture. Part of me is like, she's her father's daughter, so she's inherently born to be good at this stuff, but she might not want to use those skills. And then the choices that she makes throughout this seven-episode arc show her moral compass, her desire to be free, her desire to stop running. There's something beautiful about admitting that you don't know who you are, but that you are excited to figure that out, that you want to learn.

There are a lot of labels that women take on that really define who you are, or who you think you are. You're a mother, you're a daughter, you're a wife, you're a sister, you're a sibling—and if you remove each one of those labels and you untether yourself from them, well then who are you really? If you don't know the answer to that question, which I don't think Lucky does, then you get into that self-identity thing like, Who am I, and/or, Do I kind of maybe just want to be nobody? Do I just want to be free of all the masks and all the labels? I think she's fantasizing about “How can I get there, and what would that life look like?”

MC: Do you have a favorite scene or sequence?

CP: Episode 2 is one of my favorites when Lucky is hiding out in that ranch house in the desert, and the FBI agent is in the house. There's such simplicity to it. It's the opposite of an action sequence, and it is so tense, so edge-of-your-seat, and the acting from Aunjanue and Anya is so exquisite. What's interesting is once Aunjanue is in the house, there's not a lot of dialogue; it's just her crawling from one room to the other. It read well on the page, but then when we shot it, it got so much better.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Whether you’re throwing a book in your beach bag, taking advantage of an international flight, or lying by a body of water, July is for long, languid days of reading. This month brings a handful of new books you won’t want to put down—and because it’s summer, you won’t have to.

Get ready to fill your TBR list with coming-of-age stories of desire, obsession, and Tinder dates, as well as titillating thrillers and novels all about climate anxiety, sweaty summer jobs, and family scandals. To help you decide how to curate your summer reading and what to add to your cart, read on for our picks of the best must-read books coming out in July 2026.

The Best Literary Fiction Coming Out in July 2026

The Best Mystery-Thriller Books Coming Out in July 2026

The Best Short Story and Essay Collections Coming Out in July 2026

If you've read a Harlan Coben thriller or watched any of the numerous Netflix series based on his books, then you know the writer loves a twist. Netflix's latest Coben adaptation, I Will Find You, is no exception. In fact, it might be the twistiest one yet.

The mystery series begins with a simple premise: David Burroughs (Sam Worthington) is a man serving a life sentence after being convicted of his son's murder, but what happens when he learns that his son might not be dead after all? What follows can only be described as a rollercoaster of bad decisions in the pursuit of the truth.

David escapes prison with the help of his godfather and prison warden Philip (Peter Outerbridge), as well as his policeman son and David's childhood friend Adam (Jonathan Tucker), and his former sister-in-law, Rachel (Britt Lower), as he becomes convinced that Nicky Fisher (Clancy Brown), a local mob boss, set him up for murder and kidnapped his son as part of a very convoluted revenge plot against David's father. The truth, however, is much, much creepier. Read on as we break down how I Will Find You really ends.

Who kidnapped Matthew in 'I Will Find You?'

As it turns out, the local mob boss didn't kidnap Matthew (Ashton Cressman) in the Netflix thriller. In fact, he wasn't taken by anyone trying to get revenge on David or anyone in his family. He was taken by Hayden Payne (Milo Ventimiglia), Rachel's on-and-off boyfriend who previously interacted with Matthew once at a Fourth of July party.

So, why would a man supposedly in love with Matthew's aunt kidnap the boy and frame David for murder, you ask? And why did he help David and Rachel when they were on the run investigating? You're going to want to sit down for this one.

Why did Hayden kidnap Matthew in 'I Will Kill You?'

Hayden kidnapped Matthew for one very simple reason: He believed that Matthew was his biological son. Over the course of their investigation into the case, Rachel and David learn that Cheryl (Erin Richards), Rachel's sister and Matthew's mother, had visited a fertility clinic before getting pregnant. She and David had been trying for a while, and in her desperation to become a mother, Cheryl decided to use a sperm donor without telling her husband. Only, she didn't get the sperm she thought she was paying for.

The donor wasn't a stranger; it was Hayden, who paid off the fertility doctor to use his sperm in the insemination. It turns out, Cheryl used Rachel's name at the fertility clinic, fearing that she might be found out, so Hayden believed that Rachel was the woman he was inseminating. He couldn't stand the thought of her being tied to another man, so he orchestrated the entire operation using his family's money and connections.

How did Hayden set David up for murder on 'I Will Find You?'

After meeting Matthew at the Fourth of July party, Hayden couldn't stop thinking about him and became obsessed with the idea of taking back his biological son. So, he did the only logical thing: fake a murder. But first, he had to find a body. Lucky for him, his family owned a Swiss orphanage where a boy around Matthew's age had arrived. Hayden used his money to have the boy taken to the U.S. and murdered, planting the boy's dead body in Matthew's bed and making it look like David had killed his own son. With the help of his mother (Madeleine Stowe), he was able to manipulate the genetic testing so that the body found was identified as Matthew. With Matthew legally declared dead, Hayden was free to raise him as his own. Matthew, now 8, spent the last five years believing he was Hayden's son named Theo.

Who is Matthew's father in 'I Will Find You?'

Hayden spent years believing that he was Matthew's biological father, but in the final episode of I Will Find You, he learns the brutal truth: Matthew isn't his. Yes, Cheryl was artificially inseminated, but, as she learned soon after, she had already been pregnant at the time. David is Matthew's father.

By the time Hayden thought about getting a paternity test, he had already killed a boy and framed David for murder. Wanting desperately to protect her son and her family legacy, Hayden's mother lied to him about the results. What Hayden had done, after all, could not be undone.

What did David's dad and Nicky Fisher have to do with Matthew's Disappearance in 'I Will Find You?'

Once David breaks out of prison, he and Rachel follow the only lead they have: a witness who testified that she saw David burying the murder weapon in the woods on the night of Matthew's murder. David tracks her down, and while she maintains she saw an unidentified man burying the murder weapon that night, she admits that Nicky Fisher, the local mob boss, paid her to testify that she saw David.

David is convinced that Nicky Fisher has his son, but Nicky is actually just a red herring. He paid the witness to ensure that David would end up in jail, but only because David's cop father, Lenny (Hugh Thompson), had previously sent Nicky's own son to jail, where he then died. Nicky, blaming David's father, decided that David's trial was the perfect opportunity to get his revenge. (It also didn't hurt that David and his partner had, in fact, buried the murder weapon on the night of Matthew's death in an effort to save David from prison.)

How does 'I Will Find You' end?

After spending the season hunting David, FBI Agents Sarah Greer (Logan Browning) and Max Williams (Chi McBride)—partners and a father-daughter pair—take a leap of faith in the series finale, choosing to trust the escaped convict instead. Despite being suspended after a shootout with Nicky Fisher's men that left Max in the hospital, Sarah determines that Matthew's case is connected to that of a missing boy from Switzerland—the boy who was killed and believed to be Matthew. She decides to team up with Rachel and David to rescue Matthew from Hayden before they can leave the country.

While Rachel, David, and Sarah head to the Payne Estate, Cheryl heads to visit Max in the hospital and gives him proof that Matthew was not the boy who was found dead all those years ago. She had a family friend run another DNA test on the blood found the night of the murder, and it wasn't a match. With this new evidence, Max calls in reinforcements from the FBI.

Before the FBI can arrive, however, Hayden shoots his mother after learning that Matthew was never his biological son and shoots David as they both run after a very confused Matthew. Sarah and Rachel manage to catch up with him before he can escape, and, without a way out, Hayden decides not to surrender. He points his gun at Rachel instead, forcing Sarah to shoot him.

The finale then cuts to months later. After solving David's case, Sarah took over as the head of the FBI's Boston Fugitive Task Force. Meanwhile, David was cleared of all charges, and he and Cheryl were able to take their son home. Cheryl also gave birth to a baby girl with her new husband, and David and Rachel are giving their relationship a shot. Their entire blended family is adjusting to their new lives in Boston.

Back in the ‘70s—way before Twilight and True Blood got a new generation hooked on stories of sexy, brooding blood-suckers—prolific author Anne Rice ignited a vampire fever with Interview with the Vampire, the first book in her Vampire Chronicles series. A dozen more novels—plus a few spinoffs and crossover stories—followed over the course of more than 40 years. And though the paranormal book series is definitively complete following Rice’s 2021 death, it’s proven itself just as immortal as its main characters, finding new life in recent years as a prestige drama TV series on AMC that’s earned widespread critical acclaim and been praised for its depiction of queer characters and racial tensions.

The long-awaited third season arrives this summer, with a name change from Interview with the Vampire to The Vampire Lestat as it shifts focus from the first book in the series to its sequel. Whether you want to catch up on the source material before diving into the show or you’ve already sunk your teeth in and need more Louis and Lestat, read on for a full guide to The Vampire Chronicles book series.

What is 'The Vampire Chronicles' book series about?

With the core collection spanning 13 lengthy books, The Vampire Chronicles series covers quite a bit of ground. At the center of it all is Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman who was turned into a vampire in the 1700s. The series starts with Interview with the Vampire, as he tells the story of Louis de Pointe du Lac, whom he made into a vampire.

We get Lestat’s autobiography in Book 2, The Vampire Lestat, culminating in his tenure as a rock star in the 1980s—the attention from which he’s hoping will reunite him with old friends and stir up some drama between humans and vampires. The next three books—The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, and Memnoch the Devil—see Lestat fighting a major threat to the vampire community, grappling with his loneliness and lack of humanity, and coming into close contact with the devil.

Books 5 through 10 further build out Lestat’s world, both with and without him as a main character. We dive deep into the life stories of several familiar faces, including prominent vampires Marius and Armand, and see the universe expand to include characters from Rice’s witchy series, the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy.

Though Rice initially meant for Lestat’s saga to end with the 10th Vampire Chronicles book, 2003’s Blood Canticle, she resurrected him once again a decade later. Between 2014 and 2018, she published three final books in the series: Prince Lestat, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, and Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat. The final installments begin as the vampire emerges from exile and attempts to calm widespread chaos by stepping up as leader of the vampire community.

Which books from 'The Vampire Chronicles' series have been adapted for the screen so far?

AMC’s critically adored TV series debuted in 2022 as Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire and kept that title for 2024's season 2 as well. Those initial 15 episodes bring to life the events of the first novel in The Vampire Chronicles, with Game of Thrones alum Jacob Anderson as Louis and Australian actor Sam Reid portraying Lestat.

Starting with the third season, which premiered on June 7, the show has been renamed Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat and will dig into the eponymous second book in Rice’s series. The new installment will reportedly also tie in The Queen of the Damned.

Meanwhile, AMC is also adapting Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy, the titular characters of which feature heavily in the Vampire Chronicles books. Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches is now two seasons in, with a third currently in production. Both shows are part of AMC’s Immortal Universe based on Rice’s vast bibliography.

So far, the Immortal Universe also includes another series: Talamasca: The Secret Order, which debuted in fall 2025 and focuses on an organization that crops up in both the Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches books and is tasked with investigating and monitoring supernatural communities.

It's still early days, but in 2025, AMC revealed that an adaptation of Memnoch the Devil is also in development at the network. Lestat is still the main character in the fifth novel of the series, though without The Vampire Lestat renewed for additional seasons, it's unclear whether the Book 5 adaptation will be another installment, a spinoff, or a new show entirely.

Elsewhere, before The Vampire Chronicles got the prestige TV treatment, Interview with the Vampire was first brought to the screen as a 1994 film starring Tom Cruise as Lestat, Brad Pitt as Louis, and Kirsten Dunst as Claudia, a young girl-turned-vampire who becomes something of a daughter to the pair. (In the series, she's portrayed by Bailey Bass and Delainey Hayles.)

In 2002, a movie combining elements from both The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned—taking its title from the latter—premiered with Stuart Townsend as Lestat and Aaliyah as Akasha, the original vampire in Rice’s books.

How do I read 'The Vampire Chronicles' books in order?

Here are all 13 of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles books, from 1976’s Interview with the Vampire to 2018’s Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat:

• Interview With the Vampire (1976)
• The Vampire Lestat (1985)
• The Queen of the Damned (1988)
• The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)
• Memnoch the Devil (1995)
• The Vampire Armand (1998)
• Merrick (2000)
• Blood and Gold (2001)
• Blackwood Farm (2002)
• Blood Canticle (2003)
• Prince Lestat (2014)
• Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016)
• Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat (2018)

Are there any spinoffs to 'The Vampire Chronicles' series?

Yes! About halfway through writing The Vampire Chronicles series, in 1998 and 1999, Rice published two more books that further flesh out the universe but can stand alone and don’t directly impact the plot of the main series. This New Tales of the Vampire series comprises Pandora and Vittorio, the Vampire. Pandora tells the story of the titular vampire, who has known Marius for centuries and crops up as a side character in Lestat’s 1980s timeline. Vittorio, the Vampire, meanwhile, is an autobiography of yet another centuries-old vampire. His story, however, doesn't crossover with the main characters of The Vampire Chronicles books.

And, while technically not direct spinoffs of the Vampire Chronicles books, Rice’s three Lives of the Mayfair Witches novels do take place in the same universe as and star characters that feature heavily in the vampire-focused series. They include 1990’s The Witching Hour, 1993’s Lasher, and 1994’s Taltos.

Season 2 of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder put young sleuth Pippa “Pip” Fitz-Amobi (Emma Myers) at the center of another investigation in her quaint English town of Little Kilton. But the BBC/Netflix series is based on Holly Jackson’s bestselling series of YA mysteries, meaning there is more source material to draw from—so there may be even more cases for Pip to solve.

Season 1 followed Pip as she dug into the murder of popular high-schooler Andie Bell for a school project—but also because her instincts (correctly) told her the cops had pinned her death on the wrong person. In season 2, Pip and her friends investigated the disappearance of Jamie Reynolds (Eden H. Davies), the brother of friend Connor (Jude Morgan-Collie), who went missing right before he was set to testify in the rape trial of Andie’s classmate, Max Hastings (Henry Ashton).

This last season of the detective series ended with Jamie found safe, but the events surrounding the search for him (and Max’s acquittal) leave Pip traumatized. That aftermath would surely follow her into the next chapter of her story—as would the anonymous threats she received at home and school.

Curious what might come next for Pip, Ravi (Zain Iqbal), and the rest of their Little Kilton crew? Lucky for you, we’ve got some clues. Read on for everything we know about a potential season 3 of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

Has 'A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder' been renewed for season 3?

In mid-June 2026, Netflix confirmed via a press release that A Good Girl's Guide to Murder will return for season 3. Considering that there’s still one more book in Jackson’s series to adapt—and that season 2 debuted on the streamer's Global Top 10 list just four days after its release—you didn't have to be a detective to think a renewal announcement could be forthcoming.

To celebrate the good news, author Holly Jackson shared a statement: "I am ecstatic that we are able to bring A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder to its (bloody) conclusion. As Good As Dead is my favourite of the book series and it’s by far my favourite season of the show too. You’ll see Pip as you’ve never seen her before. It’s dark, breathless, horrible and…somehow still manages to be funny. Come on back to Little Kilton for the final time…if you dare."

Not only that, but star Emma Myers also shared her excitement and emphasized just how great the source material is. "I'm very happy that we get to bring everyone season 3 of A Good Girl's Guide To Murder. Thank you so much to everyone who has given this show love and support throughout! This has truly been an incredible experience, and Pip will be a character I will never forget," she said. "Book 3 is my favorite of all the books, so I'm very excited to show everyone what we've done. Get ready for a crazy time!" 

Which 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' book will season 3 be based on?

As confirmed by Netflix and Jackson herself, the third season will adapt Book 3 of her mystery books, As Good As Dead. That makes sense, as season 1 was based on the 2019 novel A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, and season 2 was adapted from 2020’s Good Girl, Bad Blood. The 2021 (ominously titled!) thriller is the conclusion to the trilogy, but there is also a prequel, Kill Joy; however, it's unclear if any scenes from that book will appear in flashbacks.

What will 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' season 3 be about?

According to a synopsis for As Good As Dead, Pip is about to head off to college but is still haunted by the events of her last investigation. By the end of season 2, we start to see as much, as she’s devastated by Stanley's death and feels guilty about the ways her sleuthing has hurt the people closest to her. Then there’s also the case of those anonymous threats she’s received: “Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?”

“Soon the threats escalate, and Pip realizes that someone is following her in real life. When she starts to find connections between her stalker and a local serial killer caught six years ago, she wonders if maybe the wrong man is behind bars,” the synopsis reads. “Police refuse to act, so Pip has only one choice: find the suspect herself—or be the next victim. As the deadly game plays out, Pip discovers that everything in her small town is coming full circle...and if she doesn’t find the answers, this time she will be the one who disappears...”

Which 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' cast members will return for season 3?

You can’t have A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder without the titular girl, can you? Inevitably, Emma Myers will be back as Pip. Netflix has confirmed we'll also see more of her besties and fellow clue-following crew, including Zain Iqbal as her boyfriend, Ravi Singh, Asha Banks as Cara Ward, Jude Morgan-Collie as Connor Reynolds, and Yali Topol Margalith as Lauren Gibson.

Because Max is now a free man following his acquittal—which arguably would not have happened if Jamie, a key eyewitness in the case, had not gone missing during the trial—Henry Ashton will reprise his role as well. Jamie, played by Eden H. Davies, will also continue to be part of season 3.

It's safe to say that the case is far from over. There’s still plenty of bad blood (pun intended) between Pip and Max: Remember, she painted the word “rapist” on his front door, and he taunted her by saying, “You started this, Pip. It’s my turn next.”

When will season 3 of 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' be released?

We don't have a proper release date yet; however, Netflix has given us a major update. According to the streamer, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder season 3 has already wrapped production and will premiere sometime in 2027. The news was confirmed as soon as the renewal was announced. It seems possible that we could have new episodes at the same time next year, around spring 2027.

We'll keep following all the clues and update this story as more information becomes available.

Pippa “Pip” Fitz-Amobi (Emma Myers) has a new case to crack. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder returned for its second season on May 27, bringing fans of the BBC/Netflix mystery series (and the Holly Jackson book series it’s adapted from) back to the quaint English town of Little Kilton. Season 2— based on the second book in Jackson’s series, Good Girl, Bad Blood—sees Pip dealing with the ramifications of discovering who really killed Andie Bell, including releasing a popular true-crime podcast about the investigation. She also finds herself in the middle of a new mystery: the disappearance of Jamie Reynolds (Eden H. Davies), just as he was about to testify in the trial against Max Hastings (Henry Ashton), who was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting classmates, including Andie’s sister, Becca Bell (Carla Woodcock).

The looming trial means Pip, Ravi (Zain Iqbal), and their friends need to race against time to find Jamie—and the search brings more twists and small-town secrets to light.

So, what happened to Jamie Reynolds? And what does this latest foray into detective work mean for Pip? Read on for our breakdown of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder’s surprising season 2 ending.

What happened to Jamie in 'A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder' season 2?

Perhaps the biggest surprise about Jamie’s disappearance is how little the police are concerned about it when it first happens—a key witness in a major trial goes missing right before he’s supposed to testify? Seems pretty suspicious! But because he’s an adult and has been known to go off the grid, it falls to Pip to start the search herself.

In the course of her investigation, Pip discovers that Jamie had been acting strangely in the lead-up to his disappearance: He tried to take his mother’s credit card and claimed he needed the money for a life-or-death reason, he stole a bracelet from Pip’s new next-door neighbors, and left a large sum of money in the Little Kilton graveyard. Pip initially believed she was the last person to see Jamie before he went missing, at a memorial marking the sixth anniversary of Andie Bell (India Lillie Davies) and Sal Singh’s (Rahul Pattni) deaths. However, he was actually spotted again that night—first at a Calamity party, then by Max, who saw him walking down the road after midnight.

It’s not surprising that Pip suspected foul play tied to the trial, because Max is certainly capable of manipulation and threats. But Jamie’s disappearance actually had nothing to do with that trial at all: He was catfished by a woman named “Layla Mead,” whom he met on a dating app. Layla was looking for a man known as “Child Brunswick,” who would now be 29-years-old and thought to be living in the Little Kilton area. She was talking to any man in town who fit that criteria, and got linked up with Jamie, who’s only 24, because he lied about his age on the app.

Once Layla deduced that it couldn’t be Jamie, she manipulated him into helping her track down the real Child Brunswick—though he didn’t actually know what “Child Brunswick” was referring to, or why Layla was looking for him. That’s why he was acting strange: Layla was seeing how far he would go in the name of helping her. Jamie did encounter Child Brunswick on the night he went missing—but that man then took Jamie hostage and held him in his home. He didn't want to hurt Jamie, but was afraid of whoever was after him. And once Jamie learned more about Child Brunswick's life, he wanted to help him figure out Layla's real identity, which is why he didn't try to escape.

And why was Jamie supposed to testify at Max's trial?

Jamie was a key witness because of what he saw at one of the Calamity parties. One of the women testifying against Max is Nat Da Silva (Jessica Webber), Jamie’s close friend who he also harbors romantic feelings for.

During her own testimony at the trial, Nat recalls blacking out at a Calamity party and coming to hours later on a sofa, knowing she’d been assaulted because her skirt had been pulled up and her underwear was off. She didn’t know who was responsible until a few months ago, when she told Jamie what happened and he revealed he saw Max coming out of the room that night. That’s why Jamie’s testimony was so important—it placed Max at the scene, which Nat couldn’t do herself because she’d been drugged.

Who is "Child Brunswick" and what does he have to do with Jamie’s disappearance?

This takes us to a different murder case: Scott Brunswick, a man responsible for a string of child murders almost two decades earlier. Scott used his young son to lure his victims to him, and the boy—who was 10 at the time of the last murder—ultimately testified against his dad at trial. The boy’s name was kept out of the media because of his age, hence being referred to as “Child Brunswick.” He served time in a juvenile facility due to his role in the murders, and upon release was essentially placed into witness protection to protect him from retaliation: He was given a new identity, and the media was barred from reporting on his whereabouts.

Naturally, like with so many other true crime cases, rumors circulated online about who Child Brunswick could be and where he might live now. One commenter claimed to know he lived in Little Kilton, and that someone his friend was in prison with—local drug dealer Howie Bowers (Thomas Gray)—had uncovered his identity and was blackmailing the man into keeping his secret.

Pip, ever the masterful detective, figures out Child Brunswick really is: Stanley Forbes (Misia Butler), a local man working security at the Hastings’s golf club. He’s the right age, for starters, but also Pip spotted him giving money to Howie while investigating Jamie’s disappearance, which was the blackmail to keep his true identity under wraps. She also remembered that he didn’t respond to his name at the club when his boss called for him—because it isn’t actually “Stanley.”

So, who was Layla Mead in 'A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder' season 2?

After deducing that Stanley is Child Brunswick, Pip messages him as Layla and asks to meet at the abandoned manor in town. Pip’s best friend Cara (Asha Banks) stays in the car as a lookout, while Ravi and Connor (Jude Morgan-Collie) search Stanley’s home—which is where they found Jamie.

Pip tells Stanley that she knows he’s Child Brunswick, and that there’s no way Jamie could be Layla because she’d been messaging with her during the week Jamie was off the grid.

As they’re talking, Cara is led in at gunpoint by the real Layla: Pip’s next-door neighbor, Charlie Green (Jack Rowan). His twin sister was one of Scott Brunswick’s victims, and he’s moved from town to town posing as Layla, obsessed with getting revenge. His wife, Flora, was in on the plan and helped whenever he needed a female voice on the phone.

Once Pip started looking for Jamie, he kept tabs as she narrowed the possibilities down to Stanley or Luke Eaton (Freddie Thorp), Nat’s jerk boyfriend. And now, thanks to Pip, he found the person he’s spent years looking for.

What happened to Stanley Forbes in 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' season 2?

Now that Pip has (unintentionally) done Charlie’s last bit of detective work for him, Stanley does what he set out to do: He shoots Charlie and sets the manor on fire.

Pip dragged him out of the building—this is the scene we see at the very start of the first episode—and tried to perform CPR before the authorities arrive. Unfortunately, she’s unable to save him, but before he dies, Stanley tells her it’s okay and reveals his real name: Jack Brunswick. Seeing him die, and knowing she led his killer directly to him, leaves her traumatized.

Two weeks later, when a funeral is held for Stanley, Pip and her friends are among the few people who attend.

Is Max Hastings found guilty in 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' season 2?

Max uses every lever his wealth, privilege, and family’s influence can afford him to try to sway the trial: He pushes Becca’s dad to convince her not to testify, threatening that his business will lose clients if she does. He gives himself a fake alibi for the night Jamie went missing by getting Stanley to doctor CCTV footage from the golf club, making it look like he was there. And he tries to get Pip to stand down from testifying in the case by threatening to get Ravi fired from his law firm.

Pip ultimately convinces Becca to go to court and tell the jury what Max did to her. She also speaks to the phone call she had with Max, in which she confronted him about drugging and raping Becca, which she had recorded, and Max tried to destroy by enlisting his cousin Robin (Freddie England) to steal her phone.

But Max’s lawyer undercuts both of them during cross-examination. And despite pressure from his mother to do the right thing and confess, Max doubles down on the stand and accuses Sal Singh of the assaults instead—a man who can’t defend himself, because he’s dead. And without Jamie on hand to corroborate Nat’s testimony, he’s acquitted of all charges.

Pip, furious about this, takes justice into her own hands: She couldn’t play her phone call with Max in court, but she does upload the footage to her podcast before throwing a rock through his window and painting “Rapist, I will get you” on his door.

What happens with Pip and Ravi in 'A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder' season 2?

Pip’s relentless search for Jamie and passion for taking down Max put a strain on her relationship with Ravi. She lies about missing his speech at Andie and Sal’s memorial (because she was following up on a tip that she didn't realize Max planted). And she eventually feels guilty about him losing his job at the law firm because Max made good on his threat—one she didn’t tell Ravi about until after the fact.

Ravi is more upset that she felt like she couldn’t come to him, because they’re supposed to be a team. When she still pushes him away, he reminds her that he loves her.

After Max’s acquittal, they have a heart-to-heart where she admits she blames herself for everything that’s happened to the people closest to her, because she pursues these cases. But this is who she is: obsessive, relentless, and doesn’t mind bad things happening if she’s the one doing them—and she hopes Ravi is okay with all that, because she loves him too.

After they kiss, Ravi reassures her: “I know exactly who you are, and I always have done. I love her, I love you.”

How does 'A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder' season 2 end?

The disappearance of Jamie Reynolds has been solved, but that doesn’t mean things are settled in Little Kilton. Charlie and Flora are on the run, and Pip still feels immense guilt about what happened to Stanley.

Jamie, now safely back home, confessed his feelings to Nat, and now the two are officially together and happy. Pip also cleared the air with Cara, who drunkenly told Pip earlier in the season that she ruined her life by uncovering her father as Andie Bell’s killer. Cara admits she doesn’t remember saying those things, and that it might have been easier to take her anger out on Pip because she’s still here, but she loves her friend and does not blame her.

Case closed, then? Not quite. Max still has a serious ax to grind with Pip. When she walks past him on her way to Stanley’s funeral, he taunts her by warning: “You started this, Pip. It’s my turn next.”

And then there’s one more mystery: Throughout the series, someone has been leaving threatening messages for Pip. First there was a news article about her, sent through her mail slot with tape covering her mouth in the photo, then an ominous note scrawled on her locker at school. The season ends with Pip going back to her room and finding that same message written over and over on her laptop, one that will surely come into play if (or when) the show returns for season 3: “Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?”

Countless mystery-thriller authors have cult followings and ascend to the top of bestseller lists, but not all of them straddle YA and adult audiences. British phenom Holly Jackson, however, does—and has followed all of the clues and gathered all of the evidence to know how to be damn good at it.

In less than a decade, Jackson has become one of the top-selling crime authors in the U.K., thanks in part to her largely teen-girl readership, whom she reveres and have followed her with each release since her 2019 debut, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. The book, following teenage detective Pip's investigation into a cold case, peaked at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list, where it spent over 77 weeks, and its Netflix adaptation went on to reach No. 1 on its streaming charts in roughly 80 countries.

With a highly devoted fan base and a healthy Easter egg-hiding habit, the author has even earned the nickname “The Taylor Swift of books,” selling more than 10 million novels in the process. It checks out, considering how intricately she plans her whodunnits. "I am obsessive about it," she has said. "I don't quite have a 'murder board' because it's not on the wall, but it is on the floor."

Whether you’re just discovering the British writer thanks to her recent foray into adult thrillers, you’re a diehard fan, or obsessed with Netflix's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, there's much to dive into. Below, we ranked every one of Holly Jackson's books so you know which one to pick up next.

Every Holly Jackson Book, Ranked

How to read Holly Jackson's books in order:

There are several different ways to approach Holly Jackson’s novels. If you want to dive straight into the young adult series that made the author famous, you’ll want to start with A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, followed by its sequels, Good Girl, Bad Blood and As Good As Dead, and its prequel novella, Kill Joy.

Five Survive, The Reappearance of Rachel Price, and Not Quite Dead Yet can be read in any order, since they’re all standalone novels.

If you prefer to read your books in the order that Jackson wrote them, however, you’ll start with the same first two books, but switch up the order of Kill Joy, which was released in February 2021, and As Good As Dead, the final book in the Good Girl’s Guide series, which was released in August 2021.

You can see Jackson's full chronological list below:

• A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019)
• Good Girl, Bad Blood (2020)
• Kill Joy (2021)
• As Good As Dead (2021)
• Five Survive (2022)
• The Reappearance of Rachel Price (2024)
• Not Quite Dead Yet (2025)

Which of Holly Jackson books are being adapted into TV shows or movies?

So far, two of Holly Jackson’s books—A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and Good Girl, Bad Blood—have been adapted for the small screen. The first season of the series debuted on Netflix and BBC Three in 2024, and season 2 will premiere on May 27, 2026.

While Poppy Cogan adapted the novel for the screen for season 1, Jackson told Variety that she had a lot of input into the final product. “I was very heavily involved in the show,” she said. “I was doing script notes throughout. I was basically…working 24/7 on the show.”

According to the author, the work came naturally. “I like to joke that I’m a screenwriter trapped in the body of a novelist,” she once told the New York Times. “I’m very visual. I need to be able to run the entire story, kind of like a movie in my head, before I put it down on paper.”

As such, she had opinions on the series, which she said was originally “far too different” from the book. She told Variety, "I just made it very clear at that point that if they weren’t going to adapt the book as an adaptation, I could take it elsewhere."

The author added, "If I hadn’t offered my sage advice and guidance and butted in, the show wouldn’t look the way it is today."

Season 2, which adapts the sophomore novel, Good Girl, Bad Blood, sees Jackson even more involved. This time around, she has a co-writing credit with Cogan. "I am BEYOND thrilled that we can continue Pip’s story and, this time, I’m writing on the show!" she said in a statement to Netflix's Tudum.

She expounded upon her role to Radio Times, saying, "I’ve always wanted to write for the screen as well as books, and with season 2, this is my take on what the show should be. I’m confident fans will love it—I’m really proud of it."

We'll have to wait and see if Book 3, As Good As Dead, or even the prequel, makes it to the screen. We certainly hope we'll see more of Pip's story play out; after all, the material is there!

Why Trust Us

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re kind of obsessed with books. Our team of editors and writers regularly spends hours scrolling through #Booktok, reading feedback on Goodreads and Reddit to see what hidden gems we’ve yet to discover, and, most importantly, actually reading the books we put on our lists.

