Who killed Brenda on Fatal Seduction? We unpack one of the key story elements of the South African Netflix series. Needless to say, this article contains major spoilers.
Fatal Seduction is the South African remake of the Mexican telenovela Dark Desire, and both shows are currently streaming on Netflix.
A saucy, soapy, sordid tale of extramarital affairs, secret cover-ups, and eventually murder, the show has many competing subplots. However, the most essential one involves the murder of Brenda, the best friend of the show’s protagonist, Nandi.
Who is Brenda on Fatal Seduction?
As mentioned above, Brenda is Nandi’s best friend, but there’s much more to it than that.
Brenda was also a teacher and was having a secret relationship with Vuyo, the brother of Nandi’s husband, Leonard.
A decade before the events depicted in the show’s first volume of episodes, Brenda was the key witness in the case against Benjamin Jiba, a man who was accused of the rape and murder of a minister’s daughter. Brenda was the girl’s teacher, and her account was essential in getting Jiba convicted.
However, one of the crucial later developments in the season is that Brenda committed perjury and was coerced into doing so by Leonard, who also paid off someone to shoot Vuyo to keep him from investigating the case.
Who killed Brenda on Fatal Seduction?
The prime suspect in Brenda’s death is Jacob, the son of Benjamin Jiba.
After his conviction, Benjamin committed suicide, and his wife, Jacob’s mother, was severely mentally affected, developing selective mutism and early-onset dementia. Fatal Seduction revolves largely around Jacob’s affair with Nandi, and while it’s later revealed that this was initially just a way to get closer to Leonard, the judge who put Jiba in jail, in the finale Jacob claims to have genuinely fallen in love with Nandi.
Jacob also claims that he didn’t kill Brenda. Instead, he suggests that after he made her feel guilty about her involvement in what happened to him, she took her own life.
As of the end of Volume 1, we still don’t know for sure who killed Brenda, although Jacob is a very likely possibility.
What else might have happened to Brenda?
Presuming Jacob didn’t kill Brenda, there are only two other feasible options – either Jacob’s account of her suicide is true, or someone else killed her.
Suicide seems unlikely, though would be explainable, since Brenda was finally brought face to face with the real, wide-ranging repercussions of her actions.
If Brenda was killed by someone else, it would likely be at the behest of Leonard, who had attempted to cover up the whole scam in the first place, even going so far as to have his own brother shot. Given what Leonard has already done thus far, it isn’t a stretch to imagine him arranging Brenda’s death.
Answers to all of these questions and more will presumably be revealed in Fatal Seduction Season 1 Volume 2, which is presumably coming to Netflix sooner rather than later.
