If you were confused by the final scene in Netflix’s The Secret Woman, you’re not alone. Despite solving all of the mysteries that come before it, that fourth-wall-breaking moment is a little jarring, but thankfully the book it’s based on gives us a clearer picture. Most of The Secret Woman revolves around Louise Anderson (Natalie Madueño), a woman with amnesia who has spent years living in Norway with her fiancé Joachim (Pål Sverre Hagen), with no memory of anything that happened before she met him. Things change when she receives an unexpected visit from someone in Denmark. She goes looking for answers, discovering that her real name is Helene Söderberg and she’s married to businessman Edmund (Claes Bang). Even more surprising? She has a young son named Alexander. When she’s reunited with her family, things only get more complicated from there. While Edmund initially appears to be a devastated husband who has finally found his missing wife, Helene gradually realises there was a very good reason she ran away from him. Her memories also begin returning in flashes, particularly after she stops taking the medication Edmund has been giving her. Eventually, Helene and Joachim are able to figure out what’s really been going on: her family’s shipping empire was actually being used for human trafficking. Her father Aksel (Lars Simonsen) had learned what was happening too and wanted to expose it, only for Edmund’s mother Caroline (Stina Ekblad) to kill him by pushing him down the stairs. Helene had meanwhile been working with the real Louise Andersen, who had gathered evidence of the trafficking operation. When Edmund discovered what the pair were doing, he pursued them as they tried to escape and hit Louise with his car, killing her. While Helene escaped by jumping from a bridge onto a cargo ship below, the trauma left her with amnesia. With Louise’s belongings in her possession, she eventually began an entirely new life believing that she was Louise. By the time we reach the ending, Helene has already remembered a significant amount of what happened to her. But the unusual final scene still leaves part of this up for debate. The Secret Woman ending explained Credit: Netflix After the truth comes out, Edmund is arrested and Helene returns to the life she built while she had amnesia, heading back to Norway with Joachim – only this time she brings Alexander with her. In the final scene, the three are swimming together when Helene casually remembers that Alexander has always loved the water. Confused, he asks, “Can you remember now?” Helene continues looking at the broken compact mirror that helped trigger her flashes of memories earlier on in the film. She then says, “A few things, yes,” before turning and looking directly into the camera. At this stage, the music turns ominous for a second. The screen then turns to black and the film ends. It’s a strange way to wrap up what should otherwise be a fairly happy scene, and the movie never tells us what “some things” means. Has Helene now recovered all of her memories? Is she referring to the fact that the mirror helped her to remember what she needed to know? Or did she actually know this whole time? It’s left some viewers confused too, with one Redditor writing, “The line about swimming doesn’t really connect to anything we saw before, unless I missed some flashback or something. The book probably handled it better, or at least made it feel less random.” Another wrote, “I’ve been wondering the same thing about the ending. It’s like they were hinting that she didn’t really have amnesia but then the whole movie wouldn’t make sense.” Well, this is where the original book becomes very useful. The Secret Woman book explains what Helene remembers Credit: Netflix The Secret Woman is based on the 2016 Danish novel Den Hemmelige Kvinde by Anna Ekberg, the pseudonym used by writers Jacob Weinreich and Anders Rønnow Klarlund. The Netflix adaptation makes some major changes to the book, so there isn’t a literal explanation of this scene – but the novel is much less ambiguous about her amnesia. Towards the end, Helene begins remembering her past in “glimpses”, including her escape and what happened before she lost her memory. She also explains that her amnesia was genuine, with her brain essentially burying everything traumatic so she could continue living. But – the part we wanted to know after that ending – she doesn’t remember everything. In the final chapter, Helene returns to the life she built with Joachim, bringing her two children (she only has one in the Netflix version) with her. The book says she doesn’t know how much of her memory will eventually return and describes the memories she does recover as “small pieces of a puzzle” that may never be complete. So if the film is following the same idea, Helene’s “a few things, yes” can be taken pretty literally. Despite that ominous look at the camera, there’s nothing in the book to suggest she was faking her amnesia all along. For all the latest film and TV updates and hot takes, like our Facebook page. Featured image credit: Netflix Post navigation Next story