We’re interviewing your favorite authors, listening to podcasts for the dirt on the best new book adaptations, and out in the world, checking out buzzy literary scenes. Bottom line: You should trust us because we’re lovers of the written word—just like you.

This story contains light spoilers for Is God Is. Aleshea Harris wrote Is God Is for herself. Over a decade ago, the playwright wove together inspiration from Greek tragedies, spaghetti westerns, revenge thrillers, and her own Southern upbringing to craft the story she wanted to read about Black female rage. She didn't know whether it would ever be performed—but after a buzzy 2018 Off-Broadway premiere that won her an Obie Award and drew attention from Hollywood executives, she’s now the screenwriter, producer, and director of a feature-film adaptation.

“Is God Is was a turning point for me,” Harris tells Marie Claire over Zoom. “This was the first time I was like, No, I'm just going to do what I want to do, what I think is delicious.

She says it was “soul work” to write. The result is a timeless yet contemporary folktale following discarded twins, Anaia and Racine, as their mother tasks them to find and kill their father, who burned and left them for dead 18 years ago. Every step of bringing Anaia (played by Mallori Johnson in the film) and Racine’s (Kara Young) bloodthirsty odyssey to the screen was painstakingly intentional; from casting legends like Vivica A. Fox and Sterling K. Brown to play to (and against) their celebrity personas, to recruiting collaborators, like producers Janicza Bravo and Tessa Thompson, who nurtured and built upon the first-time filmmaker’s vision. Harris’s film doesn’t pause to explain the intricacies that it explores, or diminish itself to make its audience comfortable; it’s just brash, explosive, and unapologetic as it reads on the page.

Though its themes of vengeance, trauma, and lookism are universal, Is God Is is first and foremost a story about Black womanhood. The twins don box braids and waist beads, they utilize humor in the face of pain, and rap girlie bops make up the soundtrack. Beyond that, Anaia and Racine's voyage is an allegory for the many ways Black women stay resilient, even when their community fails them. That's what Harris says she hopes audiences recognize as the film's base truth: "The inherent value and power of Black women."

Below, Harris chats with Marie Claire about crafting the style of her film’s world, depicting Black violence onscreen, and exploring her own girlhood through Anaia.

MC: The dialogue in the play and film is very true to Southern Black vernacular, but it also feels haunting. What were some of your inspirations?

AH: It often takes me a long time to start a play because I have to find its mother tongue. I need to know how the people speak in this universe, and then I'm trying to be inventive. This is in many ways Black Southern speech, but even that's quite general. It's really me recalling from memory and the ways that I speak—but then there's also a poetic gesture inside of it. That's the inventive part, where I'm creating a word that I know people will understand what it means, but it's not in the dictionary.

The playwright Suzan-Lori Parks says, "Words are spells in our mouths," and I think of a story as a very immense and complicated spell. Each of those ingredients has to be just right. If someone's going to say, "gonna," that's different from "gon’." "What you gon’ do" is different from "what you gonna do." The rhythm is different and can shift the sensibility of it. That's exactly what Is God Is is to me. It's got one foot in the familiar and then one foot in something else that's imaginative.

MC: The sequence introducing Vivica A. Fox’s character God/Ruby is a great example of the movie skewing reality toward the mythic. How did you approach adapting that scene visually and keeping it rooted without fully leaning into magical realism?

AH: Keeping the balance with all these genres—when I'm playing with a bit of a Greek chorus, but also there’s nods to the culture with the braiding and the nails—it's a gut thing. I feel like nothing should be there that's just ornamental. It should be supportive of the story.

When we get into the mother's space, it gives her a size and a texture to have the suggestion of a halo, to have her hair look like a veil, and to have these women [with her]. On one hand, they're attendants, which we see in the real world, but they also move in unison. They're extensions of her body, so that's the magic of it. It's like riding that line for me: We've got one foot here, one foot there, and that's the creation of a new world.

MC: How did you land on Racine and Anaia’s look, which feels very contemporary, but also fits within the film’s gothic style?

AH: I have to shout out our incredible costume designer, Angelina Vitto. Her lookbook made me more excited to tell this story. I remember saying to Angelina that I felt like Racine and Anaia's silhouette is like the punk band Bad Brains. There's something that feels a little tomboy, but there's a feminine flair. And she brought back Aaliyah and Gwen Stefani back in the day. The dresses that they wear when they meet their mother, I was [initially] like, “I don't know.” But you see what it does as part of this greater tapestry. She nailed it.

MC: There are some changes from the play to the film, including the introduction of Divine (played by Erica Alexander). Why did you decide to add her?

AH: I had gotten the note that we needed a little more of an obstacle for the twins as they went on their journey. So I wondered who else organically exists in this world? Who else has their father left behind? It made sense that there could have been another woman and another son.

A lot of people comment on what I'm trying to say about the Black church with this scene. When I wrote that, I was thinking that she's got a kind of cult. I was also thinking about institutions, so not only the church, in the way that she protects this man. Despite the terrible thing that he had done, he can come into the fold and be welcomed into her arms; the lack of wanting to hold him accountable, the lack of empathy for these women and their mother. We see versions of that in the culture, unfortunately, and that's what I'm trying to call out, because I think accountability is good for the entire community. I am coming for a certain reaction to harm that I think is problematic, and Divine was a great way to do that.

MC: There’s an ongoing conversation about the depiction of Black pain and trauma in film. What considerations did you have about how much violence to actually show on-screen?

AH: I'm very conscious of pain that exists because we are Black and pathologized, but I hope that this movie is about so many other things. I was sitting with that, where I know that my people experienced certain things, but I want to tell this story. Inevitably, because of the nature of anti-Blackness, there's overlap between the awful things that happen in the world and some stereotypes somebody has about us. To me, it goes without saying that not all Black men are like this man. If you're making a revenge story, which I am, and you like writing about Black people, which I do, your revenge story is going to have Black people, and somebody is going to be the bad guy. Unfortunately, gender violence exists in our world, and there's something to be said about it, but I think the way that one says it is important.

I knew that I did not want to show [God/Ruby] being tortured. It's also true to ancient Greek tragedy that the violence happens inside the home, and then you see or hear about the results of the violence. So we shot it in such a way that we wouldn't be directly on the violence. We would help the audience to engage other senses through sound or obscure the act. We'd have the camera on the person who was casually standing there while the violent, horrible thing happened, which tells us a lot.

MC: The film's themes of who is perceived as "ugly" and Anaia being dehumanized based on her appearance are so potent and really resonated with me. What conversations might you have had about that aspect of the film?

AH: People have said that it meant something to them that I had a Black woman calling herself ugly onscreen. We know the ways that beauty standards work; they're harmful to all women, and especially non-white women. That's something that I had sort of forgotten about or wasn't conscious of [at the time], but I absolutely wrote this from the inside, so I wrote from feeling ugly.

Growing up, I knew that I was [considered] ugly. I remember being about 4-years-old and talking to my mother. I named someone, and I was like, "That person is ugly." And then I was naming every Black person I knew, and saying, "She's ugly, she's ugly, I'm ugly." Because I had already processed at 4-years-old that Black people were not [seen as] pretty. The Barbie doll that they showed in the commercial was the white one. Beauty and how one is perceived in the world is a huge part of this story, to state the obvious, but I think what had kind of slipped under was that I wrote that because I spent a lot of time walking around thinking a thing about myself that I had been taught about myself.

MC: In this new Black myth that you’ve created, how do you hope audiences will react to Anaia and Racine, who seem to represent two different manifestations of Black female rage?

AH: I’ve described them before as opposites, as different reactions to harm, and to trauma. I've also thought to myself that they're aspects of the psyche. One part of the self who's like, No, no, no, I'm going to go scorched earth, and the part that's like, Let me just take a step back. There's an inherent drama having these two people who have different reactions, and I think that’s an important part of the movie.

I hope that people can sit with those questions for themselves, if they're a Racine or an Anaia, and when, and under what circumstances. Even though Is God Is isn't a literal proposition, I do hope that it affirms both kinds of being and anything in between, for everyone, and of course for Black women. To continually suffer because of your identity is a horrible thing. I think the question of my life is, What do I do with that? How do I maintain a sense of joy and peace and stay good and keep making my art when I know it's going to happen? It's all in there.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

If you've just finished bingeing Trust Me: The False Prophet, Netflix has a new fictionalized cult drama for you to dive into next. Inspired by showrunner Julie Gearey's brief encounter with a young conservative woman, Unchosen follows Rosie (Molly Windsor), a young mother who becomes entwined with a mysterious, but charismatic outsider named Sam (Fra Fee) when he saves her daughter Grace (Olivia Pickering) from drowning.

Rosie welcomes Sam into their tight-knit community and begins a romantic relationship with him, and his presence ignites her desire to leave her abusive marriage and the strict confines of their sect. Soon, even her devout husband Adam (Asa Butterfield) takes a strong liking to their newest neighbor. But as details about Sam's life, including that he's an escaped convict serving time for murder, slowly come to light, it threatens everything they've built and believe in—for better or worse.

So does Rosie escape at the end of Unchosen? Is Sam's bad behavior a thing of the past? Here's how Netflix's latest series Unchosen ends.

Does Rosie escape her violent marriage to Adam at the end of 'Unchosen?'

Yes, Rosie does escape her marriage at the end of Unchosen. But, in the end, it isn't her husband, Adam, that she's running from. It's Sam, the outsider whom she fought for, and who was hiding his violent secret from everyone.

Do Rosie and Sam stay together romantically at the end of 'Unchosen?'

Rosie learns the truth about Sam's past while she's in town, as she frantically searches for his name online. A young woman steps in to help her, and their Google search is troubling: Sam was imprisoned for killing a young girl in his native Ireland. Moreover, Rosie's daughter, Grace, tells her that when she witnessed Sam fighting with Mr. Phillips (Christopher Eccleston), Sam threatened Grace if she opened her mouth.

Back in their community, Sam corners Rosie in the kitchen and offers her his undying love. Knowing the truth, Rosie is repulsed and makes an excuse to leave, finding her husband Adam instead. She confesses about her sexual involvement with Sam and Sam's threat towards Grace, and Adam is kind for the first time, committing to help them escape.

They try to leave during a storm but are cornered by Sam in the rain. He feigns needing car help and discovers suitcases in the back, quickly understanding that they are fleeing. Adam tries to attack Sam, but he's overpowered, and Sam tracks down Rosie before she can run away. Feeling rage about being "abandoned" again—the same feeling that led him to murder the girl in his past—he holds Rosie's head under water. But suddenly, her voice is in his head, preaching about forgiveness, and he lets her go. She takes Grace into town, landing on the doorstep of Mrs. Phillips (Siobhan Finneran) and her son.

Does Adam reconcile with his brother Isaac in 'Unchosen?'

Adam casts Isaac (Aston McAuley) out in the early episodes of Unchosen when it's revealed that he had a cell phone and was in a relationship with an outsider—two no-no's for their separated community. But before there is a chance at reconciliation, Sam seizes an opportunity to run Isaac off the road and kill him in a fatal car crash. Isaac had tried to warn his family about getting close to Sam, but was unable to get through to them before meeting his end.

In the aftermath of the car crash, Sam frames the community's leader, Mr. Phillips, by pulling him into the front seat of the car and placing a flask in his hand, playing into his known drinking problem. Sam seems to grieve what he's done by seeking absolution in church, but he never confesses to what he did, allowing Mr. Phillips to take the blame publicly.

Is Sam and Adam's romantic moment revealed at the end of 'Unchosen?'

Suspecting Adam's repressed homosexuality, Sam stages a moment of intimacy between them, recording the whole thing without Adam's knowledge. He holds this over Adam's head, considering he was recently named an Elder in the community, and this revelation would threaten his standing.

Luckily, the video was never released, even after Adam helped Rosie and Grace escape. And when Adam has the chance to attack Sam, he takes it. “I remember reading the script and thinking, ‘Yes, finally,’” Butterfield told Tudum. “Adam has all of this pent-up guilt and shame and rage. He’s finally able to really stand up for himself and for his family. It’s taken him a long time to be able to do that.”

What is Sam's fate at the end of 'Unchosen?'

Before the credits roll, Unchosen jumps a year into the future, revealing that Sam never had to pay for killing Isaac. Instead, he's been welcomed into the Church, where he is seen preaching to a congregation—just like Adam and Mr. Phillips did before him.

Showrunner Julie Gearey told Tudum that releasing Rosie was “a moment of proper redemption” for Sam. (“Otherwise it’s like, what has it all been for?” she said.) But the eerie ending reads more as an indictment of both organized religion and culture at large, which often fails to punish men with status for their wrongdoings.

What's next for Rosie, Adam, and Sam after the end of 'Unchosen?'

Of course, we don't know anything beyond what was shown on screen, but Gearey and the Unchosen actors revealed to Tudum what they saw next for their characters.

Windsor believes Rosie's next step would be to figure out how to integrate into society and learn to trust people again, while Butterfield hopes Adam would find the courage to leave the cult. "I think he’s still got a journey ahead of him, an internal journey to really confront his own truth, to confront the loss of his family, to confront Sam,” he told the Netflix site. “It’s so deeply ingrained in him, this life and this world. Unlike Rosie, who needs the change and who’s seen the chance to change, I don’t think Adam’s really opened his eyes to that yet.”

Fee, on the other hand, doesn't really believe Sam has changed; he's just riding the wave as long as he can. “He entered the fellowship as a hero. He saved Grace,” Fee said. “They all think of him as this hero, and he’s going to allow that narrative to play out for as long as possible. I think he’s very much on a high, high pedestal at the end of the show...[Maybe] he’s replaced that love with the admiration and devotion of followers, but we all know that that’s not real.”

Though many know her primarily as the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, the 1985 instant classic is only one of Margaret Atwood’s seemingly endless list of published works, many of which have garnered prestigious literary awards and nominations. To date, she’s churned out 17 novels—plus another, Scribbler Moon, that’s set to be published in 2114 as part of a global project—as well as nine short fiction collections, more than 20 poetry collections, several children’s books, and quite a few nonfiction works, too, including her 2025 “memoir of sorts,” Book of Lives.

If that’s not enough of Atwood’s writing for you, she joined Substack in 2022 and has sent out periodic updates and musings in newsletter form ever since. Her body of work has also influenced countless other writers, meaning there’s even more Atwood-inspired writing to add to your shelves—like 2016’s The Power, a must-read from one of the prolific author’s mentees, Naomi Alderman.

Key to Atwood's decades-long position as a beloved and acclaimed author are several qualities. Not only do many of her stories feature imaginative, fast-moving plots, but they're often set in dystopian, near-future worlds that look uncomfortably similar to our own. She also has a signature darkly funny voice and, of course, focuses on themes of feminism, power struggles, gender dynamics, and identity.

With so many published works, it can be difficult to know where to start with Atwood’s books. Though you really can’t go wrong with any of them, we’ve rounded up 10 of her best and most beloved novels here to guide you on your journey into the Atwood-verse. Read on for the best books by Margaret Atwood, ranked.

Margaret Atwood's 10 Best Novels, Ranked

What is Margaret Atwood's most famous book?

Far and away, Margaret Atwood’s most famous book is The Handmaid’s Tale, which arrived in 1985 and earned the author several major awards and nominations, including her first time on the Booker Prize shortlist.

Atwood’s story of Gilead, a near-future version of the U.S. operating under a suffocating patriarchy, has been adapted several times: There's a 1990 film starring Natasha Richardson, an Emmy-winning Hulu series, which ran for six seasons from 2017 to 2025 and starred Elisabeth Moss, and even an opera and a ballet. It also sparked a long-awaited follow-up novel from the author, 2019’s The Testaments, which is now the subject of its own Hulu series starring Chase Infiniti.

How to read Margaret Atwood's novels in order

For the most part, Margaret Atwood’s 17 published novels can be read in any order. That said, she has written a couple of series. For one, 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale was followed nearly 35 years later by a sequel, The Testaments, so they should ideally be read in that order. And Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy is equally beloved: It goes Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, then MaddAddam.

Other than that, the world is really your oyster when getting into Atwood’s work, although the common consensus would likely be to start with The Handmaid’s Tale. Then, once you have a taste for her specific brand of sharply written fiction—predominantly of the feminist and speculative varieties—you can delve deeper into her bibliography, from the post-apocalyptic world of the MaddAddam trilogy to her retellings of classic works, a la The Penelopiad and Hag-Seed, which take on the Odyssey and The Tempest, respectively.

If you want to get to know Atwood’s work by following her evolution as a writer over time, here are all 17 of her novels in order of publication date:

• 1. The Edible Woman (1969)
• 2. Surfacing (1972)
• 3. Lady Oracle (1976)
• 4. Life Before Man (1979)
• 5. Bodily Harm (1981)
• 6. The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
• 7. Cat’s Eye (1988)
• 8. The Robber Bride (1993)
• 9. Alias Grace (1996)
• 10. The Blind Assassin (2000)
• 11. Oryx and Crake (2003)
• 12. The Penelopiad (2005)
• 13. The Year of the Flood (2009)
• 14. MaddAddam (2013)
• 15. The Heart Goes Last (2015)
• 16. Hag-Seed (2016)
• 17. The Testaments (2019)

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It’s a February afternoon in L.A., and Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, and Kate Mara are back in the same room. Five months after wrapping their Apple TV thriller Imperfect Women, the three sit around a table, between breaks in a photo shoot, slipping easily into conversation as good friends do—swapping notes on the latest prestige dramas.

For actors who’ve each anchored some of TV's most critically acclaimed shows, this project marks a first: sharing the screen as a trio. In Imperfect Women, they play longtime friends who realize how little they know about each other after one of them goes missing. Through illuminating flashbacks and switching POVs, viewers learn the secrets about their friendships at the same time as the titular women.

The newest addition to the rich-women-behaving-badly genre is a standout both in front of and behind the camera—Moss and Washington also served as co-executive producers on a set where the showrunner, directors, and top stars were all women.

Ahead of the series’ premiere (and its April 29 finale) Moss, Washington, and Mara sat down with Marie Claire to discuss adapting Araminta Hall’s novel for the screen, bringing the production to post-wildfires Los Angeles, and the importance of telling complex, female-led stories.

Marie Claire: I’d love to discuss how each of you came onto the project. What has it been like to work together—both onscreen and, for Kerry and Elisabeth, as producers?

Elisabeth Moss: I read the book at the end of 2019. It's highly likely I got it at the airport—I was flying to Hawaii to do Taika Watiti's film, and I thought, This looks like a good beach read—and I fell in love with it. I had just met my producing partner, Lindsay McManus, and we hadn't even started the company. This was the first thing we ever got together, so it's special to us because of that.

Kerry Washington: I'm a huge Lizzie Moss fan. Even just getting any correspondence from her was incredible. I feel like these opportunities to work with other women and really lift each other up and carry the weight together are so wonderful.

EM: It's really rare you get to go to another actress and say, "Do you want to partner up on something and both have great roles and have it be sort of an equal partnership as well?" I've never been able to do that before.

Kate Mara: The thing that I was most flattered by when you guys presented this to me before I read it was: "We need someone who presents as [perfect], but also has probably done some really messed up stuff." And I was like, "Oh my god, I'm so flattered." The thought that I could play that was much more exciting.

EM: There was literally one person that we thought of for Nancy, and luckily she said yes.

MC: Each of your wardrobes is very distinctive for your characters. Did each of you have a favorite look or element that really helped you embody your character?

KW: We need to lift up Tiffany Hasbourne, our costume designer. She was so committed to telling the story of who these women were through clothes and the subtle differences which also helped convey that we all were friends.

KM: Nancy's daily wardrobe is so fancy. Our rule for Nancy was she never wears pants unless she's just given birth. I’d show up [to set] in sweatpants and then put on these incredible dresses, and it does totally change your whole vibe.

KW: Eleanor came from money but didn't want to present that way in the world. She was very eclectic and kind of artsy in her choices, but underneath that it was like, 'Oh, that just happens to be McQueen, or it just happens to be Prada.' It was always mixed in with high-low and vintage finds.

EM: I presented Tiffany with a challenge with Mary. Part of me wishes I had said yes to some of her initial ideas because they were really beautiful; There was a lot of Zimmerman and things like that that I would have loved to have gotten to wear. But it didn't feel realistic for Mary, who is a stay-at-home mom and has two young kids. There were times when I had to dress up a little bit more to just look like I was going to the same party as these ladies, but the highest end we got was Dôen.

MC: Los Angeles is shot so beautifully in this series. How did the change from the novel’s U.K. setting to L.A. come about?

EM: I will point a very grateful finger at Kerry, who came up with the idea. It just worked creatively so well. I feel like I've seen the East Coast version of this show, and I thought, this is going to be different. And obviously to bring work to L.A. was really important to all of us. [Filming] ended up being after the [2025] wildfires.

KW: It was a gift to be able to give the crews here an opportunity to do what they do so brilliantly and not have to leave their families to do it. Also, I don't think people think of L.A. as being a place where there is old money and that's what I love about Nancy’s family story. Those families exist in Pasadena.

EM: It's a place too where you can reinvent yourself, right? You can be who you want to be, even if that person isn’t who you really are.

KW: It's part of our characters. We're all keeping so many secrets, like how much money we have or don't have, where we're from or not from. We're all sort of selling a misconception of those stories.

MC: Were there any elements of the original novel you really fought to make it to the screen?

EM: The distinct changes in point of view were really important to me. When I read the book, I really thought that I had it all figured out, and I was totally wrong about who Nancy was. That to me was something that was really important to keep.

KW: In the world that we're living in right now, to understand that you can be two people in the same room, in the same moment, and be telling two different stories, it is a muscle we all need to be building. We all need to be understanding that perspective really dictates so much and that you might learn something from seeing a moment from somebody else's point of view.

MC: There’s an interrogation scene teased in the trailer, where Detective Ganz says she wouldn’t call the women’s dynamic a friendship. Do you ultimately think Eleanor, Mary, and Nancy were friends?

EM: Look, we made a TV show. As far as I know, none of my friends have done some of the things that these women do in the show, but we needed to add a little drama. I do think they're friends.

KW: I do too. I think friendship—like women, like humans—is imperfect. I feel like the closest friends I have are the ones where we have fucked up and we made it through to the other side. Then you really know somebody.

EM: Also, it's so relatable. The idea that you tell one friend something that you're not going to tell your other friend. Everyone has a friend they go to that is maybe slightly less judgmental.

KM: Even with family as well. I'm going to tell this brother and not that brother.

EM: Absolutely. And when I read the book, I was like, yes, female friendships sometimes are not great. Sometimes someone messes up.

MC: The scenes that impacted me most, in terms of their bond, were when you could see the village they built together among their families. What was it like bringing that dynamic to the screen?

KW: I just got emotional, because it made me think of what it was like to make the show. We were saying yesterday that it's almost like the show had three number ones. We held it up together. There were weeks that were really hard for me and these girls were like glorified background actors. And then it became all about Kate and [Elisabeth and I] were like, 'We're just going to hang out and do our nails.' But we were there for each other and that allowed us to tell this story together as a community, as a circle. The way these women are sort of helping to raise all of their kids, that's how we were building the show, creating that support network for each other.

EM: This accommodation behind the scenes that no one would ever see; that quiet placing the other person in front of you. I wasn’t surprised at all, but it was very cool to see.

MC: Tell me about that experience working on a female-led set where all of the leads were working moms.

KM: There were babies and toddlers showing up all the time.

KW: My [eight-year-old] son was on set one day, and decided to be our still photographer. He was taking pictures of the crew and interviewing them, like, “What's your job?” It was really, really sweet.

EM: I'm kind of newer to the game and so I would just like constantly be trying to think of questions to ask them as working moms. 'How do you prioritize this? How do you make time for this?' There wasn't enough time to talk to them about everything I wanted to talk to them about.

MC: In each of your opinions, why do you think stories about the inner workings of “unlikeable” women and complicated female friendships are so fascinating to audiences?

EM: I think we like to watch ourselves on screen. We like to find things that we relate to, and it can be more fun when it's a heightened version. This show has moments that are so honest, vulnerable, and hard to watch. And then it also has watercooler, I can't believe she did that moments. I love watching that mix of highbrow and fun.

KM: People enjoy watching a mess. I don't think every show and every movie needs to necessarily have a message. Sometimes that's really important, but it can also just be a really fun watch. You can get lost in the story.

KW: I do think for a long time in film and television, women have been relegated to being the best friend, the girlfriend, the wife. I think we're in an era of knowing that we are at the center of our own stories and our own lives. It's shown in a beautiful way through this show where there are three interesting, complicated women, and you don't get to say one of them is the lead. That idea of making room for everybody to have the value where they are worth their own story. I choose as a mom and as a wife to sometimes be a supporting character, but in my day-to-day life, I also know that I'm the lead of my life, and we all deserve to know this.

EM: I'd love to get to a point where that's not even what we're talking about as related to women. Without calling out anyone specific, there's a lot of directors and actors that no one has ever asked them what it's like to play a messy person. Instead it's, "Oh my God, you were brilliant." Maybe we get to the place where it's not even a part of the conversation.

Photographer Tracy Nguyễn | Creative Direction Alexa Wiley | Art Direction Montse Tanús | Entertainment Director Neha Prakash | Producer Luciana De La Fe

Elisabeth Moss: Stylist Chloe Hartstein | Hair Stylist Sunnie Brook | Makeup Artist Sabriana Bedrani

Kerry Washington: Stylist Rob Zangardi & Mariel Haenn | Hair Stylist Davontae Washington | Makeup Artist Adam Burrel

Kate Mara: Stylist Johnny Wujek | Hair Stylist Mara Roszak | Makeup Artist Alisha Bailey

Love them or hate them, there’s no denying that trad wives have captured the zeitgeist. Scroll through TikTok or Instagram, and you’re bound to see a beautiful young mother cooking or baking things from scratch—and doing so dressed in couture, if you’re Nara Smith.

But the trad wife phenomenon goes far beyond social media: old-school staples like apron dresses, headscarves, and elbow-length gloves are dominating the runway, while hit reality TV shows like Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives—which has surpassed The Kardashians in ratings—and Fox’s Farmer Wants a Wife depict the far messier reality of modern women trying to operate within the constraints of traditional gender roles.

Now, the literary world is lending its own critical eye to the trad wife craze. A handful of recent books are putting a new spin on the domestic thriller, calling our cultural obsession with these hyperfeminized figures into question. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden and Jo Piazza’s Everyone Is Lying to You are just two recent bestselling examples that reinterpret tropes from classics like Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives or Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.

In 2026, the trend reaches a fever pitch, with three more novelists entering the discourse. Saratoga Schaefer’s USA Today Bestseller Trad Wife, released in February, follows wannabe influencer Camille Deming, who spawns with a demon à la Levin's Rosemary’s Baby. TikTok-famous cultural commentator Caro Claire Burke’s buzzy debut, Yesteryear, out this week, tells the story of viral sensation Natalie Heller Mills, who is transported back to the pioneer era she yearns for. (Anne Hathaway is already attached to star in the feature film adaptation.) Finally, Bram Stoker Award winner Sarah Langan’s Trad Wife, to be released this fall, sees journalist Jenny Kaplan investigate Mia Wright—the “trad wife queen” followed by millions—only to discover the dark truths behind the quaint town that has become her dominion.

Below, Schaefer, Burke, and Langan tell Marie Claire about the inspiration behind their books, social media’s role in the trad wife empire, and how the rise of trad wives correlates with culture and politics at large.

Marie Claire: What initially interested you in writing about trad wives?

Caro Claire Burke, author of Yesteryear: Everything that I’m interested in was things that I felt like I could access very easily through this topic. There are a lot of contradictions within trad wife discourse, like the irony of trying to sell subservience. That has been in women's literature forever—I think about The Stepford Wives, The Handmaid's Tale—so I don't even think it's necessarily new. It's a very established canon, and this felt like such a new way to access all of those same conversations.

Saratoga Schaefer, author of Trad Wife: I'm non-binary, and I wrote a horror book that's about someone who is a woman and who is in a very traditionally feminized role, [and] gets pregnant. That was very interesting for me to explore personally, because that was the horror for me. I like to write about things that confuse me, that I personally maybe don't understand or can't relate to. It’s a way for me to get into the head of somebody who's very different from me. That's what I was trying to do here—figure out the motivation behind the attraction to a lifestyle like this one.

Sarah Langan, author of Trad Wife: I think trad wives are really alluring. They're beautiful. They seem to be able to handle domestic life in ways that are really difficult. There's a lot of wish fulfillment in the trad wife algorithm that I think is what people love about them.

They also play into this cultural wave of wanting to put women back in their boxes. Cultural change is really scary, and we’ve had huge upheaval in the 2020s. Some people are really uncomfortable with that, and this makes them feel safe—this trend of exaggerating that existence in ways that are harmful.

I don't have an issue with a woman making a buck. My concern is that the algorithm wants this, just as it wants the manosphere, this exaggerated representation. It all goes back to this idea of trying to pretend that things are back to normal, especially in this post-COVID era, where we're not able to articulate what happened during COVID. Instead, it’s like, ‘Let's just go back to conservatism.’

MC: All three of these books fit into the genres of horror or suspense. Why might those genres speak to the trad wife trend?

CCB: Well, being a woman kind of is horrific. There are so many horror tropes around women, like the witch, the old hag, and gestation is another common theme. There’s something about womanhood where it's like, you can take the perspective of an autonomous person, you can have a protagonist, but they're never fully in control.

SS: The true horror of it, at least for me, comes from this social aspect and this way that we're regressing and putting all of these gendered binaries and boundaries on things like parenting and relationships. Horror is one of the very best genres to do that with because it gives you so much creative freedom and the ability to express these issues we're dealing with as a society.

SL: I think that the monster within is the scariest monster. The fears that I have, and I think are the most relevant ones, are what you don't know, and what you're living inside of and accepting without realizing that it's not okay. In Trad Wife, what I'm trying to do is put some paint on top of these invisible things so we can see them, these unseen assumptions about gender and about our roles in the world.

MC: The concept of trad wives predates social media, but how has social media shaped our perception of them?

CCB: Anything that does well on social media can capture the discourse now, like there is a little bit of the chicken and the egg where we’re stuck within the algorithm. I don't think it's accidental that all of our social media platforms are now owned by men who don't think women should have rights. Twitter was the birthplace of #MeToo, and that would never happen now because Elon Musk owns it. I think about Peter Thiel funding [28, a menstrual cycle-tracking app created by the founders of the conservative women’s magazine] Evie. I think of Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Meta and therefore Instagram and Facebook, and he talks openly about the need for a return to masculinity. These people are perfectly comfortable warping young women’s understanding of themselves.

SS: Social media has given us the ability to put ourselves inside of other people's homes, inside their lives, inside their families, and that’s something relatively new in terms of the human experience. That takes things to a very intense level that we haven't really seen before.

L: There’s value in being the person who runs the home. They're not just the glue for their children and their spouse. They're the glue for their community and extended families. Their full-time job is to love other people. I think we've lost that, or we perceive having lost that, because there's a necessity for two incomes now. It feels good to watch a stylized version of that on TikTok and think, ‘I could do that. I could be home, and I would give love, and I would be loved, and it would be amazing.’ Obviously, the issue is that these [influencers] are encouraging others to stay home, but they're working full-time to make this money. So it's a little bit of a pyramid scheme.

MC: Themes of performance, parasocial relationships, and agency were common threads in all of these stories. Why did these concepts feel important to explore?

CCB: The performance aspect is so interesting because with trad wives, you see elements of that both in religion and on social media. These women are trained to perform. You're performing for the Lord. You're performing for everyone around you. You're raised to believe that how you present as a woman not just impacts you, but impacts everyone around you. I think we all relate to this feeling of carrying so many different versions of ourselves and how exhausting that is.

