


Secrets We Keep is a Danish mystery thriller limited series that has had viewers thoroughly engrossed since it premiered on Netflix last week.
Throughout its six gripping episodes, Secrets We Keep follows wealthy executive Cecilie (Marie Bach Hansen) as she searches for answers behind the sudden disappearance of her neighbors’ au pair, Ruby (Donna Levkovski).
Cecilie lives with her lawyer husband, Mike (Simon Sears), their preteen son, Viggo (Lukas Zuperka), young daughter Vera (Asta Tvilling Jensen), and family au pair, Angel (Excel Busano), in an extremely affluent neighborhood just outside of Copenhagen, Denmark. Right next door live husband and wife Rasmus (Lars Ranthe) and Katarina (Danica Curcic), with their teenage son, Oscar (Frode Bilde Rønsholt). The neighbors are all friends, making for a very comfortable and convenient living situation for these two rich families.
Rasmus and Katarina’s au pair is Ruby, Angel’s close friend, who is also from the Philippines. But what seems like the perfect neighborly situation soon turns into a nightmare when Ruby vanishes, launching Cecilie on a quest to unravel this missing person’s case that will ultimately shatter her worldview and change her life forever.

Here’s a full, spoiler-filled breakdown of the ending to Secrets We Keep on Netflix.
Over the course of Secrets We Keep, Ruby is found dead at a marina, and then confirmed by the coroner to have been five to eight weeks pregnant at the time. Local police officer Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore) went to Ruby’s old church and got the pastor to reveal Ruby’s confession that the pregnancy was a result of rape, but that her devout Christianity convinced her not to go through with an abortion. Still unsure as to Ruby’s cause of death, the police then test her corpse in hopes of finding the rapist’s DNA, and from there, a lead.
Earlier in the series, Cecilie found a pregnancy test on the ground where she saw Ruby convertly throw something away just a day before the latter’s disappearance. Cecilie then begins to suspect Rasmus as the potential father, and then even comes to suspect her own husband, Mike, due to some suspicious evidence suggesting that he may have taken Ruby to a luxury hotel in the area, as well as a prior rape charge in his past. But the DNA test reveals that Mike is not a match and Rasmus is a 24.1% match, meaning that Ruby’s child could only have been fathered by Rasmus’s son, Oscar.

Before the results of the DNA test, Ruby’s death was conjectured to be a suicide committed after realizing she was pregnant, since there was no evidence of murder. But Ruby’s deep commitment to her faith convinces Aicha that she would not go against her religion by taking her own life. After Oscar is revealed as the father, we also learn that he saw Ruby more as his possession than as a person. He would film and touch her without her consent and order her around, knowing that she couldn’t do anything to retaliate due to his family’s wealth and power over her.
When Oscar gets in trouble for secretly filming a fellow student at school, it also comes to light that he filmed and circulated a naked video of Ruby, but had previously falsely claimed that it was Viggo who was the culprit of the au pair video. Multiple school parents then demand Oscar’s expulsion, heightening tensions that come to a head in the woods near his home, where Oscar chases down Viggo and threatens the younger boy into staying silent about a video that he showed him.
Viggo eventually cracks and confesses to his mother that Oscar made a video of himself raping Ruby. But after Cecilie takes this information to the police, Oscar’s seized devices lack any evidence of this video due to Katarina erasing the incriminating evidence ahead of time. Without any evidence besides Viggo’s word, Oscar can’t be held responsible in a court of law. Although Oscar even directly admits to Cecilie that he raped and abused Ruby, Mike and Rasmus (the former is also the latter’s lawyer) try to manipulate both the case and Cecilie, convincing her that with the lack of evidence, it isn’t worth it to put Viggo on the stand. Aicha wants to pursue the case and continue to put pressure on Rasmus and Katarina, but Cecilie ultimately decides not to move forward with the case in an attempt to protect Viggo.
Oscar ends up getting off without any charges or disciplinary action besides being transferred to a boarding school, and Ruby’s death is deemed suicide. To make matters even worse, Mike and Rasmus falsely claim that Ruby was the one who pursued and came onto Oscar, a minor, and that her guilt drove her to take her own life.
Cecilie is disturbed to see her own husband’s complicity, but also seems to lack the strength to do what’s right. In a misguided (and perhaps “too little too late”) attempt to step up as a mother and prevent any further scandals, she suddenly fires Angel and sends her back to the Philippines with some extra money, which Angel calls out as a self-serving decision made because of her friend’s rape and murder.

The finale’s last exchange between Cecilie and Katarina leaves both Cecilie and the viewers with the impression that Katarina was the one who ultimately killed Ruby in a warped effort to save her son from being caught for his own terrible crime. Standing on the pier at the edge of her luxurious property, Katarina whispers, “Those men…they think everything sorts itself out.” Her words, as well as the sly smirk on her face before walking back to Rasmus and Mike, all but admit to the crime without saying it aloud.
Cecilie is left stunned on the edge alone, contemplating whether she should keep this to herself to preserve her family and neighbors’ lives and reputation, or if she should tell Aicha everything, blowing up her own privileged life in the process. It’s up to us to imagine what she does next as the camera zooms out on the picturesque landscape before cutting to the end credits.
Secrets We Keep is currently streaming on Netflix.