There’s a major plot hole in Fool Me Once and Harlan Coben has addressed it

This has spun my head

4 months ago | UPDATED 3 months ago

So, it turns out there was a massive plot hole in Fool Me Once on Netflix, which was pretty key to their entire twist ending of the show. Now this has been pointed out to me, my mind is a little bit blown and I’m just confused how I didn’t see this as a glaring issue sooner.

The show starts by introducing us to Maya Stern, she has just buried her husband Joe Burkett, who is a son in the wealthy Burkett family. After his death, Maya gets given a nanny cam by a friend, to place in her daughter Lily’s playroom, so she can feel safe and watch what she gets up to with the nanny, Izabella. But what does she see on the nanny cam? Joe. Her dead husband.

At first that seemed to be the catalyst for all the drama soon to come, but actually that moment was pivotal in people getting confused.

via Netflix

So, what is the Fool Me Once plot hole and how can it be explained?

Loads of people have pointed the nanny cam out as being a huge plot hole in the overall Fool Me Once story. At the end of the show, we learn Joe is in fact dead. The video on the nanny cam had been deep-faked, as the nanny and groundsman had been paid to do so by Judith Burkett. This was in order to make Maya feel as though she was going insane, as Judith had suspicions that Maya had been the one who killed Joe, and wanted her to crack.

But this is where it gets interesting. Pointing this out as a potential plot hole, on person said on Twitter: “Eva gave Maya the nanny cam photo frame. A day later Joe was on the cam. Izabella, the nanny, didn’t know about the cam, so she and Luca loaded a deep-fake video to a device, they supposedly didn’t know about, that fast?”

via Netflix

Ummm, wait a minute? HOW did they do that?! Izabella had no idea the nanny cam was even there, and the footage of “Joe” was from the very day Maya put the photo frame in the play room. There was literally no time for Judith to apparently put this masterplan together and get the nanny and groundsman together to pull it off. It’s impossible!

However, in the original Harlan Coben book the show is based on, there was a lot more time involved and Izabella made it clear she had spotted the photo frame prior to the big deep-fake plan.

Harlan says in the book, from Izabella’s perspective: “Suddenly the day after the funeral you have a new digital frame already loaded up with pictures of your family? Please. You’re the only mother I know that doesn’t keep about pictures of her daughter around. You don’t even hang up her artwork. So when I saw that frame – how stupid do you think I am?”

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