SS: I think it all goes back to social media, which highlights this concept of performing and also selling, because we have these huge trad wife accounts that are monetized. There’s maybe a lack of transparency from those bigger accounts, of how they got there and what they're doing. Do they have generational wealth or not? Do they have other jobs or not? We are not being given the entirety of the truth. I think all of that ties into this intense whirlwind of emotions and reactions to trad wives, where it gets really unhealthy quickly.

I also thought it was interesting to explore this conscious choice to give up some power or agency (which in itself maybe is its own agency) to portray a certain role in your life or your family's life. In Camille's case, it's because this is how she was raised. She's raised to be this supportive, feminine presence in the life of her father, and then her husband. It’s also due to her need for validation, so she knows she is important to the people in her life, which I think a lot of people can relate to.

SL: I'm innately very uncomfortable with the idea of making money through your brand online. When you go online and say, I'm this, this is who I am, it becomes a mask, and now you have to be consistent with that mask. And for whom? The people behind these platforms are ultimately the ones who win, and then the mask kind of eats the face.

I also think it's scary to become a woman. Any time a woman comes of age, she notices eyes on her. The idea of becoming a trad wife maybe allows women to feel safe and protected, like it’s a way that they can bypass this entire system that seems to want to peg you and have eyes on you. They think, ‘I'll get the agency I can through this if I can't get equal pay.’

MC: What about trad wives do you think are so captivating, and what does our obsession with them (whether positive or negative) say about our current cultural moment?

CCB: I'm not convinced that people are following the path. I don't think there's really any evidence that people are becoming this. The women who have dropped out of the workforce are not making bread homemade. I think it's purely a tool of propaganda that people can use to argue over, which isn't nothing.

There's also a certain reality where I'm like, ‘You could also not follow them. You don't have to think about them.’ Natalie provides fury and entertainment and comfort, and all of these emotions to people who don't know her, and then people who don't know her provide engagement. Wouldn't your ultimate condemnation of them be not giving them any attention?

SS: I don't think it hurts that a lot of these trad wives are attractive white women with a host of children. That's the whole basis, really, of the trad wife movement: It's steeped in things like white supremacy and sexism.

Regardless of whether or not I have personal opinions about trad wives, the fact is, you are doing a lot of work. You are doing a lot of work on the home front. You're doing a lot on the emotional front because you are taking care of your family and your partner in a way that really puts them before you. And then, especially if you’re online, you're doing a social media marketing job. But when people look at it from the outside, it's like, ‘That's so great. You get to sit at home all day, you do whatever you want, you take pretty pictures for social media, and you get paid for it.’

That doesn't take away from the fact that it is work, and I think we need to recognize that. That kind of thankless labor can lead to burnout and mental health issues, and that's the stuff that we don't put online, because it's not pretty.

SL: I don’t know how many people are realistically thinking, ‘I want to dress like it’s the 1950s and work a farm and have seven kids.’ I don't think a ton, but I think the algorithm really likes it, which is corrupting. The more extreme you make something, the more clicks it’s going to have, and the more distorted our reality becomes.

I wanted to be considerate of these women in the book because the point I was trying to make was, we’ve got our arrows pointed at each other. It's all these people just trying to make ends meet and get their bills paid at the end of the month, shouting at each other, while the people running these platforms are getting rich and taking everything.

If you don’t know the name Taylor Ortega yet, you’re about to. The actress, writer, and comedian is starring opposite Schitt’s Creek creator-star Dan Levy in the new Netflix crime-comedy series Big Mistakes, arriving April 9.

The duo play siblings—a New Jersey pastor (Levy) and an elementary-school teacher (Ortega)—who accidentally get blackmailed into the world of organized crime after an attempt to steal a necklace for their grandma goes wrong. Levy, who also co-created the series, says this is just the beginning of big things for the actress who's spent years cultivating her comedic chops on screen and online.

"Taylor Ortega is going to become a household name," he told Tudum.

Before she steals your attention in Big Mistakes, read on to learn more about Ortega. (And before you ask, no, she’s not related to Wednesday star Jenna.)

Taylor Ortega grew up in New Jersey, just like her 'Big Mistakes' character

Ortega, 36, was born and raised in New Jersey, and she credits her home state with helping her develop her comedic sensibilities.

"Everyone there is kind of funny," she told WWD. "And it’s a very expressive place. Humor is a way that everyone communicates in New Jersey. My whole family is very funny. Everyone was a very big character."

It just so happens that her Big Mistakes character, Morgan, also hails from the Garden State—which made it that much easier to understand the woman she got to play. "I think Morgan is a bit of a past version of myself in many ways," she explained to WWD. "I wouldn’t say beat for beat, but she’s definitely struggling this season and spending a lot of time living at home, spending a lot of time back with her family, who she tried to escape. She’s low vibrational at times. And many times she’s vibrating love, but we all have that side to us. And at times, that side is taking the reins 24/7. And so she was very fun to play."

Ortega, who is queer, also shared in an interview with Out that she saw parallels in the series’s themes of characters living double lives. "A really common form of queer thought that a lot of people develop really young is having to double-think constantly. You’re accepting a truth of like, 'And then eventually, I’ll live the same normal way everyone else is living, where I’m not double-thinking, and I’m not doing these laps,'" she noted.

She started building her career in New York City, doing improv and more.

Ortega eventually moved to N.Y.C., where she waited tables while also immersing herself in the local improv scene. That world, she told Starry Mag in 2022, "was my original avenue into comedy and live performance." That’s also where Big Mistakes co-creator Rachel Sennott (I Love LA) first met Ortega, according to Out.

In addition to her improv and comedy work, Ortega racked up various acting and hosting jobs in those early years: The first job she booked was a hosting gig where she rode a bus across the country. In 2019, she was a New Face at Just For Laughs, the world’s biggest comedy festival, where NPR called her a "standout." She also auditioned for Saturday Night Live three times in a single year, as she explained in a 2024 podcast interview.

"You tell your creative friends, ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to work again.’ And they tell you, 'Don’t worry, you’ll work again.' A pattern emerges," she told WWD. "A pattern of you doing work emerges, a pattern of creating your own work emerges. And I think then that starts to make you feel more secure."

She stayed true to those roots even as she began stepping into more TV and film work. In 2024, for example, she created and starred in a multi-part "improvised series" called Long Lost, which you can check out on her Instagram feed.

Ortega then moved into TV and film, with roles in 'Succession,' 'Kim Possible,' and more.

The actress began moving into TV work around 2018, starting with a role in a season 1 episode of Succession. The following year, she appeared in the Disney Channel live-action remake of Kim Possible as Shego, the villainous accomplice of Kim’s nemesis, Drakken.

She played Shego one more time in the 2019 miniseries Kim Hushable and has made appearances in episodes of Love Life, What We Do in the Shadows, Ghosts, and The Four Seasons. She also landed a main role on Welcome to Flatch, a mockumentary sitcom about the residents of a small Midwestern town that ran on Fox, as Nadine Garcia-Parney, who runs the Flatch Historical Society. The series aired from 2022 to 2023, but was canceled after two seasons.

At the same time, over the last few years, Ortega had an uncredited role in the Ilana Glazer-starring psychological horror film False Positive, and appeared in both the lottery comedy Jackpot! , with John Cena and Awkwafina, and in the 2025 sequel Another Simple Favor, in which she played an FBI agent who trails Anna Kendrick’s Stephanie. All of which led up to her biggest role yet, in the Netflix original Big Mistakes.

She was the first person to audition for 'Big Mistakes'—and one of the last.

Levy and Ortega both recall her audition process being long because she had the unfortunate luck of being the first person to read for the role, and then had to play the waiting game. "You don’t want to be the first person in the [audition] room. When you’re seeing 250 people—it was a lot of people—it gets muddled," Levy explained to the Los Angeles Times.

Still, Ortega proved memorable, and after submitting a second audition tape, it became clear she was the right person to play Morgan, New Jersey roots and all.

“It had been like six months [between auditions]. “I was in a different place in my life. When I first auditioned for this, I thought, ‘This is a very good fit.’ It doesn’t mean that it’s my job, but it would be the best choice to pick me,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “Very rarely do you think, ‘I could do the best job at this,’ and get to do the job.”

Landing the role was an unforgettable moment for Ortega, but not just for the reason you’d expect: In addition to the big break for her career, she also revealed on Instagram that right after Levy called her to break the news, she tripped and fractured her elbow.

Ortega and the 'Big Mistakes' cast formed a tight-knit bond while filming.

Levy and Ortega easily found chemistry playing siblings, as the series co-creator shared in an interview with CBS: “You either have it with somebody, or you don't, and she is brilliant.”

In fact, he said the full cast (which also includes Laurie Metcalf as their mother) has a “familial camaraderie” that felt essential to their behind-the-scenes dynamic—a feeling similar to what he experienced working on Schitt’s Creek.

“I never thought I would be able to re-create that dynamic again,” he revealed to Out.

And again, had high praise for Ortega, who stepped into a role she seemed destined for: “To me, there’s no greater joy than watching an actor who has been working but not gotten that starring role, walk into something that’s so tailor-made,” he told the Los Angeles Times, catching himself in the pun.

In that same interview, Ortega also appreciated how cosmic it all seems. “It’s one of those classic lucky breaks where you do something for like 10, 15 years, and then the perfect thing comes along.”

Dan Levy's first TV series after Schitt's Creek is finally here, and it's a very different take on a dysfunctional family. Co-created by Levy and I Love L.A.'s Rachel Sennott, Big Mistakes is a crime-comedy series centered on hapless New Jersey siblings Nicky (Levy) and Morgan (Taylor Ortega). When the pair's mother, Linda (Laurie Metcalf), tasks them with buying a necklace for their dying grandmother, an impulsive theft puts them in the crosshairs of a local gang. Soon, the unlucky duo has to balance their ongoing family dramas with their forays into the criminal underworld.

For the genre-bending series, Netflix recruited several of comedy television's biggest rising stars, along with drama and sitcom legends like Laurie Metcalf. Below, read on for everything you need to know about the talented cast of Big Mistakes.

Dan Levy as Nicky

Nicky, the eldest Morelli sibling, is a pastor at the local church in small-town New Jersey. Though he's out as a gay man, his denomination requires him to stay celibate...so he has to keep his romance a secret.

Dan Levy, 42, is an Emmy-winning writer, producer, director, and actor who created the smash-hit comedy Schitt's Creek. The multi-hyphenate starred in the comfort show alongside his father, comedy legend Eugene Levy, and his sister, Sarah Levy. Since Schitt's Creek ended, Dan has starred in 2020's Happiest Season, 2023's Haunted Mansion, the final season of Sex Education, and HBO's The Idol. He also wrote, directed, and starred in the 2024 Netflix film Good Grief.

Instagram: @instadanjlevy

Taylor Ortega as Morgan

Nicky's sister, Morgan, teaches at a public elementary school, after her time pursuing acting in N.Y.C. didn't work out. Though she has built a life with her childhood sweetheart, she seems to be going through the motions. Morgan's decision to steal a necklace for her dying grandmother sets her and Nicky down a dangerous path.

Taylor Ortega, 36, is a New Jersey-born actress and comedian who started in the N.Y.C. improv scene. Since 2018, she has appeared in shows and films, including season 1 of Succession, the live-action Kim Possible movie, Love Life, 2021's False Positive, What We Do in the Shadows, 2024's Jackpot, 2025's Another Simple Favor, and The Four Seasons. Before Big Mistakes, her biggest TV role was playing Nadine Garcia-Parney in the Fox comedy Welcome to Flatch.

Instagram: @taylortega

Laurie Metcalf as Linda

Nicky and Morgan's mother, Linda, is loving and domineering to the point of exhaustion. Having run their family's hardware store for decades, Linda is about to embark on her second act: a mayoral campaign.

Laurie Metcalf, 70, is an Emmy- and Tony-winning actress and television legend, best known for playing Jackie Harris in the classic sitcom Roseanne and the recent sequel series The Conners. Her recent roles include Marion in 2017's Lady Bird, Phyllis Gardner in Hulu's The Dropout, tour manager Weed in HBO's Hacks, and Augusta Gein in Monster: The Ed Gein Story.

Abby Quinn as Natalie

Natalie (above, center right) is the youngest of the family, and seemingly the most put together. Though she's nearly a decade younger than her siblings, she has a loving husband and the closest relationship to Laurie. She's also her mother's campaign manager.

Abby Quinn, 29, is a Michigan-born actress who attended Carnegie Mellon before leaving to pursue acting. She has appeared in films like 2017's Landline, 2018's Radium Girls, 2019's Little Women, 2020's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and 2023's Knock at the Cabin. Most recently, she starred alongside Finn Wolfhard and Gabriel LaBelle in the indie dramedy Crash Land.

Instagram: @abbyquinnya

Jack Innanen as Max

Morgan's golden retriever boyfriend, Max (above, right) is completely devoted to her. He's also codependent, uses a bit too much therapy speak, and is maybe in denial about their dead-end relationship.

Jack Innanen, 27, is a Canadian comedian who was best known for his viral TikToks before he broke into acting. Last year, he had his breakout role as the caring, sexually fluid himbo Paul Baker on FX's friendship comedy Adults. He's currently campaigning to join the cast of Heated Rivalry season 2.

Instagram: @jackinnanen

Elizabeth Perkins as Annette

Max's mother, Annette, a powerful real-estate agent who's devoted to her only son, is played by Elizabeth Perkins, 65. The stage and screen actress is best known for starring in another crime-comedy series, the Showtime hit Weeds, as PTA mom Celia Hodes. Her other recent credits include the HBO shows Sharp Objects, Barry, and Minx; Apple TV's Truth Be Told and The Afterparty; and the 2025 movies Another Simple Favor and The Housemaid.

Instagram: @elizabethperkins

Jacob Gutierrez as Tareq

Nicky's boyfriend, Tareq, a local handyman and gay activist, is played by Jacob Gutierrez. The Kansas-born actor made his Broadway debut as the titular role in Aladdin in 2018. Before Big Mistakes, the actor appeared in TV shows including A Crime to Remember, Bull, and Dear Edward.

Instagram: @jacobtgutierrez

Boran Kuzum as Yusuf

Yusuf, the gangster who comes after Nicky and Morgan for the necklace, is played by Boran Kuzum. The 33-year-old Turkish actor is best known as an award-winning stage and screen actor in his home country; he notably played hot chef Feyyaz in Netflix's 2024 rom-com series Thank You, Next. Big Mistakes is Kuzum's first major U.S. role.

Instagram: @borankuzum

Mark Ivanir as Ivan

Yusuf's boss Ivan is played by Mark Ivanir, a Ukraine-born actor who has appeared in over 100 movies and shows. His first major film role was playing corrupt clerk Marcel Goldberg in Schindler's List. Most recently, he starred alongside Zoe Saldaña as Dr. Wasserman in Emilia Pérez.

Instagram: @markivanir

For the past two years, Hulu's Paradise has become the must-watch show of the winter. Created by This Is Us boss Dan Fogelman, Paradise started as a political murder-mystery and quickly expanded into a dystopian thriller, following power struggles between climate-apocalypse survivors living in a massive underground bunker. Season 2 expanded the world even more, introducing survivors outside the bunker as Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) ventured into the world to find his wife.

After several weeks of heart-wrenching (at times meandering) episodes, season 2's dual timelines finally merged in the explosive March 30 finale, which saw the death of a major character and a major cliffhanger. Luckily, there have already been updates about where the Emmy-nominated series will go from here. Below, read on for a breakdown of everything we know about Paradise season 3 so far.

Has 'Paradise' been renewed for season 3?

Yes! On March 17, 2026, Hulu announced that Paradise will return for season 3, dropping the news two weeks before the season 3 finale. Along with the announcement, the streamer revealed that season 2 had amassed 30 million hours of viewership so far, along with an additional 25 million hours for season 1.

When will 'Paradise' season 3 be released?

Though Hulu has yet to announce an official release date for Paradise season 3, it looks like the series is set to continue its annual cadence for new episodes. On March 21, nine days before the season 2 finale even dropped, creator Dan Fogelman shared on Instagram that the show's writers's room had already completed the scripts for season 3.

"We finished writing s3 of Paradise," Fogelman wrote, alongside an airplane selfie with the writers. "This very fun, very talented room has completed the assignment. Vegas here we come."

Some more good news: Speaking to The Los Angeles Times after the season 2 finale, Fogelman revealed that Paradise would start filming season 3 in mid-April 2026, and hoped the new episodes would arrive "even quicker" than season 2. If he gets his wish, we can expect Paradise season 3 to arrive in January 2027.

What happened in the 'Paradise' season 2 finale? (Who is Alex? Who is User X? Is [spoiler] really dead?)

How did 'Paradise' season 2 end, including who is Alex and is Sinatra really dead?

Major spoilers ahead for the Paradise season 2 finale. If your head's still spinning from the season 2 finale, "Exodus," let's quickly go over everything that will play a major factor in season 3. "Exodus" reveals that the mysterious "Alex" is an AI-powered quantum computer that manipulates time. Before the bunker, Sinatra killed Henry Miller (Patrick Fischler) because he thought that AI time distortion was too dangerous. (Can't say I disagree with him.) Of course, Sinatra continues with the ALEX project in hopes of saving humanity, and, by Paradise's present-day timeline, the computer (which apparently still hasn't been activated) is predicting thunderstorms and earthquakes (and deaths) and causing "anomalies," such as Link (Thomas Doherty) somehow being Sinatra's long-deceased son Dylan.

Meanwhile, "Exodus" is the evacuation order for the bunker, which comes as the nuclear reactors powering the habitat start to melt down. After what seems like everyone makes it out, Sinatra sacrifices herself to close the bunker doors and make sure that the radiation blast doesn't get outside. She does this because she realizes that another ALEX prediction was true: User X, a.k.a. Xavier, is meant to get to the separate ALEX bunker to activate it and save the world, presumably with the help of his nosebleed-twin Link. (ALEX's bunker is 100 miles away under the Denver Airport, so it didn't explode.)

Who in the 'Paradise' cast will return for season 3?

Despite the main bunker literally exploding, Paradise season 2 had a surprisingly low death count. Most of the main cast will likely return, including Sterling K. Brown (Xavier Collins), Enuka Okuma (Teri Collins), Sarah Shahi (Dr. Gabriela Torabi), Nicole Brydon Bloom (Jane), Krys Marshall (Nicole Robinson), Aliyah Mastin (Presley Collins), Percy Daggs IV (James Collins), and Charlie Evans (Jeremy Bradford). Season 2 addition Thomas Doherty (Link/Dylan) will also presumably have a massive role.

As for the dearly departed (R.I.P. Sinatra, Annie, Anders, Henry Miller, and Geiger), characters on Dan Fogelman shows never really stay dead. Likely, Julianne Nicholson, Shailene Woodley, Erik Svedberg-Zelman, Patrick Fischler, and Michael McGrady will return in at least one flashback. The same can also be said for James Marsden (President Cal Bradford) and Jon Beavers (Billy Pace).

Who are the new cast members in 'Paradise' season 3?

We haven't met everyone in and outside of the bunker quite yet. In late April 2026, as production presumably began on season 3, a big name was added to the cast. Deadline reported that Emmy-winner Julianna Margulies has been cast in a recurring role. The word is still out on who longtime TV star (known for her roles in The Good Wife, The Morning Show, and ER, among other hits) will be playing.

What will 'Paradise' season 3 be about?

Prepare for Paradise to go full Lost (whether you like it or not) in season 3. Speaking to The Los Angeles Times, Fogelman teased that season 2 sets viewers up for a lot of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff in season 3, as the show will "definitely play with time" as it leans fully into sci-fi. With that, it's safe to say that Xavier's new mission to activate ALEX will give viewers answers to the many questions that the season 2 finale left us with.

However, it may take a while for Xavier to make the dangerous 100-mile trip. "That’s a big part of what we explore in season 3," Fogelman told the outlet. "He just got his nuclear family back, plus two white kids. He got back everything he’s wanted, and then a lunatic billionaire is telling you that 100 miles away under the Denver Airport, there’s this thing that sounds crazy. It’s not necessarily a scenario where you run off and do it tomorrow. Part of the journey of the third season is: What is he doing with that information? And does he resist it?"

Some other teasers from the interview re other characters: The bunker dwellers (even Xavier) will have to adapt to roughing it in actual dystopia for the first time. We're "meant to believe" that Link is somehow Sinatra's son, though it's "a tricky question because of where we’re going on a science fiction level." Also, Annie and Link's baby will play a big part in season 3. "Or, I should say, the child plays a huge part in season 3," corrects Fogelman, before hinting at that timey-wimey stuff.

Another big question for Paradise season 3 is whether or not Jane is alive. Though she was still passed out on Torabi's shower floor at the start of episode 8, after the shrink stabbed her in episode 7, "Exodus" includes a flash of Torabi's empty shower right before the bunker blows up. The rule of TV is that a character isn't dead until you see the body, but even Paradise's team seems to be mixed on the assassin's fate.

Following episode 7's release, Nicole Brydon Bloom did an interview with PEOPLE, treating the stabbing as Jane's death. And in his postmortem THR interview, Hoberg said of the scene, "She seems pretty dead to me. We intend her to be dead." But in his Los Angeles Times interview, Fogelman teased, "It sure seems like [she's dead]. But there is that shot at the end that is meant to make you wonder." Guess we'll have to wait until the season 3 cast announcement to see whether there's a payoff to Jane's intense backstory.

Will season 3 be the final season of 'Paradise'?

Since Paradise's debut, Fogelman has been clear that he had a three-season plan for Paradise already mapped out. "It’s going to be a three-season show, I know where it goes. I know what the shape of each season is," he told The Hollywood Reporter in January 2025. "Each season of the show is a slightly different show, within the same show with the same characters."

As of February 24, the three-season plan seems to still be on track. John Hoberg, executive producer and writer on the series, spoke with THR and shared the writers's process on season 3. When asked about a possible fourth season of Paradise, Hoberg said, "We know what the end [of season 3] is, and it’s an end that would make it very difficult to make a season four come afterward."

Though I'm still skeptical at the thought of a streamer letting one of its most successful shows end without milking it for all it's worth, Fogelman is sticking with the three-season plan so far. When asked about the pressure to continue the show further, the creator told LAT, "There is always pressure. But I try to resist the pressure because I think it’s the right way to tell the story. Sterling [K. Brown] feels similarly. I was very clear from the beginning that I had a three-season plan. I don’t imagine a world where I would shift that plan. And, frankly, what we do in Season 3 doesn’t leave room for it."

When you call a show Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, well… you don’t have to guess where things are going. As the title promises, something very bad does happen in this Netflix horror-thriller series, which comes from creator and showrunner Haley Z. Boston and is produced by Stranger Things masterminds The Duffer Brothers. But finding out what that bad thing is, and who it happens to, is part of the show’s twisty ride—one that marries relationship anxieties, family drama, and supernatural curses. Oh, and there’s a wedding in there, too!

You’re cordially invited to attend our breakdown of all the biggest and most surprising things that happen across Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’s eight episodes, including the ending. We’ll consider this your RSVP.

What's the very bad thing that's going to happen in 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?'

Are we stopping at just one? The leadup to Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky’s (Adam DiMarco) wedding is filled with all sorts of ominous issues—from the creepy man Rachel encounters at a roadside bar that asks if she’s sure she’s marrying the right person, to the not-exactly-warm welcome she receives from Nicky’s family and their strange behavior in the days leading up to the ceremony.

The biggest looming “bad” though, as it were, is that a curse has plagued Rachel’s family for generations—a fact she only finds out in the days before the wedding. If Nicky is truly her soulmate, there’s nothing to worry about; the wedding will go off without a hitch, at least not any of the supernatural kind. But if he’s not, she’ll die that same day at sundown. And if she bolts, the curse passes to Nicky’s entire bloodline. The only way to escape the curse altogether is never getting engaged because once you do, there’s no turning back.

So, Rachel has some soul searching to do: Is Nicky truly her perfect match? And how sure is she?

Do Rachel and Nicky get married in 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?'

After trying to calculate how she is down to a percentage point, contacting a deceased ancestor via a seance, and concocting a magic potion (more on that later), Rachel decides to put her faith in Nicky and go through with the wedding. After all, she did love him enough to say yes in the first place when he proposed.

But after the walk down the aisle and sharing their handwritten vows, it’s Nicky who pulls the plug. Rocked by the events of the past week, including learning about the curse, that his mother is dying, and that his parents’s marriage isn’t as picture-perfect as he’d always been led to believe, he’s the one who doesn’t think they should go through with it.

The ceremony goes on hold, and guests enjoy the reception while the two of them go off separately to talk it out. Rachel initially hadn’t wanted to get married, Nicky reminds her, and by calling off the wedding, he thinks he’s saving them from the “curses” of their families’s respective traumas. Rachel, meanwhile, reminds him of the very real curse hanging over them, but also that she agreed to get married because she knew what that meant for him. Nicky was the only person who could have gotten her up the aisle, and she went through a lot over the past week (to put it lightly!) to meet him at the altar with confidence.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is he doesn’t believe her about the curse, or that she’ll die if they’re not soulmates—and because he doesn't believe her, then he never was her soulmate. As Rachel comes to this heartbreaking revelation, the sun goes down, and the curse begins taking hold of Nicky’s family: his mother, Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh), begins hemorrhaging, as does his sister, Portia (Gus Birney), who had an impulsive Vegas wedding.

Now that guests are collapsing all over the reception, Nicky suddenly believes her (no kidding!) and, in a last-ditch effort to save himself and his family, shoves a ring on her finger as his father (Ted Levine) pronounces them husband and wife. Does this rebound the curse back to her? Initially, it seems that way—she begins bleeding profusely in the same way the others did, and collapses in the house’s snowy courtyard, covered in blood. But the next morning, she comes back to life as the new immortal “witness” who will watch over Nicky’s family, warn them about marrying the wrong person, and attend all their future weddings.

What happened to Rachel's mother in 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?'

Rachel always knew her mother, Alexandra (Victoria Pedretti), died when she was a baby—but the violent circumstances of it were unknown to her until the days leading up to her own wedding, thanks to an old home video. It turns out her mother and father (played by Logan Miller in the past and Josh Hamilton in the present) got married in the same snowy countryside where Nicky’s family lives, and it also turned out that her husband was, in fact, not her true soulmate.

On their wedding night, as they’re celebrating back at a rented cabin, a very pregnant Alexandra begins to bleed and convulse, falling victim to the curse on her new husband’s family. As she bleeds out, her distraught husband decides to cut the baby—Rachel—out of her dying mother’s body.

And who was the "Sorry Man" in 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?'

Nicky’s family lore included the “Sorry Man,” a depraved killer that his older brother, Jules (Jeff Wilbusch), apparently encountered as a young boy after wandering off into the woods. But it’s not a ghost, nor is it a roaming serial killer targeting brides: the gruesome scene the young boy witnessed was actually the death of Rachel’s mother on her wedding night. He was hiding under the bed in the cabin as the chaos started, and the “I’m sorry” he heard over and over was Rachel’s father apologizing as he cut open his dying wife to save their child

Alexandra noticed the young boy under the bed, and with her dying breaths, made him promise to look after the baby, which is why present-day Jules tries to keep Rachel safe, at least until the curse threatens his own family and the future of his young son, Jude (Sawyer Fraser).

And who was that mysterious man at the bar in 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?'

That old man (Zlatko Burić) who asked Rachel if she was sure she was marrying the right person wasn’t just being a creep—he had a vested interest in warning her. And it turns out he’s the reason Rachel is in this whole crazy situation in the first place.

His family was the one initially cursed with this matrimonial burden: all descendants must find their soulmate in marriage, or they’ll die. On the day of his own wedding, a mysterious man came to him and told him this same story—and, like a coward, he left his wife-to-be at the altar. The curse then spread to Marianne, who married a man named Thomas Harkin, and their children—Rachel’s ancestors—all faced the same fate.

And because he didn’t marry Marianne, he became immortal. His only job now is to witness all the weddings in her bloodline—including that of her parents—but he likes to throw a little warning in for good measure. It’s also why he’s at Rachel’s wedding, and signs the marriage certificate as soon as Nicky tries to trap her in their cursed union.

How does Rachel try to break the curse in 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?'

Part detective work, part magic, part magical thinking. After researching her doomed family tree at the county clerk’s office with Jules’s wife, Nell (Karla Crome), Rachel discovers one ancestor who did apparently marry her soulmate—or, at the very least, this bride didn’t die on her wedding night. She tries to summon this woman with a makeshift Ouija board during her bachelorette party, and it actually works: Portia becomes possessed and recites a haunted version of the famous rhyme about what brides wear to weddings: “something living, something dead, something stolen, something red.”

It turns out that rhyme is also a recipe in a mysterious book of rituals Portia had in her room: something living from the groom, something dead from the bride, something stolen from the mother-in-law, something red from an adversary. Mix those things, drink it up, and Nicky will become her soulmate, if he wasn’t already. So Rachel collects the ingredients: blood from the witness, hair stolen from Victoria, semen from Nicky, and…her own pinky toe, cut off by Jules in the final hours before the ceremony.

She drops them all into a glass of champagne, but we don’t find out until later that she never actually drank the concoction (which also means she cut off a toe for nothing). Rachel ultimately decided to trust in her own faith in Nicky, thinking her belief that he was her soulmate would be enough—and it might have been, but then he ruined it.

What happens at the end of 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?'

The last-ditch “I do” that Nicky’s family tries to pull off fails, so now his family is the one bearing the curse. This, hopefully, means Nicky will choose his next partner very carefully. It also means a large portion of his family, the ones who didn’t marry their soulmates, died at the wedding once the sun went down. Despite talking about divorce, Jules and Nell survive the night, meaning they’re better suited for one another than they might have initially realized.

The witness begins taking items of value off the dead, but stops when he feels an invisible presence: It’s Death, finally coming for him this time, because Rachel has taken his place to watch over Nicky’s family.

And Rachel comes to in the courtyard, immediately understanding her new role as a forever wedding guest. When she sees young Jude in the hallway, she tells him she’s sorry this happened to him, but not to forget that it did happen. She then gives him a well-placed warning: He should be very careful who he chooses to marry. And whenever he does get married, she’ll be there to witness it.

With that out of the way, she has no more business at the family home—at least until there’s another wedding to attend. So she swaps her blood-soaked bridal gown for a suit, takes her mother’s bracelet off the dead witness’s wrist, and drives off in a pickup truck with “Just Married” painted on the back.

We’re all for a good classic novel. The literary canon has stood the test of time for a reason, after all. Undoubtedly, their prose and powerful stories have resonated with and influenced readers and writers alike for over a century. But beyond putting their stamp on the craft, some classics have inspired authors so much so that they've given contemporary updates to well-loved books.

The best books that reimagine iconic novels take a story from one of the all-time greats, from Jane Austen to the Brontës, and retell it in a modernized setting, from another character's perspective, or update the tale with a unique, inspired spin. Essentially, these recent hits and cult favorites scratch the itch for the traditional while stimulating your mind in a whole new way.

So, whether you wish the books you read in high school could be seen through a feminist lens, or you hoped you could spend more time with the subsidiary characters, these reimagined classics deserve a place on your bookshelf. Below, find the ones to read (after you've devoured the originals, of course).

If you haven’t heard of Lucy Foley before now, you’re about to. The best-selling, renowned mystery-thriller author has not one, not two, but four books being made into adaptations, and her upcoming novel, Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, marks the first time an author has revisited Agatha Christie’s beloved character Miss Marple in 50 years.

Foley’s meteoric rise wasn’t immediate: The historical fiction books she started out writing “were not best sellers, by any means,” as she told The Hollywood Reporter in April 2025. “I did an event in London, I think it was for my second historical fiction, and seven people came…and five of them were known to me. Once you’ve experienced that, you don’t take anything for granted.”

By 2022, however, the British author had broken into a whole new genre with murder mysteries, selling more than 3.5 million copies between 2018’s The Hunting Party, 2020’s The Guest List, and 2022’s The Paris Apartment and spending more than 200 weeks on the international best seller list.

As we await the September 2026 release of Foley’s latest, commissioned by HarperCollins with Agatha Christie Limited—considering she was tapped to revive one of the legendary writer's famed characters—we're taking a look at her entire catalog. Below, see the best books by Lucy Foley, ranked, from her ambitious debut to her most recent thriller.

The Best Lucy Foley Books, Ranked

How to read Lucy Foley’s books in order

If you want to read Lucy Foley’s books in order, you’ll first want to start with her three historical novels: The Book of Lost and Found (2015), The Invitation (2016), and Last Letter from Istanbul (2018).

From there, you can delve into her thrillers, which begin with 2018’s The Hunting Party, and continue on to The Guest List (2020), The Paris Apartment (2022) and The Midnight Feast (2024).

Foley’s latest book, the highly anticipated Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, will be released on September 22, 2026.

Which Lucy Foley books are being adapted?

Three of Foley’s books are currently being adapted for TV, with one more headed to the big screen.

Her most popular book, The Guest List, was originally optioned by See-Saw Films, but stalled after a while. “It was that thing where the projects were someone’s baby, and then they left and someone else inherited it. And we couldn’t quite get it together after that,” Foley explained to The Hollywood Reporter in 2025.

However, it's still in the works and will be turned into a limited series. The Guest List has since moved to Best Day Ever, the production company from Liz Tigelaar, known for being the showrunner on Hulu hits like Little Fires Everywhere and Tiny Beautiful Things. “They’re brilliant and she totally gets it. That’s all I’m allowed to say,” Foley, who will serve as an executive producer, shared.

Also being queued up for the small screen are The Paris Apartment and The Midnight Feast. Sony's 3000 Pictures was originally adapting The Paris Apartment for film, but Foley told THR that it's since been shifted to TV, which she admited "makes a lot of sense." The Midnight Feast, meanwhile, is being helmed by Universal International Studios, with Foley among the executive producers, alongside Sue Naegle (formerly of Annapurna Pictures) and Ali Krug (Deadringers, The Staircase).

Finally, The Hunting Party is on the way—but this one is still in early stages. Like The Guest List, it had also been optioned by See-Saw Films, but now has a new team behind it. Producer Mark Roybal and Wiip (Mare of Easttown) will turn it into a major motion picture, but they're still looking for a screenwriter for the project.

While Foley is attached as an executive producer to both The Guest List and Midnight Feast, she has no plans to write her own adaptations. “At the moment, I’m not sure if that’s something I would do. I feel the books need to have a different life onscreen, and I think somebody else is better suited to do that,” she told THR.

It hasn’t stopped her from fancasting, however: “I’ve been dreamcasting the character of Eddie, the 19-year-old kitchen hand in The Midnight Feast as Leo Woodall,” she confessed. “I had Harris Dickinson for awhile as well, but I think he might have aged out of the character since I started thinking about it.”

Why Trust Us

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re kind of obsessed with books. Our team of editors and writers regularly spends hours scrolling through #Booktok, reading feedback on Goodreads and Reddit to see what hidden gems we’ve yet to discover, and, most importantly, actually reading the books we put on our lists.

We’re interviewing your favorite authors, listening to podcasts for the dirt on the best new book adaptations. and writing our own stories. (No, but seriously, have you checked out MC Digital Director Jenny Hollander’s debut novel?) Bottom line: You should trust us because we’re lovers of the written word—just like you.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta isn’t done tracking down killers. The brilliant forensic pathologist who has starred in 29 of Patricia Cornwell’s thrilling crime novels is now the star of her own murder-mystery series, which premiered in March 2026 and is already coming back for more.

Prime Video’s Scarpetta features Nicole Kidman as Kay alongside an A-list cast that includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Bobby Cannavale, Simon Baker, and Ariana DeBose. And because the season 1 story unfolded across two timelines—adapting Cornwell’s first Scarpetta novel, 1990’s Postmortem, and 2021’s Autopsy—a younger ensemble (including Rosy McEwen and Jake Cannavale) played the same characters in 1998.

Season 1 ended with two mysteries solved. In 1998, Kay, the newly installed chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, tracked down a serial killer with the help of cop Pete Marino (Jake Cannavale) and FBI profiler Benton Wesley (Hunter Parrish). (It was a 911 operator who chose his victims by the sound of their voices.) And in the present, Kay and Pete hunted down another murderer whose crime scenes resembled the ones in the 1998 case. That perpetrator winds up being a cop who was obsessed with Kay, but when he goes to her home and attacks her, she violently beats him with a baseball bat—just as someone comes to the door and catches her in the act.

Fans will have to wait to learn what comes of that cliffhanger, and what’s next for Kay & Co. In the meantime, here’s everything we know about Scarpetta season 2.

Has Scarpetta' been renewed for season 2?

Yes, and it was from the start. Prime Video announced in September 2024 that Scarpetta had been given a two-season order, so the cast and creative team knew early on that a second season was already in the cards.

When is 'Scarpetta' season 2 coming out?

You might not be held in suspense for very long. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published around the show's initial release in March 2026, showrunner Liz Sarnoff said her writers’ room has already penned seven episodes for next season. Not only that, but filming was already underway in Nashville. According to the report, production was scheduled to continue into the summer.

With that timeline, it's possible the detective series could return to Prime Video around this same time next year. So, mark your calendars (tentatively, at least) for spring 2027.

Which book will 'Scarpetta' season 2 be based on?

Make that books, as in plural. Like season 1, which adapted two mystery-thriller books from Cornwell’s canon, season 2 will also weave together two Scarpetta novels.

“We do two books a season—season 1, we did Postmortem and Autopsy, and this year we’re doing Cruel and Unusual and The Body Farm,” Sarnoff explained to THR. “So the stories definitely start to pick up, and murders happen. Cruel and Unusual, [set] in the past, is a story that involves a prisoner who’s executed, so it gives us a different setting to roll into at the top of the season.”

Published in 1993, Cruel and Unusual follows an investigation in which fingerprints belonging to an executed killer are found at another crime scene—after Kay has already performed the dead man’s autopsy.

The Body Farm, which hit bookshelves one year later, centers on Kay traveling to North Carolina to investigate the murder of an 11-year-old girl, in a case that has parallels to another investigation in Virginia.

What will 'Scarpetta' season 2 be about?

You don’t have to be an ace investigator to deduce that Scarpetta season 2 will once again unfold across both the past and present. We can assume that one book will serve as the basis for the 1998 timeline, and the other will inform the current day.

Then there are the threads we still need to pull at from season 1. Obviously, there’s the question of who caught Kay mercilessly beating Officer Ryan (David Hornsby) after he attacked her in her home. Interestingly enough, Sarnoff confirmed to THR that it’s a character we already know. Then there’s Kay’s fraught relationship with her sister, Dorothy (Curtis); her strained marriage to FBI agent Benton Wesley (Baker); and her close ties to her longtime colleague Pete (Cannavale), who is also Dorothy’s husband. We also still don’t know who pulled the plug on niece Lucy’s (Ariana DeBose) AI version of her late wife. And there’s still that mysterious cover-up of Cammie Ramada’s (Brittany Belt) murder in season 1—why was her death marked down as an accident?

“The way I sort of think about the show is that, in the past [timeline], we really embrace the procedural storytelling a little bit more and stay with the case a little bit more, and then in the present, we take some departures as far as their emotional lives and the lives of the family and all that,” Sarnoff explained in an interview with Collider. “So, we are picking up right where we left off in [the season 1 finale] in the present day at the top of season 2 to show all the mysteries we left behind, but by the end of the episode, we're fully into another case, which is a child abduction, so it's super exciting.”

Who in the 'Scarpetta' cast will be back for season 2?

Double the timelines, double the returning actors. Prime Video has confirmed that all principal cast members across both timelines will return for Scarpetta season 2. This includes Kidman, Curtis, Cannavale, Baker, and DeBose in the present; and McEwan, the younger Cannavale, Hunter Parrish (Benton), and Amanda Righetti (Dorothy) in the past.

Are there any new cast members in 'Scarpetta' season 2?

Get ready to keep track of new faces. Prime Video has revealed several actors joining Scarpetta's second season, from veteran TV star David Arquette to Cobra Kai alum William Zabka to Emmy winner Holland Taylor to even rapper Michael "Killer Mike" Render.

Other new cast members include Jodi Balfour, Kim Dickens, Troy Garity, and Jerod Haynes. The series will also continue to be a family affair; after the father-and-son Cannavales, Simon Baker's daughter Stella Baker is set to join her father on the series.

All new character details are under wraps, so we’ll have to wait to see what twists and turns are in store. In the meantime, fans have plenty of questions to turn over—and two books to pore over for clues.

There's no shortage of detective shows, but some certainly stand out from the rest. Prime Video’s Cross, for instance, is one of them. The thriller TV series, based on James Patterson’s popular series of mystery-thriller novels, stars Aldis Hodge as the titular Alex Cross, a Washington, D.C.-based homicide detective and forensic psychologist who delves into the minds of serial killers to track them down.

In season 2, Cross is in pursuit of a mysterious, ruthless vigilante who is hunting down corrupt billionaires. The sophomore installment ran throughout winter 2026, leading up to a propulsive finale. While fans got to watch all of the season’s twists and turns unfold, there’s still one more mystery to solve: will Cross return to crack another case? Read on for all the clues we have about Cross season 3.

Is 'Cross' renewed for season 3?

Get ready for some more covert action because Cross has officially been renewed for season 3. Prime Video confirmed the renewal via a press release when the season 2 finale aired in mid-March.

To celebrate, Peter Friedlander, Head of Global Television, Amazon MGM Studios, shared a statement about the forthcoming eight-episode installment. “From the beginning, Cross has captivated audiences with its layered characters, pulse-pounding suspense, and emotionally grounded storytelling,” he said. “Aldis has delivered a definitive portrayal of Alex Cross, anchoring the series with depth, intelligence, and heart. We’re thrilled to continue this journey with Ben, our collaborators at Paramount Television Studios, and the rest of the incredible cast to bring even more of James Patterson’s iconic world to our global Prime Video audience.”

The thriller has been a runaway hit for the streamer: Season 2 immediately became one of the Top 10 most-watched shows on Prime, upon its winter 2026 release, and season 1 was its third most-watched show in 2025.

What’s more? Creator Ben Watkins told The Hollywood Reporter in 2024 that he has already thought through four seasons of the show. “We want this thing to go for 10 seasons, but in my head, I had already made a four-year plan, and it’s based on some things that I want to do to mine and pay homage to the characters that are in the Alex Cross book series,” he said. “Even though I’m doing new stories, I want at some point for there to be a dovetail between these characters, so I’ve been planting these seeds.”

We’re looking forward to seeing those seeds grow with season 3!

When will 'Cross' season 3 come out?

A release date hasn’t been announced for Cross season 3, but filming is underway. According to a Deadline casting report (more on that below), shooting started in mid-April. And based on comments from author Patterson in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, it seems as though the scripts were written even before season 2 hit the air. So, if production goes smoothly and runs through the spring/summer, it's possible new episodes could arrive in the first half of 2027.

That would be aligned with the show's typical release schedule. Cross season 1 debuted in November 2024 and season 2 aired between February and March 2026, meaning there was a little more than a year between them. If that schedule holds between season 2 and season 3, we could be looking at a summer 2027 release.

What will happen in 'Cross' season 3?

It’s too early to say, but the first two seasons have not been adapted from specific Alex Cross books; instead, as Hodge explained in a 2024 interview with TV Insider, the series is “based on the foundation of Alex Cross” and uses Patterson’s novels as a “bone structure.” So while we can’t point to any one specific book for ideas about what’s to come, we can expect to continue seeing the source material and its characters being fleshed out on screen.

In this season, Cross and co. are tasked with investigating threats against a business mogul (Matthew Lillard), after he’s sent two severed fingers in the mail. But he’s not being targeted by your average serial killer (if there is such a thing): rather, a woman (Jeanine Mason) and her associate (Wes Chatham) are hunting down wealthy, powerful, and corrupt individuals to deliver justice for their crimes. She’s driven by vengeance: Her targets all have ties to her mother’s murder after she tried to expose a human trafficking ring running under Durand’s watch.

There were more than a few twists by the end of the season, especially as the vigilante killer, Rebecca Luz, learned her aunt’s (Michelle C. Bonilla) connection to the corrupt operations and her mother’s death. While, before her death, Luz tasked Cross with exposing the trafficking ring involving billionaires and high-powered politicians that she was trying to take down, his plans are thwarted by the FBI. Still, he’s able to tell a senator, who takes the information public—but seeing the government’s willingness to cover up such heinous crimes, Cross turns in his badge.

There’s no doubt that Cross will continue to fight for justice—we’ll just have to wait and see how he plans to do so going forward, and what case he feels compelled to pursue. Hodge spoke to this in a conversation with TV Insider. He said, “I think Cross made an intentional choice, not necessarily to give up, but to walk away from a system that he could not fix…He still, in his mind, represents what he thinks justice is. He’s going to find a different route to represent said justice.”

While the series doesn’t directly adapt the books, as TV Insider points out, Cross returns to working at a private psychology practice after leaving the FBI in the novels—but eventually returns to D.C. as a consultant on various cases. So, we’d bet that will unfold in season 3.

Who in the 'Cross' cast will be back for season 3?

Cross will, of course, continue to star Aldis Hodge as Alex Cross, even if he faces an uncertain future after turning in his gun and badge because he’s fed up with working within a broken system. As we said, we can assume that inevitably he’ll begin pursuing justice on his own terms.

Similarly, we would likely expect to see returning cast members like Isaiah Mustafa (John Sampson), Juanita Jennings (Regina “Nana Mama” Cross), Caleb Elijah (Damon Cross), Melody Hurd (Janelle Cross), Samantha Walkes (Elle Monteiro), Alona Tal (Kayla Craig), and Johnny Ray Gill (Bobby Trey Abellard).

And what about season 2’s newcomers? Donnie (Wes Chatham) did not survive this season: He was killed by Luz’s Aunt Clare (Michelle C. Bonilla) to hide her own involvement in the case, which included setting up Luz’s mother to be murdered.

But it remains to be seen if we’ll get more of Lance Durand (Matthew Lillard) in a potential next season: It almost seems like he’ll get away with all the crimes he committed because of his wealth and powerful ties, until they’re all publicly exposed by Sen. Ashford (Josh Peck) using evidence given to Alex by Liz (Mason). And speaking of Rebecca…while she’s presumably dead after jumping off a dam to avoid capture, there’s always a chance she survived, and we could see more of the character going forward.

Are there any new cast members joining 'Cross' season 3?

This is one of the best things about a detective series: There are always new cases to solve, which means new victims, new suspects, new witnesses, and new experts. Fans received the first hint of one of those in April 2026 when Deadline confirmed the first new cast member in season 3. According to the outlet, Ethan Embry, a former heartthrob known for starring in beloved '90s and '00s movies like That Thing You Do, Can't Hardly Wait, Empire Records, as well as more recent TV shows like Grace and Frankie, has joined the ensemble.

We also know who he'll be playing. Embry stars as Frederick, "a charismatic sobriety coach known for leading with tough love. Strong, resilient, and generous with his time, he is widely admired for making others feel seen."

In July, another major casting announcement followed. Former Head of the Class star Robin Givens is among the new recurring stars. The actress (who also appeared in shows like Batwoman, Harlem, and Riverdale) will play "intellectual conservative" Senator Mulrooney. According to Deadline, the character is "overbearing both as a parent and a partner. She is the wife of a doctor and the mother of a son, whose problems the Senator keeps a closely guarded secret." Intriguing!

We'll have to wait and see how the two newcomers fit into the Cross universe. Right now, there are so many possibilities, but concrete evidence will present itself soon enough.

When you're looking to get lost in a book, sometimes you need your reading material to match your mood. With Marie Claire's series "Buy the Book," we do the heavy lifting for you. We're offering curated, highly specific recommendations for whatever you're looking for—whether you're in your feels or hooked on a subgenre trending on #BookTok.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, who would you want along for the ride? For us, many names come to mind—strong, empowering women like Michelle Obama, Greta Thunberg, Padma Lakshmi—but that’s in a glorious hypothetical world where we have them on speed dial. We can’t get enough of imagining who’d we’d want by our side for the ultimate hang/survival challenge—and neither can some authors.

In a slate of woman vs. nature novels, writers have plunked their heroines in harrowing settings and circumstances. Whether abandoned in the Australian Outback or the historic Deep South, a handful of recent bestsellers and certified classics have explored women's resilience against Mother Nature herself and manmade obstacles.

While tigers, snakes, epic winds, extreme temperatures, and a post-apocalyptic world may not be a daily threat for most of us, the patriarchy is. If battling bigotry, injustice, violence, and the mansplaining epidemic all the time, while managing families, friends, jobs, and general life, doesn’t prepare a woman to survive in the wild, what does?

So, in honor of women’s resilience, intelligence, creativity, and ability to get shit done even when the world is on fire, we pulled together some of the most captivating novels about women confronting harsh elements in a range of situations. Below, check out the best books about women communing with nature.

After solving cases in 29 books spanning more than three decades, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the heroine of Patricia Cornwell’s series of page-turning crime novels, finally received her own thriller series adaptation.

In the Prime Video show, Scarpetta, Nicole Kidman stars as Kay, the chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, who uses forensic techniques and her brilliant mind to track down killers and get justice for victims. Season 1 of the murder-mystery unfolds across two timelines, taking inspiration from two of Cornwell’s books: 1990’s Postmortem, and 2021’s Autopsy.

How these two stories connect, and the big cliffhanger it leads to, is all part of the mystery Kay has to contend with—both in the past (in which Rosy McEwen plays her) and present. Read on for a breakdown of the Scarpetta season 1 ending.

Who killed Gwen Hainey and Cammie Ramada in 'Scarpetta?'

Kay—with the help of her longtime investigative partner (and now brother-in-law) Pete Marino (Bobby Cannavale and Jake Cannavale in the present and past, respectively)–was able to connect the murders of Gwen Hainey (Emma Massalone) and Cammie Ramada (Brittany Belt) to the same killer.

The identity of the perpetrator, however, isn’t revealed until the season finale, and it’s someone Kay has known all along. It was Officer August Ryan (David Hornsby and Austin McMains), a cop she encountered during her investigations dating back to the Lori Petersen case in 1998.

Ryan was one of the first cops on the scene after Lori (Kassia Conway) was killed, and seeing her body unlocked something from his childhood: His uncle was a rapist who brought the young Ryan along while committing his crimes. He was given a penny to try to flatten on nearby train tracks as a distraction, which is how that became his signature to leave behind at his own crime scenes.

The officer became obsessed with Kay and, when she returned to the Virginia medical examiner’s office at the start of the series, began committing murders inspired by the ones she investigated years ago. This is all revealed when Ryan comes to Kay’s home at the end of the series, planning to strangle and kill her next. Thankfully, she’s able to resist and takes him down by beating him mercilessly with a baseball bat.

And who was the killer from the 1998 timeline in 'Scarpetta?'

The 1998 case came down to some good, old-fashioned detective work. Pete initially pegs Lori Petersen’s husband, Matthew Petersen (Graham Phillips and Anson Mount), as the prime suspect, but Kay disagrees: If this were a case of “the husband did it,” why would he also kill the other women in the same gruesome manner?

One breakthrough came via one of the strange coincidences that tied the cases together: a mysterious substance on the bodies that sparkled under a black light. That turned out to be a byproduct of a powdered soap the killer used to wash his hands, which he did frequently to cover up a medical condition (if you were curious, “maple syrup urine disease” is indeed a real thing) that gave him a distinct body odor.

Through tracking down the brand of soap and deducing that the killer chose his victims by the sound of their voice, Kay and Pete conclude that this man must do a job that requires him to be on the phone. That suspicion proves correct: The serial killer is a 911 operator named Roy McCorkle (Martin De Boer), who answered calls made by the victims.

How was Matt Petersen connected to Gwen Hainey in 'Scarpetta?'

One of the big questions hanging over Kay and Pete throughout the present-day investigation is why Matt Petersen’s fingerprints were linked to the Gwen Hainey case. If he were involved, that would mean that they got the wrong guy in the 1998 murders—and the case that made Kay’s entire career was built on a lie.

Turns out, Matt really just was a man grieving his murdered wife, though he winds up taking that in a weird (and potentially unsettling) direction. Now, 30 years on, he’s refashioned himself as a spiritual guru helping people deal with grief on a farm he operates as a kind of commune. He did meet with Gwen, but not to kill her: He’d read articles about her work at a bioengineering firm that was experimenting with 3D-printing synthetic human organs, and chatted with her about it after recognizing her out at a bar. So he had no interest in wanting Gwen dead and lots of reasons to want her alive. (Namely, so he could clone his dead wife. Like we said, unsettling!)

Also, what’s the deal with the whole space plotline in 'Scarpetta?'

And you thought the 3D organs were weird! Thor Laboratories, the firm where Gwen worked, was also conducting experiments on growing human organs in space. One of the astronauts on that orbiter was colluding with Gwen to sell the company’s trade secrets to the Russians, and murdered his colleagues before jumping off the ship onto another vessel. The dead men and the orbiter then crash into some poor man’s farm, making it a very active FBI scene investigated by Kay’s husband, FBI agent Benton Wesley (Simon Baker in the present, Hunter Parrish in 1998), and his partner.

This plotline is a red herring of sorts, because it seems for a moment like Gwen’s death could have been tied to her corporate espionage—but it also reveals that Benton knows more about the Gwen investigation than he’s telling his wife.

Who hacked Kay’s computer in 'Scarpetta?'

In both the past and present, Kay faces harsh professional scrutiny from the press and especially from her bosses, who balk at a woman holding the chief medical examiner position. At one point, someone sets her up to be fired by making it look like evidence from the Lori Petersen case was mishandled, potentially compromising the entire investigation. However, she insists her methods are solid, and Pete backs her up.

Someone also tried to hack into Kay’s computer in 1998, seemingly looking for information on the Petersen case. That call also turned out to be coming from inside the house: It was Dr. Reddy (Alex Klein), who had an ax to grind because Kay was made chief over him, and remains hostile to her in his present-day role as health commissioner. This revelation came via Kay’s assistant, Maggie (Georgia King and Stephanie Faracy), who, throughout the series, was painted as an adversary working with Reddy to take Kay down. Now, though, she’s ready to help expose her boss’s shady dealings, which probably includes why he covered up Cammie Ramada’s murder by pushing for it to be ruled accidental. Presumably, we’ll get into more of this cover-up in season 2.

What’s the secret Kay and Pete are keeping in 'Scarpetta?'

Kay and Pete’s relationship—as professional investigators, as family through marriage, and the fact that he may or may not be in love with her—includes a massive secret they’ve both been keeping about the night they tracked down Roy McCorkle in 1998.

When Kay identifies Roy as the killer, she tells Pete, and they plan to meet at his home to stake him out. But when Kay gets there, she hears screaming from inside the house and goes to investigate. That’s when Roy attacks and goes to strangle her like he did his other victims—until Kay grabs a piece of a broken ceramic plate and jams it into his neck, killing him. Pete arrives on the scene and covers for Kay by shooting Roy repeatedly, then claiming she was never there. When Kay does the autopsy, she lists his cause of death as gunshot wounds, making their lie the official record.

Where do things leave off between Kay and Benton in 'Scarpetta?'

These two kept big secrets from one another—including the truth about Roy’s autopsy. After Kay’s chaotic, drama-loving sister Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis and Amanda Righetti) drunkenly blabs to Benton that his wife has kept something major from him, the two wind up having a scorched-earth fight on their property, where Benton had been interrogating an FBI suspect without his wife’s knowledge.

Benton also has his own demons to contend with, stemming from dark and obsessive behaviors his mother identified in him as a child that he’s still trying to contain. As they’re having it out, he asks Kay for a divorce.

And what about Dorothy and Pete by the end of 'Scarpetta?'

After lots of tension because of Pete working alongside Kay—compounded by Dorothy’s over-the-top personality and worries about the closeness between her sister and husband—Dorothy and Pete wind up moving out of Kay and Benton’s home, where they had been staying while their house was undergoing renovations, and settle into a nearby Airbnb to regroup. Despite Kay saying she needs Pete’s help, he chooses to go with his wife, but things still seem uneasy between them. Dorothy’s fears about her husband being in love with Kay won’t go away that easily.

What happens to Lucy at the end of 'Scarpetta?'

Poor Lucy (Ariana DeBose and Savannah Lumar) has gone through it all season—essentially being raised by Kay as a teen when her mother was absent, and as an adult spending her days talking with an AI version of her dead wife, Janet (Janet Montgomery), while living in Kay’s guest house.

A lifelong tech genius, Lucy lends her talents to her aunt and stepfather’s investigation and becomes close to Blaise Fruge (Tiya Sircar), one of the cops also working the case. But there’s also a lot of fretting about how Lucy is coping: whether she’s too dependent on her aunt, spending too much time with her AI Janet, or both.

By the series’s end, someone has destroyed the AI Janet—it’s not clear who—leaving Lucy even more heartbroken. The final episode leaves her seeking solace at Matt Petersen’s grief commune.

How does 'Scarpetta' season 1 end?

The mystery-thriller series ends with a big new mystery. As Kay is bashing Officer Ryan’s head in with a baseball bat, someone opens the front door and catches her in the act. Who is it? And will they come to Kay’s aid, or try to blackmail her over what she’s done? We’ll have to wait until season 2 to find out.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta has been solving crimes for more than 30 years, and she’s showing no signs of stopping. The brilliant forensic pathologist is the protagonist of Patricia Cornwell’s long-running mystery-thriller series, which currently spans an impressive 29 books and has made her one of the most recognizable and enduring characters in crime fiction. Now, she’s cracking a new (but also very old) case in a Prime Video series that premiered March 11 and stars Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bobby Canavale, and Ariana DeBose.

Like Cornwell’s books, the thriller series follows Dr. Scarpetta (Kidman), the chief medical examiner of Virginia. Her skilled hands and relentless determination guide her as she investigates crime scenes, examines evidence, and serves as a voice for victims—including, in the world of the show, a murder that has unsettling connections to a case from her past.

If the murder-mystery TV show has you curious about the Scarpetta books, look no further. We have your guide to the series’s origins (including the real-life woman who inspired the character), the full rundown of the books in order, and some sleuthing about what’s to come in season 2.

Is Kay Scarpetta based on a real person?

Yes, and she has a fascinating story of her own. Dr. Marcella Fierro spent a three-decade career in forensic pathology, including serving as Virginia’s first female chief medical examiner from 1994 until her retirement in 2008. Author Cornwell met Fierro in 1984, when the then-aspiring writer, who was living in Richmond, Virginia at the time (where the Scarpetta novels are set), got an appointment to ask her questions about what a medical examiner does.

“Marcella told me, ‘This is not a spectator sport; I don’t just let people watch autopsies,’” Cornwell recalled in a 2025 interview with Richmond magazine. “She told me I had to make myself legitimate and suggested I become a volunteer police officer—so I did.” Cornwell then accompanied Fierro to crime scenes and observed her in the morgue, and that firsthand experience led her to craft the character of Dr. Kay Scarpetta.

“She would often run things by me to make sure they were plausible,” Fierro told Richmond. “I was convinced from the get-go her drive, her determination and her commitment to the accuracy of the work would triumph.”

Cornwell published her first Scarpetta novel, Postmortem, in 1990, with Fierro’s support, launching what would become a seminal part of the crime fiction genre. As she told the Associated Press when Fierro retired, “I would not be where I am today in my life were it not for Dr. Fierro.”

What are the 'Scarpetta' books about?

If we tried to recap all 29 books, we’d be here a while! But here are the biggest things to know about the series: Dr. Kay Scarpetta is the brilliant and compassionate chief medical examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia, who uses her sharp analytical skills and forensic investigative techniques to solve crimes and unmask killers. Her work, naturally, also brings her into contact with law enforcement, including the gruff cop Pete Marino and FBI agent Benton Wesley (who becomes her husband).

The Scarpetta novels also spend time on the character’s life outside the office. She has a sister, Dorothy Farinelli, a chaotic and impulsive foil to the disciplined, even-keeled Kay, and a niece, Lucy, who is extremely intelligent and tech-savvy.

What book is 'Scarpetta' season 1 based on?

As Cornwell noted on Instagram, season 1 of Scarpetta takes inspiration from two books in her long-running series. One is the first Scarpetta novel, 1990’s Postmortem, which follows Kay as she hunts down a serial killer while navigating scrutiny and possible sabotage from those who are skeptical of a woman holding the chief medical examiner post. The other is 2021’s Autopsy, in which Kay returns to Virginia with Benton after many years away. Newly back on the job as chief medical examiner, she’s called to a murder case with a trail that leads “unnervingly close to her own historic neighborhood.”

The TV series breaks up these stories across two timelines, in 1998 and the present day. The 1998 part of the plot—featuring an ensemble of younger actors—is where Kay Scarpetta, newly appointed as chief medical examiner, investigates a series of murders with the help of Pete and Wesley. The present-day timeline sees Kay (Kidman) and Benton (Simon Baker) returning to Virginia after some time away—while also navigating complicated family dynamics with Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis); Pete (Bobby Cannavale), who’s now married to Dorothy; and Lucy (Ariana DeBose), who lives in Kay’s guest house and is grieving the death of her wife. Now reinstated as chief medical examiner, Kay finds herself investigating a murder with surprising connections to that first case she cracked 28 years earlier. And if they are connected, it could mean her entire career was built on a lie.

How do I read the 'Scarpetta' books in order?

Here are the 29* Scarpetta books, starting with 1990’s Postmortem and continuing through 2025’s Sharp Force.

• Postmortem (1990)
• Body of Evidence (1991)
• All that Remains (1992)
• Cruel and Unusual (1993)
• The Body Farm (1994)
• From Potter’s Field (1995)
• Cause of Death (1996)
• Unnatural Exposure (1997)
• Point of Origin (1998)
• Black Notice (1999)
• The Last Precinct (2000)
• Blow Fly (2003)
• Trace (2004)
• Predator (2005)
• Book of the Dead (2007)
• Scarpetta (2008)
• The Scarpetta Factor (2009)
• Port Mortuary (2010)
• Red Mist (2011)
• The Bone Bed (2012)
• Dust (2013)
• Flesh and Blood (2014)
• Depraved Heart (2015)
• Chaos (2016)
• Autopsy (2021)
• Livid (2022)
• Unnatural Death (2023)
• Identity Unknown (2024)
• Sharp Force (2025)

*There’s also a holiday-themed novella, Scarpetta’s Winter Table (1998), which features Christmas recipes and photographs.

What book will 'Scarpetta' season 2 adapt?

The show was given a two-season order right from the jump, so we know that Kay will return for another round of crime-solving.

There’s no logline or casting info for the new season just yet, but showrunner Liz Sarnoff said it will adapt two more books from Cornwell’s Scarpetta series: 1993’s Cruel and Unusual and 1994’s The Body Farm. She also said things will pick back up after the events of the season 1 finale and continue telling the story across the past and present timelines. That means the younger troupe of actors, including Rosy McEwen and Jake Cannavale (yes, son of Bobby) as the past versions of Kay and Pete, seems likely to return alongside Kidman, Curtis, Cannavale, and DeBose.

“I read the first eight books again, and I thought these two really speak to each other, and it’ll be really interesting if we can make them work together,” she told The Hollywood Reporter of choosing those two books to focus on next. “I didn’t want to get too far into the series—those are actually books four and five of [Cornwell’s] series—so I took a step back from the present-day books and thought, ‘Let’s do a past book with the present-day cast.’”

Sarnoff also revealed that Cornwell has been involved in the series, including having her expert eyes on the season 2 scripts. “She read all the scripts and corrected us when we got stuff wrong, and she was always there. I could reach out to her, and it was wonderful for me. I’m a big fan, and she was very available to the show,” she revealed to TV Insider. “We had her in season 2. She was in the writers’s room a bunch, where we would Zoom with her and talk to her about what we were planning. And she has unbelievable ideas, and she was just a pleasure to have as a resource.”

For now, fans can watch the eight-episode first season of Scarpetta and play forensic analyst, looking for clues about where the story could go next. And if that’s not enough to keep you hooked until the show returns, you know which two books to pick up next.

Netflix’s The Night Agent is a thrilling espionage drama series whose third season took the titular spy, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), around the world as he pursued answers to an international terrorism conspiracy linked to the United States government. But by the end of the season, Peter is ready to step away from the job—at least for a little while. While that could be a natural end to Peter’s story, we’ll likely see more of his adventures at the Night Action agency.

Ahead, we’ll break down what exactly we know about The Night Agent season 4, when we can expect it to hit our screens, and who might be joining Peter on his next mission.

Is 'The Night Agent' Renewed for season 4?

We've just received an important asset: Netflix has officially renewed The Night Agent for season 4! The streamer announced that the show was "answering the call" for another installment via a press release in early March 2026, just over two weeks after season 3 dropped.

Showrunner Shawn Ryan shared a statement to celebrate: "It's been a wild ride filming The Night Agent in five countries across three continents to this point, and we're so thrilled that the adventures of Peter Sutherland will continue into season 4. Our writers, our cast, and our crew stand ready to answer the call to bring our incredible fans even more twists, turns, and thrills."

Beyond that, Netflix tapped Gabriel Basso and people on the streets of N.Y.C. to tease the renewal. In a fun initiative, the streamer set up a mysterious phone in the middle of Times Square, leading tourists to solve a series of clues and find a code. The answer to it? "The Night Agent will return for season 4," plastered on a huge billboard.

It makes sense that not only is The New Agent returning, but that it received such a quick renewal. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show is Netflix's 10th-most-watched English-language show of all time.

Also, even before season 4 was greenlit, Deadline reported that Netflix had already asked the showrunner to assemble a writers’s room. "We’ve been working for a while on the storyline. We have some scripts, we are breaking stories," Ryan told the outlet during early 2026 press for the show’s third season. As we now know, Netflix is definitely moving ahead with what they've been working on.

When will 'The Night Agent' season 4 come out?

The Night Agent season 4 kicked off production in L.A. in early May, according to a Netflix press release. It's unclear how long filming will last, but the show has been one of Netflix's consistent yearly releases. With the third season arriving in February 2026, we’d expect that a fourth would arrive in late Q1 2027.

Is season 4 the last season of 'The Night Agent?'

As it turns out, Peter Sutherland is answering one last call. When production began on season 4, Netflix confirmed in a press release that it would be the show's final instalment.

Series creator Shawn Ryan shared a statement about the decision. He said, "Ever since the initial success of The Night Agent, I’ve been obsessed with eventually delivering a proper and thrilling conclusion to the show and to Peter Sutherland’s journey...I’m so grateful to Netflix and Sony Pictures Television for partnering with me on The Night Agent and for giving us the space to deliver a definitive final season to our worldwide legion of fans. We are hard at work to complete our story and to make our final season one our fans will never forget."

The show has been a consistent hit for Netflix—with its debut season breaking into the streamer's Most Popular list and every subsequent season cracking the Global Top 10—so it makes sense that the decision to wrap it up was amicable, rather than a cancellation. We can only assume that means it'll be an epic conclusion!

Who in the 'The Night Agent' cast will return for season 4?

Based on the eponymous mystery-thriller novel by Matthew Quirk, Ryan structured each season of The Night Agent around a “revolving cast,” as our titular agent Peter Sutherland (played by Gabriel Basso) is thrown into new adventures. So while Basso will surely return for a new season, we can expect that he’ll be one of the few familiar faces on the show.

Still, it’s possible that recurring characters like Fola Evans-Akingbola’s Chelsea Arrington could return in season 4, given her sustained presence throughout the series’s run. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Amanda Warren’s Catherine Weaver, since Peter’s mentor dies in season 3. Similarly, Louis Herthum won’t appear in future seasons, as his character, Jacob Monroe, was murdered in the most recent season.

The Night Agent’s worldbuilding means it can tap former stars to reprise their roles in later seasons—but that also means that beloved characters may take a season or two off. The latter is the case for Luciane Buchanan’s Rose Larkin, who did not appear in season 3 but could potentially rejoin in season 4. “The writers decided that they wanted to follow Peter and his journey based on what happened at the end of season 2…so we don’t get to see what happens to Rose,” she told Deadline while season 3 was in production, and it was confirmed that she wouldn’t be back. However, she did tease that “it’s not a goodbye forever.” Ryan also confirmed that Rose could appear again, telling Deadline, “I don’t believe that we’re done telling the story of Peter and Rose. I hope circumstances ultimately allow for the return of Rose to our Night Agent universe.”

What will 'The Night Agent' season 4 be about?

Season 3 brings Peter into the dangerous waters of an international terrorism financing conspiracy that implicates the President and the First Lady (played by Jennifer Morrison). Staying steadfast to his morals, Peter works with a reporter (Genesis Rodriguez) and an insider to expose the truth—even putting his life on the line opposite his new partner Adam (David Lyons), who was blindly loyal to the President (Ward Horton).

At the end of the season, Peter is ready to take a break from his high-octane job. “Someone once told me that the best agents know how to find balance in their lives. I’m thinking I should find some,” he says in the series, implying that he’ll step away for an unspecified time. Season 4 could pick up at the end of his sabbatical, right before he’s pulled into another assignment—because of course he won’t stay away too long. Basso said as much, telling Tudum about his character’s motivations: “I think he recognizes that he’s part of a bigger plan and that he’s in service of good. And if he’s not there helping, then who is?”

The Night Agent’s FBI Deputy Director, Aiden Mosley (Albert Jones), endorses Peter’s plan for some time away from the job, but also teases new adventures when he’s ready to return. “I’ve been thinking about the request you made earlier for a partner. I think I have a candidate in mind,” he tells Peter—a line that Ryan confirmed to Tudum was “meant to be a launching pad for season 4.”

We'll have to see where exactly that call takes him, but we know one thing's for certain: He's headed to L.A. When Netflix announced more episodes were on the way, it revealed they'll be filmed in L.A. It's unclear what might bring Peter there, but we can assume it'll be another thrilling story...and perhaps be what reunites him with Rose.

Who are the new cast members in 'The Night Agent' season 4?

With The Night Agent headed to L.A., inevitably, Peter's bound to meet some fresh faces. Deadline announced the first set of them in late April. According to the outlet, a handful of exciting stars are joining the season 4 cast, including former Bosch star Titus Welliver, Trevante Rhodes of Moonlight fame, Sinners actress Li Jun Li, and Elizabeth Lail, who broke out in the first season of You.

While details about their characters are scarce, we do know their names and brief descriptions—and one of them should be exciting for eagle-eyed fans. You can expect Peter to face off with Welliver's character Duval, a special DOJ prosecutor. Alternatively, he'll work closely with Rhodes's character Dom, who is said to be his new partner, while Li will portray his wife, Min. Lail, meanwhile, will play Zoe, Peter’s ex-fiancée. The series has made references to Zoe in the past, though she's yet to be introduced on screen.

As the show entered production, even more exciting newcomers joined the ensemble. According to Deadline, former child star Abigail Breslin (Scream Queens) and David Denman (The Office, Mare of Easttown) are among the new series regulars, while The West Wing alum Annabeth Gish has landed a major recurring role. Some of the new stars are likely playing Peter's adversaries: Gish's character, Holland, is described as "an FBI agent who joins the DOJ investigation into Peter Sutherland," and Breslin's Cahlin is "a young FBI agent working on Duval’s investigation into Night Action." Meanwhile, Denhman's playing a man named Ford who is "a veteran CIA agent and former head of a Joint Terrorism Task Force."

Based on those announcements, there's a lot to unpack with what's up next for Peter. Beyond the FBI being on his tail, we're curious to know if he and his former flame, Zoe, reconnect—inevitably thrusting her into danger? Or, might Rose resurface and introduce a love triangle of sorts? The word is still out, but we'll keep tracking any new evidence about the forthcoming season as it surfaces.

Netflix’s hit The Night Agent is back for more bombshell twists and high-octane action. In season 3, Gabriel Basso reprises his role as Peter Sutherland, an FBI agent based on Matthew Quirk’s 2019 mystery-thriller novel of the same name. This time, Peter is on the hunt for a rogue Treasury agent who has fled to Istanbul with sensitive intelligence in tow. As Peter’s investigation ramps up, he “uncovers a dark money network, evades paid assassins, and crosses paths with a relentless journalist whose pursuit of the truth puts them both squarely in the crosshairs,” according to Tudum.

With an entirely new mission in his hands, Peter will be interfacing with a fresh ensemble of characters. Ahead, see who is joining Basso on Peter’s globetrotting mission in The Night Agent season 3 cast.

Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland

Sutherland is the titular Night Agent: an FBI agent who works in the secret Night Action investigative program at the White House, to be exact. Per Tudum, in season 3, Peter is “struggling with guilt over his actions in season 2 [and] desperate to bring the mysterious broker to justice.”

Gabriel Basso, 31, most recently appeared in the 2025 Kathryn Bigelow film A House of Dynamite and previously played now-Vice President J.D. Vance in the 2020 film adaptation of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. He also had a supporting role on the early 2010s Showtime series The Big C, starring opposite Laura Linney, and appeared in films like Juror #2, Super 8, and The Kings of Summer.

Fola Evans-Akingbola as Chelsea Arrington

Now Head of Security for the First Family, Agent Arrington’s life is upended when there’s a violent incident at the White House that reframes the picture-perfect First Family.

Fola Evans-Akingbola, 31, is a Nigerian-English actress best known for playing Maddie Bishop in Freeform’s Siren. She has also appeared in the TV shows Game of Thrones, Black Mirror, and Ten Percent. Evans-Akingbola also lent her voice to the video game Assassin's Creed: Origins.

Louis Herthum as Jacob Monroe

Monroe is an international businessman and the “broker” who became Peter’s foe in season 2. Tudum promises that season 3 will show a more “human side of Monroe, as old wounds are reopened and we learn more about what it took to turn a man into a monster.”

Louis Herthum, 69, was a recurring star on HBO’s Westworld and has appeared in shows like True Blood, Longmire, What/If, and Home Before Dark. In the 1980s and 90s, he also held various roles on the long-running murder-mystery classic Murder, She Wrote.

Ward Horton as President Richard Hagan

According to Tudum, President Richard Hagan is “riding a wave of bipartisan popularity in his first term,” which could be upended by the decision between “being seen as a great president or a good man.”

Ward Horton, 50, is best known for appearing in the horror film Annabelle, a spin-off of The Conjuring. On TV, he appeared on the soap opera One Life to Live, the drama Pure Genius, and the HBO hit drama The Gilded Age.

Albert Jones as Aiden Mosley

Aiden Mosley is the FBI Deputy Director, and one of the few people who knows about Peter’s season 2 relationship with the broker. While he wants to support Peter, his governmental duties may force his hand.

Albert Jones, 44, previously appeared in TV shows like Mindhunter, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and The Changeling. In film, you might recognize Jones from The Bourne Ultimatum, Salt, and American Gangster.

David Lyons as Adam

Adam is Peter’s mysterious—and charming—new partner. Peter approaches Adam with an air of caution but is also intrigued by the newbie’s “experience, humor, and competence,” according to Tudum.

David Lyons, 49, most recently played FBI agent Brian Abbott opposite Claire Danes in the limited series The Beast in Me. Before that, he appeared on ER, Revolution, and Sea Patrol in his native Australia. In film, he starred alongside Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love and in the Nicholas Sparks romance drama Safe Haven.

Jennifer Morrison as Jenny Hagan

Move over, Mellie Grant; Jenny Hagan is the newest TV First Lady secretly pulling the strings in her husband’s administration. In season 3, First Lady Hagan will have her wits tested when a violent event occurs at the White House, forcing her to turn to unexpected sources.

Jennifer Morrison, 46, is a TV legend, with main or recurring roles on shows like House, Once Upon A Time, How I Met Your Mother, This is Us, and more. As a director, she’s helmed episodes of Yellowjackets, Euphoria, and Dr. Death. In 2017, she directed her first feature, Sun Dogs, which won the Best Narrative Feature award at the Savannah Film Festival

Stephen Moyer as The Father

A contract killer, “The Father” is a ruthless and determined assassin. But as his moniker suggests, he’s also the father to a young boy. When the lines between his worlds are blurred, he’s forced to make a tough choice.

Fans first fell in love with Stephen Moyer, 56, when he played vampire Bill Compton on True Blood. He later starred in the X-Men TV series The Gifted, The Bastard Executioner, and Shots Fired. In his native England, he appeared in Safe House and Art Detectives. He also played Georg Von Trapp in the live televised production of The Sound of Music.

Genesis Rodriguez as Isabel De Leon

Isabel De Leon is a journalist committed to exposing the truth—no matter the cost. When she begins pursuing a major scoop, she finds it’s much more personal than she expected, which threatens her entire foundation.

Genesis Rodriguez, 38, is best known for her leading roles in Spanish-language dramas like Prisionera, Dame Chocolate, and Doña Bárbara. She later appeared on Entourage, and in the films Man on a Ledge, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and The Last Stand.

Suraj Sharma as Jay Batra

Financial analyst Jay Batra uncovers a huge international conspiracy linked to terrorism, and must decide whether to keep his head down or listen to his moral compass.

Suraj Sharma, 32, broke onto the scene with his acclaimed starring role in Ang Lee’s 2012 film Life of Pi. Since then, he’s appeared in Homeland, God Friended Me, and How I Met Your Father. Starring in both American and Indian projects, Sharma has also appeared in films like Million Dollar Arm, Wedding Season, Gulmohar, and Happy Death Day 2U.

Callum Vinson as The Son

As expected, The Son is the real son of Moyer’s “The Father” character. As he matures, he finds himself questioning the parameters of the world that his father has built for him.

Callum Vinson, 11, is no stranger to complex roles: He got his start on the Chucky series. Last year, he appeared in the limited series Long Bright River opposite Amanda Seyfried, and has voiced Piglet on various Winnie the Pooh series. In addition to The Night Agent, Vinson is slated to star in Peacock’s forthcoming Friday the 13th prequel series, Crystal Lake, as a young Jason Voorhees.

Amanda Warren as Catherine Weaver

One of the few returning characters that Peter can trust, Catherine Weaver is hellbent on bringing down the broker—despite the risks.

Amanda Warren, 43, is best known for her roles on celebrated series like The Leftovers, Dickinson, and The Americans. Her film credits include Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Adjustment Bureau.

There’s nothing quite like sitting in a dark movie theater and feeling a chill run down your spine. The best horror movies can transport us to terrifying yet enticing new worlds, introduce iconic characters, and even reflect the terrors of our own reality back at us in thrilling ways. Plus, with the advent of subgenres like horror-comedy, movie lovers can enjoy several different films within one!

2026 in particular is shaping up to be a promising year for horror film buffs. Beloved franchises like Resident Evil and Evil Dead are returning, and horror icons like the Bride of Frankenstein are being reimagined in bold new ways. Meanwhile, new original horror films are exploring everything from Irish witches to medieval werewolves. To help you get your spine-tingling watchlist in order, we’ve rounded up some of the most exciting horror films of 2026, including what’s coming soon. (And if you’re interested in watching something right now, here’s our list of the best horror movies of 2025).

The Best Horror Movies of 2026 So Far

'28 Years Later: The Bone Temple'

Release date: January 16

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O'Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, and Chi Lewis-Parry

Why it's worth seeing: When Nia DaCosta releases a thriller or horror movie, you see it. The Candyman filmmaker took the reins on this movie in the 28 Days Later series, which marks the second in the past two years. In 2025, the series returned with the first movie's original screenwriter, Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Civil War), penning the first of three new sequels. DaCosta put her own stamp on the gory zombie franchise, upping the dread as Spike (Alfie Williams) navigates falling into the sadistic Jimmy Crystal's (Jack O'Connell) cult and Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) continues looking for a cure.

WATCH IT

'Iron Lung'

Release date: January 30

Starring: Markiplier, Caroline Rose Kaplan, Troy Baker, and Elsie Lovelock

Why it's worth seeing: 2026 is being hailed as the year of YouTuber-made horror. Even so, content creator-turned-director Markiplier’s Iron Lung stands alone as an indie movie that made a whopping $51 million without a major studio behind it. Based on the video game of the same name, the film takes place in the aftermath of an apocalyptic “rapture” as a convict (also played by Markiplier) attempts to steer a submarine through an ocean of blood. Oh, and it’s on the moon! Apart from its unique premise, Iron Lung is a fascinating case study of the non-traditional movie opportunities that an online following could grant creators access to moving forward.

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'The Bride!'

Release date: March 6

Starring: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Penélope Cruz, and Annette Bening

Why it’s worth seeing: Despite having less than 10 minutes of screentime in her titular 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein, the monster’s Bride has nevertheless become a horror icon. Now, she finally takes center stage in The Bride!, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s bold, punk-inspired reimagining. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film stars Hamnet’s Jessie Buckley as a murdered woman resurrected by mad scientist Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to be a companion for Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale). Naturally, chaos ensues.

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'Ready or Not 2: Here I Come'

Release date: March 27

Starring: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Nadeem Umar-Khitab, David Cronenberg, and Elijah Wood

Why it's worth seeing: We may not get to see Radio Silence's complete Scream series, but thankfully, we got a sequel to Ready or Not. The hunt-to-the-death movie was nasty fun when it became a surprise blockbuster in 2019, and the second film has its own tricks up its sleeves. Just when Grace (Samara Weaving) thought she had it rough on her wedding night, she finds out that the ultra-wealthy still have it out for her—as well as her younger sister (Kathryn Newton). And they're upping the ante: Now she has to survive a disturbing game brought up by not just one affluent family, but several of the richest from across the globe.

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'They Will Kill You'

Release date: March 27

Starring: Zazie Beetz, Tom Felton, Patricia Arquette, Myha’la, and Heather Graham

Why it’s worth seeing: They Will Kill You puts a comedic spin on the cultish-apartment-neighbors archetype popularized by Rosemary’s Baby. Blending humor, horror, and thriller elements, the film follows a young woman (Zazie Beetz) who takes a housekeeping job at a N.Y.C. high-rise. After learning that the building has seen several disappearances, she’s forced to confront the fact that (gasp!) her new employers are a demonic cult.

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'Exit 8'

Release date: May 15

Starring: Kazunari Ninomiya, Yamato Kochi, Nana Komatsu, Naru Asanuma, and Kotone Hanase

Why it’s worth seeing: An ordinary subway commute turns into a deadly puzzle in Exit 8, Japanese filmmaker Genki Kawamura’s reimagining of the 2023 video game of the same name. Just after he receives life-changing news from his ex-girlfriend, a down-on-his-luck man (Kazunari Ninomiya) finds himself trapped in an endlessly looping subway tunnel. While Exit 8 follows in the footsteps of horror game adaptations like The Last of Us and Resident Evil, its embrace of psychological horror sets it apart from its peers.

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'Hokum'

Release date: May 1

Starring: Adam Scott, David Wilmot, Austin Amelio, Peter Coonan, Florence Ordesh, and Will O’Connell

Why it’s worth seeing: Hokum is a spooky new Adam Scott movie to help tide us over during the long wait for Severance season 3. Scott plays a horror novelist who arrives at a rural Irish inn to spread his late parents’ ashes. This time around, his grief is compounded not by experimental brain surgery, but by a vengeful, ancient witch.

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'Obsession'

Release date: May 15

Starring: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter

Why it’s worth seeing: YouTuber Curry Barker entered the horror scene with the full, stylish genre treatment. In Obsession, a music clerk uses a novelty wishing toy to get exactly what he thinks he wants: the woman (Inde Navarrette) he has a crush on. Inevitably, his wish takes an ominous turn—resulting in a star-making performance by new scream queen Navarrette and a smart, eerie commentary on modern dating.

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'Backrooms'

Release date: May 29

Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell

Why it’s worth seeing: Liminal space horror has blown up in recent years, thanks in no small part to 21-year-old Kane Parsons’ spine-tingling Backrooms YouTube series. Now, the horror wunderkind has leaped from unsettling short-form content to feature filmmaking with a Backrooms movie that pays homage to the original series’ lore, all while evoking a Lynchian sense of disorienting surrealism. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, a struggling furniture store owner who discovers another dimension full of interconnected, slightly uncanny empty rooms.

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The Best Horror Movies Coming in Summer 2026

'Evil Dead Burn'

Release date: July 10

Starring: Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Tandi Wright, and George Pullar

Why it’s worth seeing: Part of the fun of the Evil Dead franchise is its capacity for reinvention. Whereas the original Evil Dead told a fairly gory, straightforward tale of college kids accidentally summoning demons in the woods, Evil Dead II leaned into fully gonzo comedy horror. As recently as 2023, Evil Dead Rise played with format once again, introducing a haunted vinyl into a terrifying apartment complex. Although details about the latest entry are scarce outside of director Sébastien Vaniček’s promise that it will be “a film that hurts,” there are endless out-of-the-box possibilities for where the series could go next.

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'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma'

Release date: August 7

Starring: Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, Patrick Fischler, Hunter Dillon, and Jordana Summer

Why it’s worth seeing: Fresh off their beloved 2024 film I Saw The TV Glow, director Jane Schoenbrun is taking on a beloved horror subgenre: the slasher. Hacks star Hannah Einbinder leads Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, playing a young film director mounting a reboot of a Friday the 13th-style slasher franchise. In the process, she becomes obsessed with tracking down the franchise’s elusive original star (played by Gilligan Anderson), with whom she becomes embroiled in a campy, homoerotic encounter. Schoenbrun is a master at nostalgic, cerebral genre moviemaking, and Camp Miasma is no exception.

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The Best Horror Movies Coming in Fall 2026

'Resident Evil'

Release date: September 18

Starring: Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis, and Zach Cherry

Why it’s worth seeing: With Barbarian and last year’s viral sensation Weapons, comedian-turned-filmmaker Zach Cregger has proven himself as a horror director to watch. While his first two films were out-of-the-box originals that played with structure and tone, this year’s Resident Evil marks his first foray into franchise filmmaking. Maybe Raccoon City will get one of Cregger’s trademark creepy basements, too!

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'Other Mommy'

Release date: October 9

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Dichen Lachman, Sean Kaufman, and Karen Allen

Why it’s worth seeing: If Paranormal Activity and Insidious taught us anything, it’s that a paranormal presence terrorizing kiddos is a reliable crowd-pleaser at the box office. If you’re looking for more in this subgenre, The Other Mommy is well worth adding to your list. Based on Josh Malerman’s 2024 novel Incidents Around the House, this tale of a sinister entity haunting a young girl’s home has a stacked cast featuring the likes of Jessica Chastain and Severance’s Dichen Lachman.

'Clayface'

Release date: October 23

Starring: Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, Max Minghella, and Eddie Marsan

Why it’s worth seeing: Clayface might be set in the same universe as 2025’s cheerful Superman, but this DC film promises to give audiences something we rarely see: a superhero movie that fully embraces horror. Featuring a script penned by Mike Flanagan of Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Hill House fame, DC head James Gunn has teased that the Batman villain’s solo movie will reimagine his origin story as a full-on body-horror tale.

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'Werwulf'

Release date: December 25

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Ralph Ineson, and Simon McBurney

Why it’s worth seeing: Nosferatu director Robert Eggers is back for more festive horror this December. This time, he’s swapping vampire lore for the beast at the center of Werwulf, who stalks a medieval British village. Featuring returning Eggers collaborators like Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, expect plenty of stunning, painstakingly period-accurate bloodshed, just in time for the holidays.

If you’re ever having a bad day at work, just remember it’s nowhere near as bad as the one Zara (Sophie Turner) has in the Prime Video thriller series Steal. What starts as a typical day at the London financial investment firm Lochmill Capital turns terrifying when armed thieves burst in and force Zara and her friend/coworker, Luke (Archie Madekwe), to help them steal a massive £4 billion—money that comes from everyday workers’s pension funds.

Why would someone steal the pensions of doctors, policemen, and social workers? And where did the money go? These questions are just the tip of the iceberg, and there’s more to this robbery than initially meets the eye—including who was involved in the crime. Read on for a breakdown of the ending of Steal.

Who was behind the heist in 'Steal?'

When the group of thieves raided Lochmill, forced all the employees into a conference room at gunpoint, and forced Luke and Zara to their desks to execute the staggering trade of billions of dollars, it wasn’t clear who they were working for or what their motivations were. Greed? Terrorism? Conspiracy? The reasons were a mystery—especially after finding out Luke and Zara were both paid £5 million in crypto in the aftermath.

Even more curious is what happens to the money after it’s moved. As DCI Rhys Covac (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) and his colleagues investigate the case, and the intelligence agents at MI5 conduct their own surveillance, the funds keep moving across various offshore accounts tied to prominent people—politicians, celebrities, and moguls—and major corporations. As soon as it’s in one of those accounts, it moves again, taking money belonging to those individuals along with it. So the already massive heist also includes several others—continuing to draw attention to the less-than-ethical ways people in power hold onto their money.

Then, surprisingly, the original £4 billion was returned to Lochmill. So, who would do such a thing? The answer was right in front of us from almost the very beginning: Darren Yoshida (Andrew Koji), the financial investigator who’d been working with the cops on the case. He hired the thieves and then arranged his schedule so he’d be assigned to the case after the robbery, allowing him to keep an eye on the investigation and speed up or impede their progress.

After Rhys realizes that he was the true mastermind, he and Zara confront him together at the Lochmill office. It’s there that Yoshida admits his involvement and motivations: The heist was meant to “change the world,” exposing the corrupt financial systems that leave millions struggling and starving while the rich enjoy lives of luxury with their money stored in offshore accounts.

How did Luke and Zara become involved in the robbery in 'Steal?'

While Yoshida masterminded the plan and the thieves executed it, the Lochmill heist also turns out to be an inside job. The thieves recruited Luke and, when they said they needed a second person for their plan to work, he convinced Zara to take part too. Still, they didn’t know the extent of what was being planned—the friends and colleagues were under the impression that the criminals just needed their login credentials to facilitate a hack and that money would only be taken from more ethically questionable sources like tobacco executives. (They were also promised a £100,000 payout, which seemed more relative to the scale of theft they thought was taking place.)

The reason they said yes? For Luke, it was money: He had credit card debt to pay off. Zara, meanwhile, wasn’t as easily swayed until she was passed over for a promotion at work because she’s “too good” at the low-level job she’s currently doing. The dissatisfaction with her job—and, frankly, the state of her life—is what pushes her to meet with the thieves and join the plot.

It also turns out a third Lochmill employee was involved: Milo (Harry Michell), a more senior employee who was already well-off but wanted the payout so he could retire early. The thieves contacted him online, he directed them to Luke, and then they chose Zara because her displeasure with her job made her an easy target to blame.

What was Rhys hiding in 'Steal?'

Luke and Zara weren’t the only ones carrying a secret in Steal. Rhys, the detective investigating the Lochmill heist, is a gambling addict whose luck has come up short. He owes just under £100,000, and if he doesn’t pay up soon, his debts will be sold from people he knows to ones he doesn't, which would be very bad for him (to say nothing of loan sharks having potential leverage over a cop).

As the investigation into the heist continues, his superiors keep stalling him as MI5 gets more involved in surveilling Zara and tracking the case—and his personal problems make his involvement more complicated. At one point, after he begins his own rogue investigation into the robbery, Zara (who has slept with Rhys amid these covert ops) flat-out asks if he’s trying to track down the money to pay off his own debts, which he swears isn’t the case.

After being shot during the final confrontation with the thieves at the Lochmill office, he survives but is forced to resign from his job and sells his house to clear out his debts. It’s a dire turn of events, but it’s also not where his story ends.

What happens to Luke at the end of 'Steal?'

While Luke knew more about what the Lochmill heist would entail than Zara did—he was aware thieves would be entering the office, but not the extent or intensity of it—being threatened at gunpoint is another thing entirely. He panics when the bank calls to approve the trade, forcing Zara to step in and finish the deal, and continues spiraling at home when he thinks (correctly) that he’s being watched.

After he calls Zara in a panic, the thieves break into his apartment building to kidnap him, getting past cops who are stationed outside to keep an eye on him. While being held at their safe house in the countryside, he tries to appeal to one of the thugs by offering him some of his money if he helps him escape. That man ultimately turns against his compatriots and takes Luke back to London. There, they confront Zara at her apartment, and she convinces the man to let them go if they can take him to Milo to steal his larger payout. Milo is killed when he tries to resist, but the codes to open his crypto wallet are at the Lochmill office, which is why the three of them head there for that final confrontation with the other thieves, MI5 agents, and finally the police.

What happens to Zara at the end of 'Steal?'

After what can only be described as a hellish few days (including but not limited to being held at gunpoint and being forced to participate in a massive robbery, going on the run after your accomplice in said heist is kidnapped, being pursued relentlessly by intelligence agents, and your mom trying to steal your windfall from the crime you’re complicit in), Zara survives the gunfire at the office.

After she and Luke sign the witness statements, MI5 asks them to hand over their crypto wallets with the stolen money, and it seems like they can put this whole mess behind them. Indeed, they’re both preparing to go on a trip together, but before she departs, she has that final meeting with Rhys—prompting him to realize Darren Yoshida was the real mastermind. When they confront him at the Lochmill office, where police had been on the scene after the money was returned, he explains his motivations for the scheme. He also makes them a final offer: another crypto wallet with £10 million stolen from the tax haven accounts, which they can take if they let him go. Rhys could certainly use the money—couldn’t anyone use an extra few million dollars?—but Zara turns it down, because accepting it would have tied them to him forever.

How does 'Steal' end?

Steal ends with Zara and Rhys walking out of Lochmill for what’s presumably the last time. She has a box of odds and ends she packed for her and Luke, and he’s incredulous that they just said no to a cool £10 million. But this is when Zara reveals one last twist: In the box of random office junk, hidden inside a desk trophy, is Milo’s crypto wallet, with the clean £20 million he’d already been paid. The money isn’t tied to Lochmill, so they can take it with a clean conscience. And Zara knew she’d be searched after the shootout, so she’d left her wallet for the cops to find and hoped Milo’s would be in the box when she collected it. Lucky for both of them, it was a bet that paid off.

So, Rhys asks, what will she do now? For the first time, Zara has a world of options. “I don’t know,” she responds. “Something exciting.” And the show ends with the two of them walking off together towards whatever’s next.

Warning: This story contains light spoilers about His & Hers. About 15 years ago, it seemed that all you needed to do to give a male character purpose was to kill the woman he loves. While this wasn’t a new storytelling phenomenon exclusive to the ‘00s and ‘10s, it happened with such frequency that a trope was born: the "dead wife." In countless movies and TV shows, repeated gauzy flashbacks of a beautiful woman lying in bed, bathed in sunshine (Memento) indicate happier times before the Grim Reaper came calling. She might also appear as a ghostly hallucination (hello, Grace in Peaky Blinders) to needle his guilt, act as a moral compass, or offer a surface-level reminder of an aching loss. She will rarely get to be anything more than a pretty symbol of masculine failings and feelings.

In the years since Gone Girl took this missing-or-murdered cliché and spun it on its head, filmmakers like Christopher Nolan have since cooled on this kind of plotting (to a degree). But move over, dead wives, there is another deceased relative serving motivation, suspense, and conflict in an array of TV thrillers that are starting to resemble a mystery turducken.

Stuffed inside the overarching case that needs solving—a murder, kidnapping, or government conspiracy—is a different tragedy from the past that has left marriages in pieces and still-open wounds. In the streaming era, the loss of a child has become a plot shortcut that informs frayed relationships, heightens tension, delivers the requisite snapshot of a blissful era, and, eventually, the moment the loss occurred. But as the number of examples centering on the ultimate parenting nightmare grows, so does the ability to see through a narrative that uses trauma as a means to excuse behavior, and draw out sympathy, while avoiding revealing how the death happened until the conclusion draws near.

The new year has barely begun, and Netflix’s unpredictable His & Hers joins the “dead child” list, alongside recent entries like The Beast in Me, All Her Fault, Untamed, and The Last Frontier. The six-part limited series, adapted from mystery-thriller writer Alice Feeney’s best-selling 2020 novel of the same name, sees Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal play estranged spouses and grieving parents who reunite during a murder investigation in their sleepy Georgia hometown. The couple hasn’t seen each other for a year, and pieces fall into place about what led to the schism between TV reporter Anna Andrews (Thompson) and Detective Jack Harper (Bernthal) across the first few episodes.

To the credit of the whiplash-inducing His & Hers, it doesn’t leave us in the dark about the particulars of baby Charlotte’s death until the penultimate episode, which has become a frustrating go-to strategy for TV shows boasting myriad twists and turns like All Her Fault and The Beast in Me. It is refreshing that it only takes Jack and Anna a couple of episodes before they directly discuss losing their nearly 9-month-old infant; by the mid-way point, their unresolved issues have come to a head. And it is here that His & Hers offers compelling insight: Anger, resentment, shame, guilt, love, and even lust make a potent mix, with Thompson and Bernthal selling the hell out of a confessional that has been a year in the making for the couple. While His & Hers makes some wild swings in the overall whodunnit, hashing out their grief is not an afterthought or a last-minute twist to shock. The infant’s death, however, indirectly kicks off the string of killings, and themes of motherhood are central to the motive; His & Hers doesn’t entirely sidestep the ‘dead child’ tropes.

Thompson and Bernthal join the likes of Claire Danes, Sarah Snook, Eric Bana, and Jason Clarke in delivering compelling, heart-aching performances rooted in bereavement. Still, even award-winning turns can’t stop this storytelling device from edging into tired and emotionally manipulative trope territory. It isn’t enough to see Emmy-winning actors serving top-tier cry-face or dancing around the answers when the pacing treats it like another clue to the central crime. Pulling on our heartstrings with images of little blonde boys or cute babies is no better than the dead wife flashing a smile to the camera.

Of course, some of this comes from the source material. While the death of the child is part of Feeney’s book plot, William Oldroyd’s adaptation adjusts Jack and Anna’s marital status from divorced to estranged. Not being on the same page about how to deal with grief is what causes both, but the screen version adds layers to this experience in its depiction of the aftermath.

While there is little empirical evidence to support this, an often-repeated stat that up to 90 percent of couples divorce after the death of a child comes from Harriet Schiff’s 1977 book The Bereaved Parent. This theory prevails in the aforementioned series: Only The Last Frontier features a couple still living together, and even that union is hanging by a thread. By the end of All Her Fault, Marissa (Snook) has taken drastic action to ensure the safety of the child in her care. The Peacock abduction thriller keeps pulling rabbits out of hats with each new reveal about Marissa’s husband, Peter (Jake Lacy).

In these recent series, one area where this narrative excels over the "dead wife" (or fridging) plot is that it doesn’t focus solely on the male protagonist's motivation or on explaining his erratic choices. It is an equal-opportunity device for both parents to explore the nuances of a relationship in the aftermath of an unspeakable loss. All Her Fault and His & Hers both have female showrunners, and Danes (an executive producer on The Beast in Me) has spoken about the maternal grief research she undertook before playing Aggie Wiggs. The push-pull depicted in these three titles of navigating trauma and how the public or a spouse might perceive it adds a compelling layer through the female gaze. Still, there is also a question of whether an audience can only sympathize if this loss is predicated on a child. Would we feel differently if the trope were centered on dead husbands?

Career is another focus that can center on either parent and also exhibits repeat patterns. Given that a character’s work is often entwined with feelings of guilt, particularly for those characters in law enforcement who either see their job as the direct cause (The Last Frontier) or blame themselves for not having kept their child safe (Untamed). In The Beast in Me, Aggie was participating in a phone interview while driving her son to an appointment when tragedy struck; Aggie holds the drunk driver responsible for her son’s death. The inevitable later-season flashback to how it happened shows a distracted Aggie, and her guilt curdles into a desire for vengeance against the driver. Aggie only loses her writer's block when suspected wife-killer Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys) becomes her subject, and she is drawn to the danger. The murder-mystery and the responsibility she feels for her son’s death overlap.

Personal and professional intersect as Jack and Anna navigate their significant heartbreak in His & Hers; it does take a string of homicides to set the scene for reconciliation. Their child’s death is not a salacious bonus solution revealed late in the game. While there is a throughline between this awful event and the unfolding violence, it doesn’t turn a tragedy into a cheap mystery thriller trope. Even still, if TV writers insist on using this plotting, they need to get more inventive, as flashbacks of playgrounds, toys, and cribs are going to become as rote as a dead wife rolling around in bed sheets. Instead of hitting the heart, these memories, serving as character motivation, will become so familiar that the only emotion they will illicit is annoyance—or worse, boredom.

“There are at least two sides to every story. Yours and mine, ours and theirs, his and hers…which means someone is always lying.” If those opening lines didn’t give it away, the Netflix drama His & Hers, which debuted on January 8, is a twisty psychological thriller where nothing is as it seems. The series, based on Alice Feeney’s mystery-thriller novel of the same name, stars Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal as news reporter Anna Andrews and detective Jack Harper, who both have connections to a shocking murder case in their rural Georgia hometown—oh, and they’re estranged spouses, too.

The threads of why Anna and Jack are so interested in this case—beyond her desire to report on a sensational news story and his obligation as local law enforcement—are just the tip of the iceberg here. Dahlonega is the kind of small town where everybody knows everyone, and the locals have plenty to hide. Anna and Jack do too, which is why they’re both also suspicious of the other’s involvement in the case.

The six-episode thriller is stacked with surprising revelations, multiple murders, and a conclusion you probably didn’t see coming. Read on as we break it all down, including how it leads to the shocking ending of His & Hers.

Who killed Rachel Hopkins in 'His & Hers?'

The brutal murder of Rachel (Jamie Tisdale), who was found stabbed to death multiple times on the hood of her car in the middle of the woods, is the initial incident that sets off all of the action in the series. It’s what brings Anna, freshly back at her job at a news station in Atlanta after a long absence, back to Dahlonega to report on the story, and puts Jack on the case with his partner, Priya Patel (Sunita Mani). By the time His & Hers concludes, two more women are dead: Helen (Poppy Liu) and Zoe (Marin Ireland), both of whom, like Rachel, were childhood friends of Anna’s.

Potential suspects abounded: Could it have been Rachel’s husband, Clyde (Chris Bauer), a pizza chain mogul with his own secrets? Jack, who had his own very recent history with Rachel? Or Lexy Jones (Rebecca Rittenhouse), the Atlanta news anchor who took over Anna’s job and has her own connections to Dahlonega?

As it turns out, the answer is none of them—and the perpetrator is someone you likely never suspected. The killer was Anna’s mother, Alice (Crystal Fox), who uncovered a secret from the friend group’s past and plotted revenge on behalf of her daughter. When we meet Alice, she appears to be a kind but confused woman suffering from dementia. (At one point, she’s found wandering around alone, and Jack is called to bring her home.) But this, apparently, was all an act. As she points out in the handwritten confession that she leaves Anna at the end of the series, nobody thought to suspect her, so they didn’t. “They could have stopped me, but they see what they want to see—even when the truth is right in front of us,” she writes.

Why did Alice kill Rachel, Helen, and Zoe in 'His & Hers?'

Rachel, Helen, and Zoe were all childhood friends of Anna’s, and all attended the fancy St. Hilary’s private school. Unlike her friends, Anna was a scholarship student, and her mother worked at the school as a cleaner. The connection between their past and the murders quickly becomes evident when friendship bracelets are found on both Rachel's and Helen’s bodies.

If adult Rachel was a mean girl, teenage Rachel was an absolute monster. On Anna’s 16th birthday, she schemed to take Anna and another classmate, the awkward Catherine (Astrid Rotenberry), out to the woods, where she, Helen, and Zoe got them drunk and then brought in men who paid Rachel to come and assault them. Catherine managed to run away, but Anna was raped as her “friends” looked on and recorded what happened.

Alice doesn’t discover this until much later, after Anna disappears in grief over the death of her baby girl. So Alice could still feel close to her daughter, she would watch videos that Anna had kept in her childhood bedroom. While most of these tapes were clips from her news reports, the 16th birthday video was there too—and once Alice sees what happened, she plots to kill Rachel, Helen, and Zoe.

Both Tessa Thompson and series creator William Oldroyd have spoken about what a surprising turn it is that Alice is the killer—but why her emotional motive ties the twist together. Oldroyd told The Wrap, "It makes sense that Alice wants to stay connected to her daughter when her daughter leaves, so she watches her on TV, and then that is seeing that [assault] then puts everything into motion."

"We didn’t want to put anyone in any sort of doubt as to whether Alice was motivated to kill them," he continued. "For me, there’s no question that a mother would feel such a strong reaction to do those things."

The reasoning, Thompson explained to the outlet, also speaks to the show's larger themes. "I loved that we could create an ending that felt very surprising, but also very fresh," the star said. "I can’t think of a show where I’ve seen an elderly Black woman be the killer, and also the reason, which is essentially the depth and ferocity of a mother’s love, which is such a unique motive."

How were Jack and Rachel connected in 'His & Hers?'

There’s a reason Jack was so eager to pin Rachel’s murder on Clyde, and why he was so uneasy about giving a DNA sample to the medical examiner: Rachel and Jack were having an affair. In fact, they had sex in his truck the same night she was murdered.

That would be enough to set off alarm bells for any good investigator, but it wasn’t the only connection between them: Jack is also Zoe’s brother. He’s been living with her and her daughter, Meg (Ellie Rose Sawyer), while he got back on his feet following the death of his and Anna’s daughter and the subsequent breakdown of their marriage. So he’s as close as you could get to not just one, but two of the victims.

What happened to Catherine in 'His & Hers?'

His & Hers first introduces Catherine as an awkward teen whom Rachel enjoys tormenting. (At one point, the then-high-schooler hands Catherine a drink and then tells her it’s urine after she takes a sip.) But it turns out, we’ve met her as an adult, too.

When Anna’s hotel reservation in Dahlonega is suspiciously canceled, her cameraman, Richard (Pablo Schreiber), offers a solution: They can drive out to his in-laws’s lake house and finish filing their report from there before they head back to Atlanta. We’ve known from the start that his wife is Anna’s work nemesis, Lexy Jones, but it turns out that Lexy is actually Catherine.

Anna discovers this after spotting some family photos around the home. Catherine, whose middle name was Alexis, changed her appearance and started going by Lexy—and has her own score to settle with Anna, who she thinks knew about the plan to lure them into the woods 20 years ago. Anna swears she had no idea, but Lexy doesn't believe her.

While the two women are fighting, Jack speeds to get to the lake house to rescue Anna, who had called him for help, thinking Lexy and Richard were responsible for the other murders. He gets there, but only just in time: Lexy has tried firing Anna’s gun at her, only to discover it’s out of bullets. At that next moment, Priya (who had been keeping tabs on Jack, thinking his behavior around the investigation was suspicious) fires her own gun and shoots Lexy in the head, killing her.

What happened to Catherine's sister Andrea in 'His & Hers?'

Lexy didn’t kill Rachel, Helen, and Zoe, though she certainly had the motive. However, her hands aren’t clean either. In a flashback, we learn she’s responsible for the death of her sister, Andrea (Savanna Gann). When Catherine was still a teenager, Andrea fat-shamed her before the family was about to head out on the lake for a boat trip. In retaliation, Catherine took her sister’s inhaler and deliberately emptied the medication from it. Andrea had an asthma attack on the boat, and the family was too far away from shore to get her help before she died.

Later, Clyde reveals that Catherine/Lexy made the mistake of confiding this information to Rachel at some point, and Rachel and Helen later attempted to blackmail her. This all gave ammo to Lexy being a suspect in the murders, but ultimately wound up being a red herring.

If viewers were shocked that Lexy wasn't actually the killer, that was by design. The series creator spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about how Anna's colleague was set up to be a suspect—and why their dramatic confrontation was inevitable. "When Anna turns up at Lexy’s family lake house and unloads a handgun at Richard, Lexy is left in no doubt that Anna is the murderer," Oldroyd explained to THR. "Now the choice is simple: kill Anna or be killed. After all, Anna has a genuine motive for wanting all these women dead, and that includes Catherine, who abandoned her that night. The fatal tragedy of the final showdown is that if they had just stopped to ask each other why they’d killed these women, they would realize that neither of them had. But, in the craziness and confusion, they had to fight it out to the bitter end."

What happened to Anna and Jack's baby in 'His & Hers?'

Tragically, Anna and Jack’s daughter, Charlotte, died when she was only a few months old. The couple had gone out for a date night and left her with Alice to babysit. When they came back, the house was surrounded by ambulances.

Alice later says the cause was unexplained (“crib death”) and nobody’s fault, but she felt like she had failed her daughter. The baby’s death spun all of them into grief, with Anna taking a leave of absence from her job for a year and Jack moving back to Dahlonega.

What happens to Anna and Jack at the end of 'His & Hers?'

Things seem to have fallen back into place for Anna and Jack, who have reunited and brought Zoe’s daughter/Jack’s niece Meg into their family, along with expecting a new baby of their own.

But is it still domestic bliss once Anna learns what it took to get it? As Jack and Meg sit with Alice, she finds the handwritten confession note in her childhood room, where her mother explains how she faked dementia to commit these murders and get away with it, all in the name of getting Anna her life back. Killing Rachel, she explains, brought Anna back to Dahlonega. Killing Helen kept her there, and killing Zoe gave her back the family she’d lost. She’d never intended to kill Catherine/Lexy, thinking that going to prison was punishment enough for abandoning her that night in the woods—plus, it allowed for a convenient killer in this juicy story.

She tells Anna that she’s revealing all this now that she’s about to become a mother again, and urges her to “love my grandbabies as I loved you…Show them that a mother’s love never dims, never weakens. It’s constant, continual, relentless.”

The series then ends with Anna making eye contact with her mother, and Alice meeting it with an ambiguous smile.

A show only needs one good twist to surprise audiences. The Netflix thriller Run Away has about 5,000 of them—and each will leave your head spinning. Based on the book by Harlan Coben, Run Away follows Simon Greene (James Nesbitt), a desperate father searching for his daughter, Paige (Ellie de Lange), who struggles with substance abuse. But, as becomes clear by the time Run Away's end credits roll, this is more than just a show about a missing daughter

Netflix's Run Away has everything you want in a thriller and more, including—in no particular order—a creepy cult, catfishing, hitmen, a super hot detective duo dating in secret, a vigilante, and a brief dognapping incident. It's a lot to keep track of, so much so that even the most dedicated viewer might have missed a few things during their binge. Here's a breakdown of the Run Away ending, including all of the show's twists and turns.

What happened to Paige in 'Run Away?'

After his run-in with Paige in the first episode, Simon believes that his daughter is being held against her will by her boyfriend, Aaron Corval (Thomas Flynn), who he also believes got her addicted to drugs. However, over the course of his investigation, he finds that the truth is much more complicated.

As it turns out, Aaron isn't Paige's boyfriend at all; he's her half-brother. The two connected on a genealogy website and became close after Paige was drugged and raped by a classmate. She told Aaron about the incident and watched as he viciously beat her attacker in the school gym. Vulnerable and feeling alone, Paige started getting high with Aaron, which eventually led to her estrangement from her parents and her dropping out of school.

After she came home one night to find Aaron dead, Paige ran away—not because she was guilty, but because she wanted to get clean. It's not until the investigation into Aaron's murder has reached its end that Paige reunites with her parents and tells her dad the truth.

Who killed Aaron Corval on 'Run Away?'

Throughout the eight-episode series, there are many prime suspects in Aaron's gruesome murder. First, the detectives focus on Simon, then pivot to Paige, and then to Cornelius (Lucian Msamati), Aaron's neighbor and occasional vigilante. In the end, however, the murderer is none of them: It's Paige's mother, Ingrid Greene (Minnie Driver).

As Paige reveals in the final episode, she had gone straight to her mother after Aaron beat her following her run-in with her dad in the park. Ingrid told Paige to get away for a bit and, unbeknownst to her daughter, went to kill Aaron. She knew that Paige would never get clean as long as Aaron was alive. What she didn't realize was that Aaron was her eldest son—a boy she believed was stillborn during her youth spent in the Shining Truth cult.

What is the Shinning Truth cult in 'Run Away?'

Throughout Run Away, there are two parallel storylines: Paige's disappearance and the mission of two hitmen, Dee Dee (Maeve Courtier-Lilley) and Ash (Jon Pointing). Dee Dee is a member of the Shining Truth cult, a mysterious organization that Ingrid had been a part of before meeting her husband. It's through the Shining Truth that Dee Dee becomes a killer, as she and Ash are tasked with killing a list of seemingly unconnected white men.

The men, it turns out, are all half-brothers, children of The One—the cult leader—who frequently slept with his female followers. Except for two sons, all the boys born were immediately given up for adoption, as they were deemed unworthy heirs. Some women knew the truth, but others were told that their children had been stillborn. And, after The One is diagnosed with cancer, Dee Dee and Ash are hired to kill all of The One's unrecognized children so that his two sons can have their inheritance.

Among the names on their hit list is Aaron Corval, who Paige discovers is Ingrid's biological son. As Paige reveals to her father in the finale, Ingrid believed her son was stillborn, and doesn't know that in killing Aaron, she actually killed her firstborn.

Does Elena Ravenscroft die in 'Run Away?'

Private investigator Elena Ravenscroft (Ruth Jones) is one of the last people killed by Ash and Dee Dee. After joining forces with Simon to find Paige and investigate Aaron's killing, she uncovers the recent death of a few other young men, and that they were all related and had connected on various genealogy websites. Her investigation leads her to an adoption agency with ties to the Shining Truth.

Amid personal struggles—Elena has just found out that her dead husband donated sperm to an unknown woman so that she could have a child and didn't tell her about it—the P.I. is lured into a trap while investigating the adoptions. Dee Dee and Ash kill her on the night she's set to meet her husband's biological daughter. In her final moments, Elena finds peace with the knowledge that she will be reunited with her dead husband. The police later recovered her body.

What happens to Ash and Dee Dee on 'Run Away?'

After killing Elena Ravenscroft, Dee Dee and Ash realize that she was working with Simon and add him to their hit list, right below Aaron Corval. Upon their arrival at Aaron's apartment, they realize that somebody else had already killed him, but before they can work out the specifics, they spot Simon entering the basement next door. He's there to meet with Paige's drug dealer, Rocco (Marcus Fraser), in the hopes of gaining information on his daughter's whereabouts.

Dee Dee and Ash follow Simon, ready to kill him, when they're interrupted by Luther (Connor Porter), one of Rocco's lackeys, who shoots Ash and kills him. Simon runs and makes it up the stairwell before Dee Dee corners him, but just as she's about to kill him, she's pushed off the landing and killed by a mysterious woman. She later tells Simon that she is a member of the Shining Truth (one of the mothers of the adopted sons).

How does 'Run Away' end?

Run Away ends with the Greene family reunited. Paige completes rehab and returns to her family, happy and healthy. Having arrested The One and (temporarily) taken down the Shining Truth, Detective Fagbenle (Alfred Enoch) and his partner, Detective Todd (Amy Gledhill), determine that Ash and Dee Dee must have killed Aaron and returned to the scene of the crime, where they confronted Simon.

With the Greene family now officially cleared of Aaron's murder, they are finally free to move on. Of course, Simon and Paige will have to live with the knowledge that Ingrid killed her own son, but perhaps that's a small price to pay for avoiding jail and getting their family back together...

New year, new Netflix mystery series. 2026 starts off with a bang, courtesy of Run Away, a thriller adapted from Harlan Coben's novel of the same name. Coben, who is also the mind behind Netflix hits Fool Me Once and The Stranger, is known for his dark mysteries and wild twists, and Run Away promises to be no different.

The show stars James Nesbitt as Simon Greene, a man who, on the surface, has the perfect life with his loving wife and their three children. But when his daughter Paige (Ellie de Lange) develops an addiction to drugs and runs away, that perfect facade begins to crack. After he spots Paige in a park, looking disheveled and presumably under the spell of a controlling boyfriend, Simon begins investigating the violent underworld that has captured his daughter. If he wants to save his daughter and his family, Simon will have to look outside the lines and face his own dark past.

Intrigued? Good. Before jumping into the juicy mystery, here's a who's who of the Run Away cast, so you can be sure to keep your list of suspects straight.

James Nesbitt as Simon Greene

Simon Greene is a loving father of three whose life is turned upside down when his eldest daughter, Paige, runs away. When he sees her in a park, he becomes desperate to get her back. But after Paige's boyfriend, who Simon suspects is abusing Paige, is found dead, Simon becomes more than a desperate father—he's also a suspect.

James Nesbitt, 60, is a prolific Irish actor who has been gracing screens big and small since 1984. Over the course of his impressive career, Nesbitt has been nominated for two BAFTA Awards—the first for Best Actor for his performance in Bloody Sunday (2002) and the second for his lead role in the TV series The Missing. Fans of Irish television might know him best as DS Tommy Murphy, whom he played for five seasons on Murphy's Law (2003–2007), but others might recognize him as Bofur from The Hobbit trilogy.

Ruth Jones as Elena Ravenscroft

Elena Ravenscroft is a private investigator working with the police on Paige's case. In her investigation, she strikes up an alliance with Simon Greene in his quest to discover what happened to his daughter. Of course, not even a friendly working relationship can keep her from investigating him, as well.

Ruth Jones, 59, is a celebrated writer and actor, perhaps best known as co-creator and star of the comedy Gavin & Stacey, in which she starred opposite co-creator James Corden. The show ran for three seasons, from 2007 to 2010, and featured a 2019 Christmas special and a 2024 finale that earned Ruth a BAFTA TV Award for Female Performance in a Comedy.

Minnie Driver as Ingrid Greene

Ingrid Greene is Simon's wife. In Coben's original novel, Ingrid is stricter than her husband, especially when it comes to Paige and her substance abuse. She suggests cutting their daughter off, despite Simon's desperation to find her.

Minnie Driver, 55, is an Oscar-nominated actress who got her big Hollywood break in 1998, when she starred in Good Will Hunting opposite Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Since then, the London-born actress been a staple of American film and television, appearing in projects of all genres. She voiced Jane in Disney's Tarzan (1999) and recently joined the cast of Emily in Paris.

Alfred Enoch as Isaac Fagbenle

Isaac Fagbenle is a detective who crosses paths with Simon while investigating the murder of Aaron Corval (Thomas Flynn), Paige's boyfriend, who is found dead after Simon sees him with Paige in the park.

Alfred Enoch, 37, began as a child actor, appearing in all eight Harry Potter films as Dean Thomas. He later starred in ABC's hit drama How to Get Away with Murder. Enoch has also been known to take the stage in England, and in 2021, starred in a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Globe Theater.

Ellie de Lange as Paige Greene

Paige Greene is her parents's pride and joy, but things go downhill after she enters university, where she starts using drugs. Eventually, she runs away, leaving her family in disarray. Her parents believe that she's fallen under the influence of a controlling and dangerous boyfriend, but she might be hiding more than they know.

Ellie de Lange, 28, began her career in the Netherlands, appearing in various TV shows before jumping to British television. She's best known for appearing in Wolf Hall and The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and completed production on her first short film earlier this year.

Lucian Msamati as Cornelius Faber

Not much is known about the character of Cornelius Faber, but he does feature in the first look photos released by Netflix, so he likely has some connection to Paige's case. Whether or not he is good or bad remains to be seen.

Lucien Msamati, 49, is an actor of the stage and screen. Just last year, he starred in a West End production of Waiting for Godot and the Oscar-nominated film Conclave.

Jon Pointing as Ash

Ash is a member of a mysterious and violent cult that may be tied to Paige's disappearance.

Jon Pointing, 39, is a British TV actor who is best known for starring in the comedy Big Boys, as well as the dark comedy Sweetpea, co-starring Fallout's Ella Purnell.

Maeve Courtier-Lilley as Dee Dee

Dee Dee is another member of the mysterious cult that Paige seems to have gotten involved in.

Maeve Courtier-Lilley, 24, got her first on-screen credit in 2021 and has been working steadily ever since. She is perhaps best known for her supporting role in Gran Turismo and recently appeared in the Netflix holiday movie Champagne Problems.

Adrian Greensmith as Sam Greene; Ellie Henry as Anya Greene

Sam and Anya Greene are Paige's younger siblings whose lives are turned upside down when Paige runs away.

Adrian Greensmith, 24, is an American actor who previously starred in Shelter, another show co-created by Harlan Coben. Ellie Henry, 24, previously appeared on the British teen soap, Hollyoaks

The best films are transportive, and rarely can that be felt more viscerally than in a pulse-pounding thriller. When they’re pulled off well, thriller films evoke a memorable sense of suspense and antsy excitement in the room, whether you’re surrounded by fellow movie theatergoers or gripping the side of your living room couch.

One of the most exciting elements of the thriller is its flexibility. They can overlap with similarly engrossing genres like noir, action, and horror. Ultimately, what truly matters is the overall mood. If a thriller makes you lean forward as the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, then it’s done its job.

Because of how genre-defying they can be, there are a lot of great thrillers to look forward to in 2026—from a brand-new Matt Damon and Ben Affleck collaboration to an erotic sci-fi horror tale and a psychological musical drama. Below, we’ve put together a list of some of the best, most enticing thriller films coming out throughout the year. (And if you’re looking for movie recommendations to watch right now, check out our list of the best thrillers of 2025.)

The Best Thriller Movies of 2026 So Far

'Dead Man's Wire'

Release date: January 9

Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Cary Elwes, Myha’la, Colman Domingo, and Al Pacino

Why it’s worth seeing: If you’re already missing Bill Skarsgård’s return as Pennywise in It: Welcome to Derry, you can enjoy his unnerving character work in the true-crime-inspired movie Dead Man’s Wire. The Swedish actor stars as real-life criminal Tony Kiritsis, who kidnapped his bank mortgage holder in 1970s Indianapolis.

WATCH IT

'The Rip'

Release date: January 16

Starring: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Scott Adkins, Lina Esco, Néstor Carbonell, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Kyle Chandler

Why it’s worth seeing: Nearly 30 years after co-writing and starring in Oscar darling Good Will Hunting, lifelong best friends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are still working together. They reunited on screen this year in the Netflix action thriller The Rip. The Joe Carnahan-directed film centers on a team of Miami cops who uncover millions in cash and must decipher who they can trust as newcomers stake their claim on it.

WATCH IT

'Send Help'

Release date: January 30

Starring: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien, Edyll Ismail, Dennis Haysbert, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Thaneth Warakulnukroh, and Emma Raimi

Why it’s worth seeing: Being stranded on a secluded island is a nightmare, but what if you were trapped there with someone you can’t stand? Such is the very unlucky case for Rachel McAdams’s Linda Liddle in this survival thriller, as a plane crash finds her harpooned along with her bro-y boss, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). Directed by Sam Raimi, who’s known for his often bonkers horror joints, you can bet this movie about roles-reversed power dynamics—set in the gritty wilderness, no less—is about to get gnarly.

WATCH IT

'How to Make a Killing'

Release date: February 20

Starring: Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Ed Harris, Topher Grace, Jessica Henwick, and Zach Woods

Why it’s worth seeing: Glen Powell’s movie star rise continues in How to Make a Killing. He stars as Becket Redfellow, the son of disowned heiress Mary. When his mother dies, Beckett decides to do whatever it takes to eliminate the seven relatives who stand between him and the inheritance that Mary always said he deserved…no matter the bloody cost.

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'Ready or Not 2: Here I Come'

Release date: March 20

Starring: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Elijah Wood, Shawn Hatosy, and David Cronenberg

Why it’s worth seeing: Ready or Not’s irreverent blend of thrilling horror scares and black comedy made it a breakout hit when it premiered back in 2019. Samara Weaving’s central final girl, Grace, who escaped her in-laws’s plans to kill her for sport in the first film, is back to fight for her life once again in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. This time around, she finds herself kidnapped by The Lawyer (Elijah Wood), who represents the all-powerful High Council families. They’re once again determined to hunt her down, and Grace must team up with her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) to survive their dangerous games.

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'Mother Mary'

Release date: April 17

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, FKA twigs, Hunter Schafer, Alba Baptista, and Kaia Gerber

Why it’s worth seeing: An A24 psychosexual thriller starring Anne Hathaway as a pop star and I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel as her estranged fashion-designer confidante? If that doesn’t sound like indie prestige gold, then I don’t know what does. To make matters more exciting, Mother Mary features original music by Jack Antonoff and Charli xcx.

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'Over Your Dead Body'

Release date: April 24

Starring: Samara Weaving, Jason Segel, Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Keith Jardine, and Paul Guilfoyle

Why it’s worth seeing: Between Companion and Oh, Hi!, recent films about couples forced to confront their relationship issues during a secluded getaway are seemingly everywhere. That trend continues with Over Your Dead Body, in which Samara Weaving and Jason Segel play a couple who attempt to mend fences while on vacation. The twist? Each of them is plotting to kill the other.

WATCH IT

The Best Thrillers of 2026 Coming Soon

'Is God Is'

Release date: May 15

Starring: Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Janelle Monáe, Vivica A. Fox, and Sterling K. Brown

Why it’s worth seeing: If you didn’t get a chance to catch playwright Aleshea Harris’ acclaimed Off-Broadway play Is God Is in 2018, good news: She directed a film version. The movie stars Kara Young and Mallori Johnson as outcast twin sisters physically scarred in their youth. When they discover that their father is responsible for injuring their mother and themselves, the twins find themselves torn between revenge and forgiveness.

WATCH IT

'Pressure'

Release date: May 29

Starring: Brendan Fraser, Andrew Scott, Kerry Condon, Damian Lewis, Henry Ashton, and Chris Messina

Why it's worth seeing: If you ever assumed a weather forecast couldn’t be heart-stopping, you’d be wrong. Pressure centers on one of history’s most consequential meteorologists: James Stagg (Andrew Scott), who convinced General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) to move up the Allied Troops’s D-Day invasion. If you’re looking for a World War II thriller to enjoy with your friends and your history buff dad alike, here's your answer.

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'Disclosure Day'

Release date: June 12

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, and Eve Hewson

Why it’s worth seeing: Not only does one of the all-time greats, Steven Spielberg, have a new release in 2026—he’s back on his alien beat. The upcoming film looks bigger than ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and even War of the Worlds. The film is largely shrouded in mystery, but it appears to follow different people who have made contact with extraterrestrials and are trying to understand why, as well as decide what to disclose to the public. If you’re looking for a summer blockbuster to throw on the calendar, this is it.

WATCH THE TRAILER

'The Death of Robin Hood'

Release date: June 19

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Bill Skarsgård, Jodie Comer, Noah Jupe, and Murray Bartlett

Why it's worth seeing: Robin Hood is back, and he isn’t a hot cartoon fox anymore. This time around, he’s getting the gritty A24 anti-hero treatment. In the title role, Jackman brings some Logan-esque Wolverine energy to this darker take on the legendary outlaw.

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'Her Private Hell'

Release date: July 24

Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Diego Calva, Kristine Froseth, and Havana Rose Liu

Why it’s worth seeing: Danish bad-boy filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn cast all the It girls and boys in Hollywood for his latest. His first feature in 10 years looks stylish as ever. Set in a near-future where a dangerous mist has engulfed a metropolis, it follows a young woman (Sophie Thatcher) in search of her missing father as her path crosses with an American soldier looking for his daughter.

WATCH THE TRAILER

'Digger'

Release date: October 2

Starring: Tom Cruise, Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sophie Wilde, and Emma D'Arcy

Why it’s worth seeing: Thank goodness for blockbuster stars like Tom Cruise, whose mission remains saving the movies and ensuring fans see original features in cinema seats. He stars in the latest epic from Oscar-winner Alejandro González Iñárritu. The details are scarce, but it's said to be a wild ride about a billionaire (Cruise) tasked with thwarting his company's grave environmental impact before it's too late.

WATCH THE TRAILER

'Verity'

Release date: October 2

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Brady Wagner, Irina Dvorovenko, K. K. Moggie, Michael Abbott Jr., and Alex Cooper

Why it’s worth seeing: Perhaps you're familiar with Colleen Hoover's best-selling romance novels, but her most popular and best book may very well be this thriller. Like It Ends With Us, Regretting You, and Reminders of Him, before it, the mystery is receiving the big-screen treatment this fall. Dakota Johnson stars as Lowen, a writer tapped by the husband (Josh Hartnett) of the legendary author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) to finish her manuscript when she falls ill. Inevitably, secrets surface and twists abound.

'The Gallerist'

Release date: TBA

Starring: Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Sterling K. Brown, Zach Galifianakis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Daniel Brühl, Ash Sarohia, and Charli xcx

Why it’s worth seeing: After helming the delightfully absurdist Harley Quinn film Birds of Prey in 2020, filmmaker Cathy Yan is back with the black-comedy thriller, The Gallerist. Set at the prestigious Miami Art Basel, it stars Natalie Portman as a gallerist attempting to sell a dead man’s body during the event.

If you have a Netflix subscription, odds are you've fallen head over heels for at least one must-watch K-drama or Korean movie. Since 2023, the streaming giant has invested $2.5 billion into building its Korean slate, following the success of shows like Kingdom, All of Us Are Dead, The Glory, and, of course, Squid Game.

2025 marked the streamer's biggest year yet for Korean entertainment, with shows like When Life Gives You Tangerines, Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, Better Late Than Single, Physical: Asia, and Culinary Class Wars becoming global hits.

With 2026 underway, Netflix has revealed the dozens of original K-dramas and variety shows head to our screens this year. Plus, streaming deals with domestic networks like tvN and SBS mean that even more soon-to-be-faves will make their way to the platform. Below, we've rounded up the best K-dramas and reality shows heading to Netflix in 2026. (Once you're done, check out our round-up of the best Netflix K-dramas of 2025.)

The Best Netflix K-Dramas and Korean Reality Shows Coming Winter 2026

'Physical: Welcome to Mongolia'

Release date: January 1

Following the success of fall 2025's Physical: Asia, Netflix began the year with a travel spinoff starring finalists Team Korea and Team Mongolia. The four-part series follows Physical: 100 alums Amotti and Kim Dong-hyun (along with a surprise guest) as Mongolian fan-favorites Orkhonbayar Bayarsaikhan and Lkhagva-Ochir Erdene-Ochir lead them on a curated tour of Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar.

WATCH IT

'Can This Love Be Translated?'

Release date: January 16

Famed screenwriting duo the Hong Sisters (Alchemy of Souls, Hotel del Luna) are behind this much-anticipated romantic K-drama, starring Moving's Go Youn-jung and Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha's Kim Seon-ho. According to the description, "an unexpected romance blossoms between multilingual translator Ju Ho-jin and global celebrity Cha Mu-hee, as their professional relationship takes unpredictable and heartwarming turns."

WATCH IT

'No Tail to Tell'

Release date: January 16

For SBS's first weekly drama of the year, Lovely Runner's Kim Hye-yoon and All of Us Are Dead's Lomon will star in Korea's latest love story based on the legend of the gumiho. In a fresh twist, Eun-ho (Kim) is a gumiho who doesn't want to become human and instead enjoys her eternal youth. But her carefree life is changed when she meets Kang Si-yeol (Lomon), a narcissistic soccer player.

WATCH IT

'Undercover Miss Hong'

Release date: January 17

Fans of the classic '90s movie Never Been Kissed may be delighted to know that adult-disguises-themselves-as-teenagers is a growing K-drama trend (see last year's Undercover High School). In this comedy, Park Shin-hye plays an auditor who goes undercover as a 20-year-old high-school grad to investigate a suspicious money trail at Hanmin Securities. However, she's surprised when she runs into her former love, Sin Jeong-u (Go Kyung-pyo), who's Hanmin's new CEO.

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'Single's Inferno' season 5

Release date: January 20

Netflix's longest-running Korean reality show returned in January for its fifth year in a row. The slow-burn dating series has gotten more intense with each installment, as the cast—singles stuck on a deserted island who must couple up to escape to "paradise"—gets more competitive in going after what they want. Creator Kim Jee-won promised that season 5 would raise the bar with "fascinating dynamics between participants, unlike anything you’ve seen"—and it definitely delivered.

(Once you're done watching, don't forget to check out the first-ever reunion.)

WATCH IT

'The Art of Sarah'

Release date: February 13

Mr. Queen and Welcome to Samdal-ri star Shin Hye-sun returns to Netflix in this thriller set in the world of high fashion. When Mu-gyeong (Love Scout's Lee Jun-hyuk) sets out to investigate Sarah Kim (Shin), the enigmatic CEO of a popular luxury brand, the detective discovers that she's "a woman whose multiple names, ages, and careers make her identity almost impossible to pin down."

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'Agents of Mystery' season 2

Release date: February 27

In 2024, The Devil's Plan producer Jeong Jong-yeon premiered a new adventure-mystery show for fans of series like Busted! and The Zone: Survival Mission. For the second season, dancer and content creator GABEE will join the all-star cast as they investigate bizarre and unpredictable cases.

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'Boyfriend on Demand'

Release date: March 6

After a long wait, this rom-com starring BLACKPINK's Jisoo arrives on Netflix early this year. Seo Mi-rae (Jisoo) is a webtoon producer with no time for dating amid her hectic schedule. When she receives the titular virtual dating simulation, she "encounters unrealistically perfect boyfriends, awakening her dormant desires for romance." Seo In-guk costars as Mi-rae's IRL work rival, who's "sure to stir emotions in Mi-rae."

WATCH THE TRAILER

'Still Shining'

Release date: March 6

This weekly drama promises a sentimental love story about childhood sweethearts (played by K-pop idols-turned-actors) who reunite as adults. Yeon Tae-seo (GOT7's Jin-young) is a subway driver who focuses on living in the present. Mo Eun-a (Iz*One's Kim Min-ju) is a former hotel employee who now runs a traditional Korean guest house. According to the description, the estranged pair "become each other’s confidants and the light that illuminates their lives."

WATCH THE TRAILER

'Phantom Lawyer'

Release date: March 13

When the Phone Rings star Yoo Yeon-seok returns to Netflix, leading this workplace drama with a spectral twist. Shin Lee-rang (Yoo) is determined to become a star lawyer when he opens his own practice in the home of a former shaman. When he begins to see ghosts, he decides to get justice for them, even if it means they temporarily possess his body. Joining Lee-rang is ace lawyer Han Na-hyeon (Taxi Driver's Esom), who helps him represent the deceased clients.

'Ready or Not: Texas'

Release date: March 24

This new show from Na Yeong-seok (of 2 Days & 1 Night, New Journey to the West, The Game Caterers, Jinny's Kitchen, and more) will bring some of Korea's biggest celebrities to Dallas, Texas. Real-life besties Na and actor Lee Soo-jin (plus some surprise guests) will "set off like locals...ready to discover what surprises this laid-back road trip across America has in store."

WATCH THE TEASER

The Best Netflix K-Dramas and Korean Reality Shows Coming in Spring 2026

'Better Late Than Single' season 2

Release date: Spring TBA

The first season of Better Late Than Single was a breath of fresh air in the dating-show landscape in 2025, so it's no surprise that a second installment is in the works. Season 2 will bring back the "relatable excitement and occasional heartache of experiencing love for the first time," per Netflix, featuring "even more raw, authentic moments and emotional journeys."

'Bloodhounds' season 2

Release date: Spring TBA

Three years after its premiere, Netflix's original thriller Bloodhounds is set to return for a second season, with besties Gun-woo (Woo Do-hwan) and Woo-jin (Lee Sang-yi) going up against a new criminal enterprise. This time, the pair will face "a global underground boxing league led by Baek-jeong (Jung Ji-hoon, a.k.a. Rain)." Also reportedly appearing in season 2 are Reply 1997's Lee Si-eon, DEX, and Park Seo-joon.

'If Wishes Could Kill'

Release date: Spring TBA

This high-school-set horror drama (previously known as Wish Your Death) follows five students (Jeon So-young, Kang Mi-na, Baek Sun-ho, Hyun Woo-seok, and Lee Hyo-je) whose lives become wrapped up in a mysterious wish-granting app. "Using the app is simple: upload a video of your wish and wait for it to come true—at a cost. What shocking truths will they uncover as they grapple with the consequences of their wishes?"

'Jae-seok's B&B Rules!'

Release date: Spring TBA

Legendary Korean entertainer Yu Jae-seok will lead this new entry in the popular subgenre of hospitality variety shows. According to Netflix, "audiences can expect laughter, empathy, and genuine connections as Yu, his camp keepers, and guests share heartfelt moments in this one-of-a-kind setting." Two of the confirmed guests so far: Running Man alum Lee Kwang-soo and Lovely Runner star Byeon Woo-seok.

'Notes From the Last Row'

Release date: Spring TBA

Acclaimed veteran actor Choi Min-sik (Oldboy) and rising star Choi Hyun-wook (Weak Hero) star in this suspenseful adaptation of the Spanish play El Chico de la última fila. Heo Mun-oh (Choi Min-sik) is a miserable literature professor who never got over his failed writing career. One day, he realizes that Lee Kang (Choi Hyun-wook), a quiet student in his class, has prodigy-level talent. According to the description, the pair begin "secret one-on-one sessions that soon spiral into dangerous territory."

'Sold Out on You'

Release date: Spring TBA

Also known as Sold Out Again Today, this healing rom-com stars Doubt's Chae Won-bin and Business Proposal and KPop Demon Hunters star Ahn Hyo-seop. Matthew "Quail" Lee (Ahn), a farmer and natural beauty CEO, meets Dam Ye-jin (Chae), a home-shopping host with severe insomnia. As their paths cross, these dedicated workers help each other heal the holes in their hearts, per MyDramaList.

'Teach You a Lesson'

Release date: Spring TBA

The controversial Naver webtoon Get Schooled gets a live-action adaptation this year, bringing the fictional Educational Rights Protection Bureau (ERPB) to life. In an "era of unruly students, demanding parents, and struggling schools," the government task force seeks to "restore teacher's authority." The thriller's main cast includes Kim Moo-yul (Juvenile Justice) as ERPB inspector Na Hwa-jin, Lee Sung-min (No Other Choice) as the bureau's founder Choi Gang-seok, and Jin Ki-joo (Undercover High School) as ex–special forces inspector Im Han-rim.

'We Are All Trying Here'

Release date: Spring TBA

This highly anticipated drama from the My Liberation Notes writer is expected to hit fans right in the feels. Per MyDramaList, it will depict "a story of the struggles and journey of people tormented by envy and jealousy, while trying to find their own peace." Koo Kyo-hwan (D.P.) and Go Youn-jung (Can This Love Be Translated?) lead the all-star cast, which includes Oh Jung-se (Sweet Home), Kang Mal-geum (Divorce Attorney Shin), and Park Hae-joon (When Life Gives You Tangerines).

'The WONDERfools'

Release date: Spring TBA

Expect this comedic superhero story to be one of the biggest K-dramas of 2026, thanks to its all-star cast led by Extraordinary Attorney Woo's Park Eun-bin and True Beauty's Cha Eun-woo. Here's the description: "In a world where super-powered beings exist, those with flawed superpowers are also known as 'defective superhumans.' These individuals may possess superhuman abilities, but cannot fully control them or use them at will."

The Best Netflix K-Dramas and Korean Reality Shows Coming in Summer 2026

'The East Palace'

Release date: Summer TBA

In this historical fantasy-thriller, Gu-cheon (Nam Joo-hyuk) is a ghost hunter tasked with investigating the mysteries at a cursed palace. There, he meets Saeng-gang (Roh Yoon-seo), a court lady who's been plagued by her ability to hear ghosts. "As Gu-cheon and Saeng-gang answer the King’s (Cho Seung-woo) call to unearth the palace’s curse, what kind of deep secrets will surface?"

'Kian's Bizarre B&B' season 2

Release date: Summer TBA

After its popular premiere season featuring actress Ji Ye-eun and BTS member Jin, Kian's Bizarre B&B will return to Netflix later this year. Per Netflix, season 2 "takes viewers to a fresh locale, where Kian84’s inventive hospitality and offbeat charm reshape what a guesthouse can be."

'Mousetrap'

Release date: Summer TBA

This thriller adaptation of the Kakao Entertainment webtoon Field Mouse follows an unlikely alliance between two desperate people. A reclusive novelist named Moon-je (The 8 Show's Ryu Jun-yeol) recruits No-ja (Kill Bok-soon's Sul Kyung-gu)—a loan shark who once pursued him—to hunt down the mysterious "Rat" that has taken everything away from him. The pair begins "an intense pursuit of hidden truths as the boundary between reality and deception collapses."

'Our Sticky Love'

Release date: Summer TBA

This rom-com from My Demon director Kim Jang-han has a perfectly trope-y premise. Go Eun-sae (Trauma Code: Heroes on Call's Ha Young) is an ambitious prosecutor on a high-stakes case, while Jang Tae-ha (Love Next Door's Jung Hae-in) is a boxing prodigy-turned-gangster who wants to leave the criminal world. When Eun-sae loses her memory, she finds herself living under the same roof as Tae-ha, who claims he's her boyfriend.

'The Scandal'

Release date: Summer TBA

E J-yong's Untold Scandal is considered one of the best of the many, many adaptations of Dangerous Liaisons made around the world. In this new series, also set in 18th-century Joseon, Lady Cho (Son Ye-jin) makes a bet with her playboy admirer Cho Won (Ji Chang-wook) that he can seduce Hui-yeon (NANA), a widow who has vowed to remain chaste after her husband's death.

The Best Netflix K-Dramas and Korean Reality Shows Coming in Fall 2026

'Culinary Class Wars' season 3

Release date: Fall TBA

Netflix has confirmed that the smash-hit cooking competition Culinary Class Wars will return for a third season with a new format. This time, the chefs will compete in four-person restaurant teams, in "a collective battle for pride, reputation, and survival."

'Dead-End Job'

Release date: Fall TBA

A Killer Paradox director Kim Da-min and Weak Hero creator Han Jun-hee have teamed up on a new mystery-horror-fantasy series. When Hyuk-jun (Alchemy of Souls's Lee Jae-wook) discovers "a strange employment agency offering 'perfect' part-time jobs that pay 50 times the usual hourly wage," he's soon "thrown into a terrifying, hellish workplace with horrors he could’ve never imagined." Rounding out the main cast are Sweet Home's Go Min-si, Pachinko's Kim Min-ha, and A Killer Paradox's Lee Hee-jun.

'Road' (working title)

Release date: Fall TBA

Korea meets Japan in this adaptation of Keisi Edogawa and Kwan Ga Ya's hit web comic Blue Road. Directed by Weak Hero creator Han Jun-hee, the crime series follows a Korean detective (played by Son Suk-ku) and a Japanese detective (Eita Nagayama) as they "track a series of gruesome cross-border murders, characterized by twisted bodies and mysterious dying messages." Also starring are Tastefully Yours's Kim Shin-rok, Beyond Evil's Choi Sung-eun, and Jung Jae-young.

'Take Charge of My Heart'

Release date: Fall TBA

Rom-com queen Chae Soo-bin returns to Netflix with an adaptation of Haebeon's Naver web novel Charge Me Up. Baek Ho-rang (Kim Young-kwang) is a chaebol heir facing power struggles within his company, who lives with an artificial heart. When he meets Na Bo-bae (Chae), a screenwriter with electrical currents coursing through her body, he sees a solution to his dying battery. "Together, they ignite a high-voltage romantic comedy set to send hearts racing," per the description.

'Tantara'

Release date: Fall TBA

The Glory's Song Hye-kyo and Squid Game's Gong Yoo are set to lead this historical K-drama from Our Blues writer Noh Hee-gyoung and Coffee Prince director Lee Yoon-jung (formerly known as Show Business). "Set against the backdrop of the gritty and intense 1960s and 80s Korean entertainment industry, [Tantara] follows the journey of individuals who, despite having little, dreamed of glimmering success and gave it their all," reads the description.

'The Devil's Plan' season 3

Release date: Fall TBA

Netflix's ultimate battle of wits, The Devil's Plan, is confirmed to return for a third season after last year's controversial installment. In the Squid Game-style competition, Korea's smartest celebrities and civilians from various fields face off in sophisticated mental games, with one winner taking away a 250 million won (approximately $172,000) prize.

The Best Netflix K-Dramas and Korean Reality Shows Coming Soon

'All of Us Are Dead'

Release date: 2026 TBA

January 2026 marks four years since All of Us Are Dead became a surprise smash hit, so fans are keeping their fingers crossed that season 2 will finally make it to our screens before 2026 comes to an end. The thriller K-drama began filming new episodes last July, with the surviving students (and even one who was presumed to be dead!) returning to face a new world post-zombie outbreak.

Lovers of twisty, tangly mystery-thriller books will have their work cut out for them in 2026, as the year’s slate of new releases includes a seemingly endless list of whodunits and psychological thrillers just begging to be solved before the final page. There are debuts from up-and-coming writers who just might be poised to pick up Agatha Christie’s crown and new installments from genre royalty like Alice Feeney and Gillian McAllister, plus a new novel co-written by The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue author V.E. Schwab, in her first foray outside the fantasy genre.

So, sharpen your deductive reasoning skills and summon your inner Sherlock Holmes. To kick things off, we’ve lined up the best mystery-thriller books of 2026 (so far). And be sure to return to the scene of the crime—or, you know, this page—regularly, since we’ll be updating the list throughout the year with the twistiest, must-read novels still to come. (If you need even more reading recommendations, be sure to check out our lists of the best romance novels of 2026 and the best mystery-thriller novels of 2025.)

The Best Mystery-Thriller Novels of 2026 So Far

The Best Mystery-Thriller Books Coming Soon

When you're looking to get lost in a book, sometimes you need your reading material to match your mood. With Marie Claire's series "Buy the Book," we do the heavy lifting for you. We're offering curated, highly specific recommendations for whatever you're looking for—whether you're in your feels or hooked on a subgenre trending on #BookTok.

There’s something downright thrilling about an art heist. From the intricate planning to close calls and speeding getaway cars, this upper echelon of thievery has all the necessary ingredients of a propulsive plot. Cue the art-heist novel: Books that capture the blood-pumping drama of invading the exclusive art world, stealing iconic works and (sometimes) getting away with it.

Whether you’ve loved a good heist ever since first watching Ocean’s Eleven or got swept up in the recent Louvre scandal, books about art theft and moody thrillers set in the art world pack in tension and suspense from the first page. Between novels that laude the value of fine art to the occasionally unhinged artist's mind, when you crack open one of these books, you know you’re in for a good time.

Below, check out some of the most captivating art heist novels—beloved and new—to read now.

Blood ties, land, and motherhood are the most important factors in The Abandons, Kurt Sutter’s new Netflix Western series set in the fictional town of Jasper Hollow. Facing off over a land dispute, the latest from the Sons of Anarchy creator (who, we should mention, left the series late in production over creative differences) finds aristocrat and mining mogul Constance Van Ness (Gillian Anderson) in an ugly battle with Fiona Nolan (Lena Headey), a childless woman who has taken in a band of loyal orphans, for the future of their town. But what starts as a business disagreement soon turns both personal and fatal.

Many familiar faces join both Headey and Anderson onscreen for this seven-episode face-off between the two matriarchs in the Wild West—including a few Game of Thrones cast reunions. Before you saddle up for the sprawling drama, find out who’s who in The Abandons on Netflix below.

Lena Headey as Fiona Nolan

Fiona, a devout Irish Catholic who has taken in four orphans to raise as her own, owns a settlement sitting atop silver-rich land. She has an antagonistic relationship with the Van Ness matriarch Constance, who is eager to take over her land.

Lena Headey, 52, is most recognizable for portraying Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones, for which she was nominated for five Emmy Awards and one Golden Globe Award. On TV, she also starred as Sarah Connor in the series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and lent her voice to the animated series Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Headey has also appeared in the films 300, The Brothers Grimm, The Remains of the Day, and Fighting with My Family.

Gillian Anderson as Constance Van Ness

Constance Van Ness is the head of a European aristocratic family who yields power over other families in the small Oregon town. A devoted mother, she springs into action when her eldest son, Willem, goes missing.

Gillian Anderson, 57, is known for her work in both the U.S. and the U.K. A TV stalwart, Anderson has starred on shows like The X-Files, Sex Education, The Crown, The Fall, and more. She has won two Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards for her work on these shows. On film, Anderson has appeared in The Last King of Scotland, Viceroy’s House, and two X-Files films.

Lucas Till as Garret Van Ness

Garret is Constance’s younger son, forced to step up for his family after his older brother Willem goes missing. Like many in the Van Ness clan, he acts with an air of superiority—especially when interacting with the orphans in Fiona’s camp.

Lucas Till, 35, began his career in indie films like Walk the Line before becoming a Disney heartthrob in films like Hannah Montana: The Movie. He also played the romantic lead in the music videos for famous pop stars, like Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me” and Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb” in 2009. Since then, he has starred in the X-Men prequel films as Havok, the title character in the CBS reboot of MacGyver, and gained critical acclaim for playing Bob Zellner in the historical biopic Son of the South.

Aisling Franciosi as Trisha Van Ness

Trisha is Garret’s sister and the most gentle of the Van Ness family. She is a piano aficionado and harbors a secret romance with Elias, one of Fiona’s orphan sons.

Aisling Franciosi, 32, is an Irish actress best known for appearing as Lyanna Stark in Game of Thrones. She also starred in the BBC series The Fall and the TNT drama Legends. In film, she has primarily appeared in horror and psychological thrillers like Speak No Evil, Stopmotion, The Unforgivable, and Home.

Nick Robinson as Elias Teller

Elias Teller is one of the four orphans taken in by Fiona, along with his sister Dahlia. Elias is Fiona’s right-hand man when it comes to their land—a fact that is complicated by his slow-burning relationship with Trisha.

Nick Robinson, 30, rose to fame on the television show Melissa & Joey and the gay romance film Love, Simon. He has appeared on the shows A Teacher and Maid, and in the films Jurassic World, The Kings of Summer, The 5th Wave, and Everything Everything.

Diana Silvers as Dahlia Teller

Dahlia Teller is Elias’s biological sister and another orphan living with Fiona. Her violent encounter with Willem Van Ness in the first episode of the series sets off an even deeper hatred between the two families.

Diana Silvers, 28, began her career on the Hulu thriller series Into the Dark and continued her work in the genre with starring roles in the M. Night Shyamalan film Glass and the Octavia Spencer-led horror movie Ma. Silvers also had a small role in the coming-of-age film Booksmart, and later appeared in the Netflix comedy series Space Force and the Amazon film Birds in Paradise, based on the novel Bright Burning Stars. In recent years, she's also pursued music; she dropped her debut album, the folk record From Another Room, in November 2025.

Lamar Johnson as Albert Mason

Albert Mason is an educated Black man, born free in Philadelphia before being “adopted” into Fiona’s family.

Lamar Johnson, 31, is a Canadian actor and dancer who rose to fame on the dance drama series The Next Step. Johnson starred in the films The Hate U Give, Dark Phoenix, and All the Bright Places. On TV, he appeared on Your Honor and The Last of Us, the latter of which earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.

Natalia del Riego as Lilla Belle

Lilla Belle is one of Fiona’s adopted children, originally of Indigenous descent.

Natalia del Riego, 24, is best known for appearing in the ABC family drama Promised Land and as Rosa Reyes in NCIS: Los Angeles. She also lent her voice to the animated series Velma and Megamind Rules!.

Michiel Huisman as Roache

Xavier Roache is an outlaw hired by Constance to look into Willem’s disappearance. But once he’s under her payroll, she has him attend to some of her other unsavory business requests. According to Tudum, “his shifting allegiances and unpredictable nature make him a wild card in the battle for Jasper Hollow.”

Michiel Huisman, 44, is a Dutch actor best known in the U.S. for playing the heartthrob Daario Naharis on Game of Thrones. He also appeared in the series The Haunting of Hill House and The Flight Attendant, as well as the films Wild and Rebel Moon.

Ryan Hurst as Miles Alderton

Miles is one of Fiona’s peers and the most vocal opponent, fearful that her outspokenness against the Van Nesses will spell ruin for the entire settlement. But Miles is also keeping a few secrets of his own, which come to light near the end of the season and threaten to bring down everything he’s built.

Ryan Hurst, 49, reunites with Kurt Sutter on The Abandons after being a series regular in the acclaimed Sons of Anarchy, where he played Opie Winston. Hurst also appeared in The Walking Dead and Outsiders, and portrayed Gerry Bertier in the popular film Remember the Titans. His other film work includes Saving Private Ryan and Patch Adams, and he is slated to appear in Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated adaptation of The Odyssey next year.

Katelyn Wells as Samara Alderton

Samara is Miles’s meek daughter, targeted by Garret Van Ness once Miles’s past is discovered. In the aftermath, she has to decide who she is loyal to.

Katelyn Wells, 30, is best known for playing Silver on Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia. Before that, she appeared in Anne Without the E and The Bold Type.

Time to grab your nail bats and steel yourself for the Upside Down: Stranger Things season 5 is here! Over three years since season 4 and nine years since it became a cultural phenomenon, the Netflix original series began its final season on Wednesday, November 26, 2025. However, as fans who impatiently logged on to Netflix that morning discovered, the release dates and times for season 5 are a bit complicated.

To celebrate the end of one of its biggest shows, Netflix seems to want Stranger Things season 5 to dominate our holiday viewing schedules. So, fans who planned to, you know, spend time with family and friends on the most festive days of the year, will have to decide between watching the ball drop or watching the people of Hawkins (hopefully) defeat Vecna once and for all.

Read on for everything you need to know about Stranger Things season 5, from what time the episodes drop to how late fans should expect to stay up watching.

When does each episode of 'Stranger Things' season 5 arrive on Netflix?

Netflix will release Stranger Things season 5 in three parts, with each installment pegged to a major U.S. holiday. The first four episodes arrived on November 26, 2025, the day before Thanksgiving, and the next three will hit the streamer on Christmas Day, December 25, 2025.

The super-sized series finale is set to arrive on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2025.

What time does 'Stranger Things' season 5 arrive on Netflix?

Each installment of Stranger Things season 5 will arrive on Netflix at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT on its respective release day. With this primetime scheduling, the final season eschews Netflix's typical practice of dropping new shows at midnight PT on the day of release. (Tudum has a handy countdown clock for anyone who struggles with time zones.)

Here are the full details of Stranger Things season 5's release schedule:

• Volume 1 (Episodes 1-4): November 26, 2025, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT
• Volume 2 (Episodes 5-7): December 25, 2025, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT
• The Finale (Episode 8): December 31, 2025, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT

How long are the 'Stranger Things' season 5 episodes?

Leading up to season 5, the Duffer Brothers have been clear that the final season of Stranger Things will include longer episodes, similar to season 4. In October, Ross Duffer revealed the runtimes for the first four episodes, dispelling rumors that each episode would be at least 90 minutes long.

Here are the confirmed Stranger Things season 5 episode runtimes and titles:

• Chapter One: The Crawl – 1 hour, 8 minutes
• Chapter Two: The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler – 54 minutes
• Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap – 1 hour, 6 minutes
• Chapter Four: Sorcerer – 1 hour, 23 minutes
• Chapter Five: Shock Jock – TBC
• Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz – TBC
• Chapter Seven: The Bridge – TBC
• Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up – 2 hours, 5 minutes

Is the 'Stranger Things' finale going to be in theaters?

Yes! Netflix and the Duffer Brothers are bringing the Stranger Things series finale to select theaters in the U.S. and Canada. The fan screenings will show the final episode in more than 500 theaters on December 31 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, timed to the finale’s global premiere on Netflix at the same time. If you already have NYE plans, additional screenings will also take place throughout the day on January 1.

The full list of theater locations is now available at ST5finale.com.

"We’re beyond excited that fans will have the chance to experience the final episode of Stranger Things in theaters," series creators Matt and Ross Duffer said. "Getting to see it on the big screen, with incredible sound, picture, and a room full of fans, feels like the perfect…way to celebrate the end of this adventure."

What would you do if an infamous real estate tycoon accused of killing his first wife moved in next door? If you’re like Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes), a renowned writer who has receded from public life after the tragic death of her young son, your instinct is to uncover the truth, even if it costs you your sanity.

Over the course of the eight episodes of Netflix’s The Beast in Me, Aggie and Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys) professionally court each other, sussing out what will make the other flinch. As Aggie gets to know Nile under the guise of writing a biography about him, she presses in closer on the skeletons in his closet, threatening to bring down both his real estate empire and his life. But she’s not entirely innocent either; she’s holding a grudge against a young man named Teddy Fenig (Bubba Weiler), whom she blames for the car accident that killed her son—an event that also ended her marriage to Shelley (Natalie Morales), an amateur painter. Nile’s close proximity gives him access to her secrets, weaponizing that information to get what he wants.

By the end of the mystery series, Aggie thinks she has pieced together the truth about Nile’s involvement in his first wife Madison’s disappearance. But two steps ahead, Nile has seemingly already planted evidence that would incriminate Aggie in Teddy’s disappearance. So how does the cat-and-mouse game end? Was Aggie right about Nile’s sinister streak, and does she succeed in bringing him to justice? Read on to find out how The Beast in Me concludes.

Did Nile Jarvis actually kill his wife Madison in 'The Beast in Me?'

For most of the eight-episode thriller series, the jury is out on whether the real estate mogul really killed his late wife, Madison (Leila George). But in the penultimate episode, a flashback to Madison’s final days, we find out that everything exonerating Nile—like support from his former in-laws and his supposed devotion to Madison—was simply him stacking the deck in his favor.

In episode 7, “Ghosts,” we see that Nile did, in fact, murder Madison after Nina (Brittany Snow), a junior gallerist working under Madison, tips him off that his wife is leaking information about his real estate business’s shady practices to the FBI. While Nina didn’t have the best relationship with her boss, her intention wasn’t to have Nina killed; she was acting in her own self-interest because Nile thought she was the mole.

Both Nina and Madison are acutely aware that upsetting Nile would put their life in danger—Madison even goes so far as to beg FBI Agent Abbott (David Lyons) to arrest Nile because she feels her life is in danger. And it turns out, she’s not wrong. Once Nile knows about Madison’s betrayal, he doesn’t hesitate to confront her. The accusatory interaction turns from verbal to physical quickly, and soon, Nile has Madison pinned to the floor as he bashes her head in with a blunt object. Most disturbingly, a smile creeps across Nile’s face as Madison’s blood splatters on his face—almost like he got a thrill out of it.

Is Nile Jarvis punished for killing Madison in 'The Beast in Me?'

Though it was Aggie’s legwork that turned the spotlight onto Nile in a serious way, she needed some help to actually bring him to justice. Just as police are circling Aggie for the murder of Teddy, which Nile sadistically staged in her late son’s bedroom, she arrives at Nina’s gallery to plead for her help. (Nina is now married to Nile, a loose thread that is explained away as a desire to get ahead in her career.) Aggie tells her about the only evidence she has (the truth behind Madison’s suicide note), and initially it seems like Nina is content to live in ignorance—especially as she recently found out she’s pregnant.

But later at home with Nile, she goads him into admitting to both Madison and Teddy’s murders, all the while secretly recording him. She meets Nile after a press conference in relation to his latest real estate development, telling him to check his phone just as the police descend upon him and he’s publicly arrested. The final sequence of the Netflix series notes that he did one final interview with Aggie for her book from jail before being murdered by fellow inmates, organized by his uncle (seeking retribution for Nile’s hand in his father’s fatal stroke).

Did Nile Jarvis kill Teddy Fenig in 'The Beast in Me?'

In the taped confession, Nile admits to also killing Teddy Fenig, the missing boy who was involved in the car accident that killed Aggie’s son Cooper. Teddy’s fate was first discovered by FBI agent Brian Abbott via the files extracted from Nile’s computer mid-season. The files revealed a security video of Teddy tied up and gagged, and held captive in an unknown location. But before Abbott can act on this discovery, Nile kills him.

After murdering Abbott, Nile realizes that Aggie has uncovered the truth about Madison’s disappearance when she texts Abbott’s phone explaining her discovery of the suicide note’s origin. Knowing that she no longer goes into Cooper’s bedroom, Nile and his cronies frame Aggie by staging the room as the place where Teddy was held captive and ultimately died.

Where do Aggie and her estranged ex-wife, Shelley, end up at the end of 'The Beast in Me?'

The finale gives Aggie some much-needed personal closure. Though Nile’s methods were extreme, his interference in her life forced her to reckon with the role she played in Cooper’s death—that is, that she was distracted while driving, prioritizing an interview for her work instead of focusing on the road. For so long, she had scapegoated Teddy as the singular force behind the greatest tragedy in her life, and this new realization also helps her thread the needle for the conclusion of her Nile Jarvis biography.

The series ends with Aggie reading an excerpt from the book at her book launch, acknowledging the monsters that can live in all of us. Her ex-wife, Shelley, is there to support her with a new partner, and the former couple seems to be happy for each other, even though their lives are no longer intertwined.

In the opening moments of All Her Fault, Chicago businesswoman Marissa Irvine (Sarah Snook) goes to pick up her 5-year-old son, Milo, from a playdate—only to find out he was never there, and the mom she thought she’d been texting with, Jenny Kaminski (Dakota Fanning), has no idea what she’s talking about. That nightmare scenario kicks off a frantic search for the young boy, unearthing more than a few shocking secrets.

Based on the thriller novel of the same name by Andrea Mara, All Her Fault has surprises at every turn as it unravels the mystery of who took Milo and why. The must-watch series also tackles the expectations put upon working mothers, as the media and others around Marissa and Jenny—whose nanny, Carrie Finch (Sophia Lillis), quickly becomes a prime suspect in the case—question whether what happened is, well, all their fault.

The twisty Peacock thriller, which premiered on November 6, takes some unexpected turns throughout its eight episodes. But how does it all end? Read on as we break down all the big reveals at the end of All Her Fault.

Why does Carrie kidnap Milo in 'All Her Fault?'

Early on, it’s revealed that Carrie has been fixating on Milo (Duke McCloud), even going as far as to create a fake identity and get a job with Jenny as a nanny to her son, Jacob (Tayden Jax Ryan), to get close to him. So it’s never a question of if Carrie abducted Milo—it’s why.

By the end of the series, we have a motive. Carrie, whose real name is Josephine “Josie” Murphy, was pregnant with her own son as a teenager, but the baby was tragically killed in a car crash as they were leaving the hospital. Carrie becomes convinced that Milo is actually her son, and plots with her ex-boyfriend and baby’s father, Kyle Smit (Dominic Masterson), recently released from prison after serving time on a drug-trafficking charge, and her bookie dad, Rob Murphy (Erroll Shand), to abduct him. Marissa had never coordinated a playdate with Jenny before, so she didn’t realize she wasn’t actually texting with Jenny, and the address she was given for pickup wasn’t Jenny’s home. And because Carrie was already a familiar face to Milo—she and Jacob would stop for milkshakes with Milo and his nanny, Ana (Kartiah Vergara), regularly after school—he wasn’t alarmed when she picked him up from school.

But is Milo actually Carrie’s son in 'All Her Fault?'

Yes. When Carrie/Josie tagged along with her father to confront Marissa’s friend and business partner, Colin Dobbs (Jay Ellis), a gambling addict who had relapsed and owed him money, she sees and then briefly speaks with Milo, which is what sparks her plot to get him back.

It’s eventually revealed that Marissa, her husband, Peter (Jake Lacy), and their newborn were involved in that same car wreck as Carrie six years ago—in fact, Marissa and Carrie gave birth to their sons on the same day. In the aftermath of the accident, while the two women were both unconscious, Peter realized that their son had been killed and, thinking Carrie had also perished, switched the babies. Marissa, meanwhile, believed the other mother in the crash had died by suicide after the death of her child, and so it didn’t occur to her that the accident could have had anything to do with Milo’s present-day disappearance.

Detective Alcaras (Michael Peña), one of the cops investigating Milo’s disappearance, also comes to believe Carrie and Milo are related once he learns that they both have synesthesia, a neurological condition in which sensory information can overlap (such as words having tastes or sounds having colors). It’s apparently rare, as he discovers while working on the case, and is often inherited.

What happens to Milo in 'All Her Fault?'

After Carrie collects Milo from school (telling him they’re going on “vacation”), she dyes his distinctive blonde hair darker and hides out with him and Kyle at a rented lake house. But when the cops release a photo of Kyle as a potential suspect in Milo’s disappearance—captured from surveillance footage at the Chicago Marathon, where Carrie had arranged for Kyle to see Milo for himself—Rob considers him burned and kills him, dumping his body in the lake.

Carrie and Milo then move to a motel, but while Carrie is out getting Milo a cake for his 6th birthday, Rob meets with Peter for a ransom handoff, which he coordinated without telling Marissa or the detectives. Rob remarks that his daughter thinks Milo is her son, and then, when his back is turned, Peter strikes him with a lamp, killing him. He then finds Milo hiding in a closet and places him in the trunk of a car that he leaves near a police station, ensuring that he’ll be found.

This all means Milo is returned home to his parents unharmed. However, it doesn't stop the ripple effects that were sparked by his disappearance, which go far beyond the vitriol thrown around in the court of public opinion. (Not only did the tabloids speculate that Marissa had fabricated the incident to try to get money to save her wealth management firm, but they also alleged that Jenny employed a nanny because she was more concerned about partying than taking care of her own son.)

What happens to Carrie at the end of 'All Her Fault?'

After Milo is safely returned, Carrie goes to the Irvines’s home with a gun. After Colin attempts to get the gun away from her, she accidentally shoots and kills him in the struggle. She then tells Marissa that she hasn’t come to take Milo again, but to reveal her true identity as Josephine Murphy, and to warn her about Peter.

As she’s about to play a recording from a cell phone that is presumably to show Peter’s true colors, Peter tackles her, and she’s shot and killed with her own gun. Peter swears it was in self-defense, but Marissa fears he was trying to prevent Carrie from sharing what she knew about him.

Marissa does listen to the recording, which documents what happened in the motel room. Peter then confesses that he switched their dead son for Carrie’s living one the night of the car wreck, and Marissa finally understands the full picture of who she’s married and what he’s capable of. She’s afraid of what he’ll do if she goes to the police, and that Milo could be taken away if the truth gets out.

What happens to Peter at the end of 'All Her Fault?'

Milo’s disappearance unlocks an entire host of Peter Irvine’s secrets, not just limited to what he did on the night of that car crash six years earlier. It also comes out that Peter lied about his involvement in a childhood accident that left his younger brother, Brian (Daniel Monks), disabled, and let their sister, Lia (Abby Elliott), believe it was her fault—permanently changing their relationship and making her feel the guilt of it for all these years. He also lied to his brother about not being a candidate for a spinal surgery that could have improved his quality of life, because he enjoyed the control he got from being needed by his siblings.

A few weeks after the standoff at the house, Marissa takes matters into her own hands. When everyone gathers together for Colin’s funeral, Peter suffers a severe allergic reaction after Marissa kisses him. Marissa, who is well aware of Peter’s soy allergy, had seemingly eaten something without checking the dietary labels. Though she is normally very careful to check the ingredients of everything, she claims to have forgotten in this instance, due to how stretched she’s been mentally. Peter goes to grab an EpiPen from his jacket, but it’s expired, which is, again, something Marissa has always managed diligently. She sends Lia to call 911 and grab an emergency kit from their car, but it’s not in its usual place, and it’ll take time for the ambulance to arrive.

A flashback reveals that she orchestrated everything, grabbing an expired pen from a home disposal container and removing the kit from the car. As Peter dies, he does so knowing Marissa did this on purpose.

How does 'All Her Fault' end?

At the end of the final episode, Detective Alcaras and his partner investigate the circumstances around Peter’s death. They ask Lia about the food labels at the wake and if she saw Marissa check them before eating. Remembering how Peter treated her and Brian, Lia chooses to cover for her and implies that it was an accident.

Later, he goes to Marissa and reveals what he knows about synesthesia, the condition that Carrie had, and, because it can be inherited, Milo does too. He then explains that he knows what Peter did, and that he’s “fine” with the case being closed now. The series then ends with Marissa and Jenny sharing a calm moment together while their sons play.

Netflix's hit political drama The Diplomat is in large part a show about the complicated marriage between Kate (Keri Russell) and Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell), but that doesn't mean our heroine Kate has no other love interests. For the show's first two seasons, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. had a simmering flirtation with the British Foreign Secretary (David Gyasi). In season 3, which premiered on October 16, a newly-separated Kate finally gets to explore a romance with a Brit...but it's not Dennison.

Enter Callum Ellis, an enigmatic new hottie played by Irish actor Aidan Turner. Introduced as a British bird-watcher, it soon becomes clear that Callum is a spy and negotiator whose relationship with Kate goes beyond professional. Though the season 3 finale leaves Kate's romantic prospects up in the air, episode 7 makes it clear that Hal has some serious competition for Kate's heart.

For any new Kallum shippers out there, it's time to learn more about Aidan Turner, including what Netflix show to check out next to get more of the dashing star.

Aidan Turner is a 42-year-old Irish actor and former ballroom dancer.

Aidan Turner, who grew up in the suburbs of Dublin, Ireland, has experience in a different sector of the performing arts. He was a competitive ballroom dancer as a teenager, who once placed in the Irish National Championships. After graduating high school, he briefly worked with his father as an apprentice electrician.

In 2015, Turner recalled how he got his start in acting during an interview with the Irish Independent. "I saw a notice up in Dublin’s Gaiety School of Acting. I didn’t know anything about this world at all," he said. "I felt intimidated from the get-go and thought: That’s just right for me. The sense of potential failure is a buzz."

Aidan Turner is best known for starring in 'Poldark' (which just hit Netflix).

After graduating from acting school in 2004, Turner mostly did stage roles before making his television debut in an uncredited role on The Tudors in 2007. His breakout projects included playing a vampire on the British series Being Human from 2009 to 2012, starring as werewolf Luke Garroway in the 2013 adaptation of The Mortal Instruments, and playing dwarf Kili in The Hobbit film trilogy.

In 2015, Turner landed his first leading television role in the BBC period drama Poldark, playing the titular British soldier. The five-season series, which arrived on Netflix earlier this month, followed a sprawling family dealing with a rapidly-changing society in the wake of the American Revolutionary War.

After Poldark, Turner took up another historical role, playing the titular character in an Italian series about famed inventor and artist Leonardo Da Vinci. Last year, he starred alongside David Tennant and Alex Hassell in Hulu's Jilly Cooper adaptation Rivals (which has been renewed for a second season).

Aidan Turner is married to a 'Succession' and 'We Were Liars' star.

In August 2020, Turner married actress Caitlin FitzGerald, 43, in a private ceremony in Rome. FitzGerald's best known for starring in shows like Masters of Sex, Sweetbitter, Succession, and We Were Liars. The couple reportedly met while filming the 2018 movie The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot, and dated for three years. In January 2022, they welcomed their first child.

Though the pair are notoriously private—neither of them have public Instagrams—Turner has occasionally opened up about his family life in interviews. Last year, he told Red Magazine about how he and FitzGerald balance their busy careers by keeping an "open dialogue" on who takes on the next project.

"I mean, our lives have changed a lot and not a lot at the same time, if you know what I mean," he told the outlet. "We’re still both working. We’re still both lucky that way. We can keep working and keep our family life together, and everything is just great and happy."

The emotional heart of Netflix's must-watch series The Diplomat is the fiery, complicated relationship between U.S. Ambassador Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) and her morally dubious husband Hal (Rufus Sewell). By the end of its third installment, which showed both the couple's beginning and their brief separation (in the wake of Hal's new role as Vice President), Kate returns to her husband and re-commits herself as his partner-in-crime. But that's before a major betrayal involving President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) changes everything.

With all episodes of season 3 released in fall 2025, viewers may leave their binges wondering whether Kate and Hal's relationship will ever be the same (and, you know, whether World War III is on the horizon). Below, we're keeping track of everything we know about The Diplomat's future so far. (If you're looking for a full breakdown of The Diplomat season 3's ending, we've got you covered.)

Has 'The Diplomat' been renewed for season 4?

Yes! Netflix announced the political thriller's early renewal back in May 2025, five months before season 3 arrived on the platform. The happy news was revealed during the streamer's Upfront presentation in New York City, as reported by Variety.

When will 'The Diplomat' season 4 be released?

Netflix has not announced a release date for The Diplomat season 4 yet; however, production is underway. Shortly after the season 3 release, Tudum revealed that filming was scheduled to begin in fall 2025. According to What's on Netflix (which shared behind-the-scenes photos from the set in early April!), production remains ongoing until June.

Showrunner Debora Cahn shared an update with Deadline in late December 2025, saying filming was "going great." She said, "We’re in the middle of filming it and in the middle of writing it, and we’re at that point where it seems completely impossible that we will figure out how to land this plane. But that’s always how it feels at this point. So, yeah, now at least we were a couple seasons in, I’m at least starting to recognize that feeling and know that that’s probably a healthy part of the process."

Netflix is reportedly eyeing a 2026 release date for season 4, so with production going according to plan, the very end of the year may be feasible. After all, The Diplomat has been one of the rare Netflix series to debut a new season every year, with season 1 arriving in April 2023, season 2 in October 2024, and season 3 in October 2025.

Which of the cast members will return for 'The Diplomat' season 4?

Diplomat fans, prepare to see a lot more of the Penns! Netflix has revealed that Allison Janney (President Grace Penn) and Bradley Whitford (Todd Penn) have been upped to series regulars for season 4. After season 3's ending cliffhanger—and the one cute domestic scene we got with the First Couple—we're excited to see more of the West Wing alums!

It should come as no surprise that their presence becomes contentious for other characters...which should be all the more fun for fans. Whitford teased what viewers can expect about his arc in a March 2026 interview with Deadline, saying, "Either my character doesn’t want to be there, or the other characters don’t want my character to be there." Sounds exactly like the drama we want from The Diplomat!

In addition to Janney and Whitford, all of the main cast will return for The Diplomat season 4, including Keri Russell (Kate Wyler), Rufus Sewell (Hal Wyler), Ato Essandoh (Stuart Hayford), Ali Ahn (Eidra Park), David Gyasi (Austin Dennison), Rory Kinnear (Nicol Trowbridge), and Nana Mensah (Billie Appiah).

Mensah will be featured even more prominently. Shortly after season 3's release, Deadline reported that Mensah has been upped from recurring to a series regular in the forthcoming installment. It makes sense, considering the White House Chief of Staff works alongside President Grace Penn, whom she previously tried to oust from her Vice Presidency role, and we'll be seeing more of Penn going forward. We'll have to wait and see what kind of moves she's making behind the scenes next.

Meanwhile, it's yet to be seen whether Poldark star Aidan Turner and The Pitt alum Tracy Ifeachor will return in their roles as Callum Ellis and Thema, respectively.

What will 'The Diplomat' season 4 be about?

The Diplomat's season 3 finale ends with some very undiplomatic maneuvering from the menacing dream team of U.S. President Grace Penn and V.P. Hal Wyler. After Trowbridge accepts Kate's compromise and agrees to bury the Poseidon, a Russian "doomsday weapon" off the coast of England, the ecstatic ambassador (who spent episode 7 realizing that she may have been blaming Hal for her own baggage) declares that she wants to join Hal in D.C. and give their partnership another try. Soon after, Callum lets Kate know that the warhead has gone mysteriously missing. All it takes is some paranoid prodding from Todd for her to connect the dots: Grace and Hal stole the Poseidon, which will definitely piss off the U.K. and Russia. Hal makes Kate vow to keep her mouth shut, and viewers are left wondering what our betrayed heroine will do next.

Speaking to Tudum, creator Deborah Cahn was quite ominous while teasing what's next for the series. When asked if viewers should be concerned for what comes next, she answered, "They should be worried. There’s plenty to worry about...Hal and Grace are playing with matches in somebody else’s house. The repercussions are not going to only land on America—they’re going to land on another country. It’s really going to make a lot of people unhappy."

Based on that, it sounds like season 4 would follow Kate as she deals with both Hal's ethical betrayal and the prospect that two loose cannons are running America. (Remember, Grace was behind the HMS Courageous explosion, and Hal is, well, Hal.) "[They] are two really powerful, dynamic people who are feeding off of each other’s intellect and intensity," Cahn added. "When two people are pushing the gas at the same time and nobody’s got their foot on the brake—it’s scary."

For three seasons, the Keri Russell-starring political thriller The Diplomat has contended with a universe in which the Americans have double-crossed their closest allies, the U.K., through the actions of Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney). In season 3, the fallout from that betrayal becomes more threatening after President Rayburn (Michael McKean) dies suddenly, and Penn is promoted to the highest office. Despite some officials knowing the truth, including Russell’s Kate Wyler and her husband Hal (Rufus Sewell)—both career diplomats—their quests for political gain are also part of the equation.

The Netflix hit’s latest season, which premiered on October 16, 2025, tests the Wyler marriage when Hal is appointed to the Vice Presidency over Kate, and again when Kate discovers his collusion with Penn during a heated international negotiation over a deadly weapon called the Poseidon in the finale. Does their marriage survive the acts of betrayal, and can the alliance between the U.S. and the U.K. ever recover? Read on to find out how season 3 of The Diplomat ends, and how it sets up its already confirmed fourth season.

Is President Penn able to reinstate the alliance between the United States and the U.K. at the end of 'The Diplomat' season 3?

While the U.K. Prime Minister Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) might believe that he landed on neutral ground with the Americans, the final moments of The Diplomat season 3 suggest something different. Looming over the two governments are the claims pinning the British warship attack on the late President Rayburn (which are false, as President Penn was the true mastermind) and Kate’s intelligence around a Russian submarine carrying a large-scale weapon called the Poseidon. If it detonates, it threatens to obliterate a large portion of the country. The only problem is that the trust between the two countries is so weak that the Prime Minister doesn’t believe the President. As the link between the two countries, Kate is determined to find a solution.

Initially, she convinces her fellow Ambassador and new lover, Callum Ellis (Aidan Turner), to take the fall, as he’s in good graces with the Prime Minister and holds the key to the intelligence. He initially refuses to give up his career and his source, but eventually agrees. However, Hal vehemently opposes the idea, forcing Kate to suggest something different. Using American subs stationed nearby, the government will send a drone to take photos of the submarine to prove its existence.

In the board room, things get heated when the Prime Minister doesn’t believe the photos are real and questions why he should accept help from the U.S., which has already crossed them once. Hal encourages Kate to use her sway over Prime Minister Trowbridge to convince him to “Runit Dome,” referencing a previous mission in which they buried a similarly threatening weapon in concrete. He agrees and shakes hands with President Penn. But the high doesn’t last long—Callum’s intelligence about the dropped radiation levels tips Kate off to a plan that Hal and Grace concocted without her. They took the “genocidal weapon” for themselves, setting up an even larger-scale conflict for season 4 of the Netflix original.

Does Kate and Hal’s marriage survive 'The Diplomat' season 3?

Much of the third season of the political thriller contends with former VP and now-President Grace Penn’s decision to promote Hal Wyler to the Vice Presidency rather than his wife Kate. The fallout from this rocks their marriage, which they decide to dissolve behind closed doors. Kate agrees to be the Second Lady publicly while they live separate lives in private, with Hal in Washington and Kate in the U.K.

During this private separation, Kate begins seeing other colleagues. She and Foreign Secretary Dennison (David Gyasi) attempt to hook up before he pulls away citing bad timing, and months later Kate has moved on to a fellow Ambassador, Callum Ellis. Hal is acutely aware of Kate’s extracurricular relationships and makes a few digs at them even though he maintains that he just wants her to be happy. When Kate finally takes him at his word, she realizes she wants to make things work, and she makes a gesture to save their union: She asks Hal’s chief of staff, Billie (Nana Mensah), to find a seat for her on Air Force Two back to Washington and apologizes to Hal.

Their seemingly united front comes in handy while negotiating with the Prime Minister regarding the Poseidon. However, it’s almost immediately called into question again when Kate realizes that Hal and Grace instructed the Navy to take the weapon for American use.

Do other White House staff know what’s going on in 'The Diplomat' season 3?

Most of what happens in Kate’s world is on a need-to-know basis, which means many of her staffers and close confidants are often left in the dark. When the plot to blame the British aircraft attack on the late President Rayburn instead of the British campaign manager Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie) comes to light, Stuart (Ato Essandoh), the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in London, has a crisis of conscience. He can’t fathom working for a government whose values don’t align with his own. CIA Station Chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) convinces him that if he leaves on those terms, he’ll be unemployable elsewhere. But her motives aren’t entirely about his job prospects—when she finally tells him she wants him to stay, she climbs into his lap and makes out with him.

Does Grace Penn's husband Todd trust Hal in 'The Diplomat' season 3?

Bradley Whitford joins the cast opposite his West Wing colleague Allison Janney as Todd, the husband of the President. He appears sparingly until the end of the season (and will be a series regular in season 4), when he begins showing signs of jealousy towards Hal and his closeness to his wife, mostly spurred on by his simultaneously “alive and dead” career as a biologist. Kate is convinced that Hal and Grace have a good working relationship, but after she uncovers their plot to steal the Poseidon, she finds herself listening to Todd’s words a bit more closely. “Nothing to worry about, right?” he says rhetorically. And while they probably aren’t having an affair, it’s clear that their partnership can’t be trusted.

This article contains discussions of kidnapping, abuse, and murder.

In the television landscape today, there’s no shortage of serialized true crime stories—many of them from creator and writer Ryan Murphy. Within his Netflix deal, Murphy has already covered the stories of Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers, and when his Monster franchise returns on October 3, it will explore the 1950s Wisconsin-based serial killer Ed Gein. Also known as the Butcher of Plainfield, the notorious “bodysnatcher” and murderer will be played by Charlie Hunnam.

Unlike previous Monster installments, the Ed Gein version will also explore the killer’s infamy and depiction in horror films, with fictionalized versions of filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and Tobe Hooper included in the series. Read on to find out who will be embodying these famous names and the other major characters in Gein’s life in the cast of Monster: The Ed Gein Story.

Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein

Ed Gein was a convicted serial killer from Wisconsin, also known as the Butcher of Plainfield. Active during the 1950s, Gein’s heinous crimes inspired the novel and film adaptation Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Before leading Netflix's latest true crime series, Charlie Hunnam, 45, rose to fame for his main role in Sons of Anarchy. He has also appeared on TV shows like Queer as Folk, Undeclared, and the adaptation of Shantaram. His film roles include The Lost City of Z, Triple Frontier, and Pacific Rim.

Laurie Metcalf as Augusta Gein

Augusta was Ed Gein's mother, described as “controlling, puritanical, fervently religious, and domineering.” Ed eventually became obsessed with his mother, and their relationship was the crux of Psycho.

Laurie Metcalf, 70, is a decorated theater legend and known for her work on TV shows such as Roseanne, 3rd Rock From the Sun, and Getting On. She received acclaim and awards attention for her role in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, and appeared in other films, including JFK, Georgia Rule, and Scream 2.

Suzanna Son as Adelina

Adeline Watkins was a woman allegedly romantically involved with Gein for 20 years, who defended him even after his convictions. Watkins later refuted the articles, claiming her words were taken out of context.

Suzanna Son, 29, made her film debut in 2021 in the Sean Baker film Red Rocket. Following her breakout, she starred in the HBO series The Idol as well as the Netflix film Fear Street: Prom Queen.

Tom Hollander as Alfred Hitchcock

Tom Hollander plays Alfred Hitchcock, an acclaimed English film director who directed the horror film Psycho, which is based on Gein’s story. He was known as the “Master of Suspense” for his work on influential noirs and thrillers, from Rear Window to Vertigo to North by Northwest. He garnered a whopping 46 Oscar nominations throughout his career, taking home six trophies, but never won Best Director, even though he was nominated in the category five times.

You might recognize Hollander, 58, from his scene-stealing role on season 2 of The White Lotus, but the British actor’s career dates back to the 1980s. He began on stage before transitioning to the screen with roles in both TV and film, including Gosford Park, Pride & Prejudice, Pirates of the Caribbean, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, in which he played the titular famed author Truman Capote, and more.

Vicky Krieps as Isle Koch

Ilse Koch was a Nazi war criminal nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald.” She and her husband, Karl-Otto Koch, made lampshades from human skin from the concentration camps. It is believed that Gein was influenced by the Kochs to make a lampshade from the skin of one of his victims.

Vicky Krieps, 41, broke out via the 2017 Paul Thomas Anderson film Phantom Thread. She has also appeared in films like Hanna, Old, and Corsage—the latter of which earned her a European Film Award for Best Actress. Later this year, she will appear in the ensemble cast of the Jim Jarmusch film Father Mother Sister Brother.

Olivia Williams as Alma Reville

Alma Reville was Hitchcock’s wife and a screenwriter and film editor in her own right. She was known for her attention to detail, famously noticing Janet Leigh swallowing after her character dies in Psycho, forcing an alteration to the negative.

Olivia Williams, 57, rose to fame in the 1997 British television film Emma. She has starred in films like The Postman, Rushmore, The Sixth Sense, An Education, Anna Karenina, and more. More recently, she played Camilla Parker Bowles in the final seasons of The Crown.

Lesley Manville as Bernice Worden

Bernice Worden was Ed Gein's final victim, whom he killed in November 1957. She was a local hardware store owner, and her son, a deputy, helped connect the dots to Gein.

Lesley Manville, 69, is an acclaimed British actress across stage and screen. She has a notable collaboration with director Mike Leigh, having appeared in eight of his films, including Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvy, and Vera Drake. Her performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread earned her Academy Award and British Academy Film Award nominations. Manville’s other film appearances include Queer, Maleficent, and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, and she has also appeared on TV shows like The Crown, Citadel, and Disclaimer.

Joey Pollari as Anthony Perkins

Anthony Perkins was an actor best known for his role as Norman Bates in Psycho. He was a major star during the Old Hollywood era, acting opposite names like Audrey Hepburn, and held roles in films like The Trial and Murder on the Orient Express. He tragically was forced to hide his sexuality from his public life and died of AIDS-related complications in the ‘90s. His son, Osgood Perkins, carries on his legacy by writing/directing horror films today (many of which are inspired by his relationships with his family, including Longlegs, The Monkey, and The Blackcoat’s Daughter).

Joey Pollari, 31, is best known for his roles on American Crime and the film Love, Simon. Pollari has also appeared on the TV shows SEAL Team and Sugar, as well as LGBTQ+ films like The Obituary of Tunde Johnson and Things Like This.

Charlie Hall as Deputy Frank Worden

Deputy Worden was the son of Bernice Worden, who was Gein’s final victim. The Deputy became suspicious of Gein and played a key role in the investigation.

Charlie Hall, 28, has appeared in popular TV shows like Bel-Air, Single Drunk Female, Sex Lives of College Girls, and Love, Victor. This is his second collaboration with Ryan Murphy after appearing in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, in which he played Erik’s best friend Craig. The son of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall, he also briefly appeared in his mom’s hit comedy Veep.

Tyler Jacob Moore as Sheriff Schley

Not much is known about Sheriff Schley except that “he was infamously photographed with Gein after he confessed to murdering two women and robbing graves,” according to PEOPLE. In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Moore called the real Sheriff Schley “a very real, & genuinely good & decent man.”

Tyler Jacob Moore, 42, is best known for playing Tony Markovich on Shameless and Prince Hans in Once Upon a Time. He also appeared in Perry Mason, Ride, Paradise, and SEAL Team.

Addison Rae as Evelyn

Evelyn Hartley was a 14 year-old American teenager who mysteriously disappeared in 1953 in LaCrosse County, Wisconsin. Hartley’s disappearance was never solved.

Addison Rae, 24, rose to fame on TikTok before becoming an actress and musician. She starred in the films He’s All That and Thanksgiving, while her single “Diet Pepsi” went platinum. Earlier this year, she dropped her debut album, Addison, to acclaim and is now out on tour to support it.

Will Brill as Tobe Hooper

Tobe Hooper was an American filmmaker best known for directing and co-writing the original 1974 version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, one of the first slasher films and most influential horror films in history, which was loosely inspired by Ed Gein.

Will Brill, 39, is best known for his stage career. On Broadway, he appeared in the reimagined 75th-anniversary revival of Oklahoma! and Stereophonic, for which he won a Tony Award. On TV, he acted on The OA, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Fellow Travelers, and he also recently appeared in the Darren Aronofsky film Caught Stealing.

Mimi Kennedy as Mildred Newman

Mildred Newman was a psychologist known for her controversial views on the extremely harmful practice of conversion therapy, which she performed on actor Anthony Perkins to “cure” his homosexuality.

Mimi Kennedy, 77, rose to fame on the sitcoms Dharma & Greg and Mom. Her film credits include Erin Brockovich, Midnight in Paris, and The Five-Year Engagement.