Summary
Episode 2 of Fool Me Once adds a ton of new wrinkles to the plot, hinting at affairs, hitmen, and secret lives at every turn.
“The plot thickens” is a cliche, but it wouldn’t quite do it for Episode 2 of Fool Me Once. The plot doesn’t just thicken but becomes about thrice its size, introducing new characters, pointing the finger at old ones, and suggesting potential affairs on top of professional killings, wartime conspiracies, and hidden lives. There’s a tremendous, almost overwhelming amount of stuff to be pondering here, so let’s do our very best to break it down in something resembling a coherent manner.
Fool Me Once Season 1 Episode 2 Recap
Maya Stern was overseas when her husband called to tell her that her sister had been murdered. At the time, she probably never suspected this would eventually constitute an alibi. But, after Episode 1 revealed that the same gun was used to kill both Claire and Joe, the logical assumption of the police is a family connection. Whoever killed Joe and Claire is probably connected to Burkett Global Enterprises, where they both worked.
What Kierce and McGregor imply but don’t say outright is that Joe and Claire might have been having an affair. It’s the most obvious connection to draw up between a man and a woman, but Maya denies it outright. Given Richard Armitage’s Netflix history, though… you never know.
What was Claire hiding in her trunk?
In the absence of Izabella, Maya is forced to leave Lily at a nursery with cameras in every room that she can check in on whenever she wants (I cannot imagine this being true of any nursery on earth, but it’s a Harlan Coben show so let’s not sweat the details.) What Kierce and McGregor said is sitting with Maya, so she goes to see Eva to ask her about what Joe and Claire’s relationship was like while she was deployed. Eva, who seems to have a creepy ex named Robby who keeps calling her, tells Maya that a few weeks before her murder, Claire got a call that visibly panicked and agitated her. At the time she dismissed it as a “work thing”, but Eva reveals that she took the call on an old burner phone — which Eva never mentioned to the police.
Armed with this new information, Maya sneaks into Claire’s house when Eddie goes out and has a snoop around. Claire was murdered in the house, and there are boxes of her stuff everywhere, so it’s as much of an ongoing crime scene as it is a home. In the secret compartment of a trunk where Claire used to hide cigarettes from Eddie, Maya finds the burner phone.
Eddie comes home and catches Maya in the act, and she asks him outright if Claire was having an affair. Eddie doesn’t take it well and isn’t keen on the idea of the hidden phone either, but after a flash of anger, he does reveal that things weren’t great between him and Claire and he suspected she was having an affair with Joe. He didn’t tell the police, though, since he was already a suspect and he didn’t want to give them a motive. Eddie tries to take the phone from Maya by force, but she floors him easily and leaves, though Eddie does make a massive scene about the phone outside in front of Abby.
Was Izabella in love with Joe?
While this is going on, Kierce and McGregor stare at an evidence board and try to put the pieces together. If Claire and Joe were having an affair, but Maya was overseas and Eddie had an alibi, would it even constitute a motive? Who stood to benefit from her death, or Joe’s? Either way, there’s no way the killings aren’t connected, so they need to look closer at shared family members and associates — starting with Izabella, who, as the family nanny, was probably privy to everything without anyone realizing it.
Kierce and McGregor go to see Izabella, who completely denies having taken the SD card and claims there was nothing on the footage when Maya showed it to her. She also denies that Joe and Claire were having an affair, but says that Joe was “too good” for Maya. Was Izabella into Joe? Seems like it.
Maya charges Claire’s burner phone and looks through the call logs, which reveal multiple incoming and outgoing calls to an arcade, of all places. Maya goes there but the manager is no help at all, though he’s clearly hiding something.
Who is Nicole?
Episode 2 reveals that Kierce’s mysterious interlocutor, Nicole, is his AA sponsor. At present, she’s the only one who knows about his mysterious illness, though he’s adamant about keeping it a secret so that his job isn’t threatened. Nicole advises him to go private and get a test — even if he keeps the results a secret, he needs to know what’s going on.
Kierce collapses again at home and wakes up face-down in his Shreddies, so Nicole’s right that the matter can’t be left alone. However, he continues to keep it to himself, even when his fear of driving causes issues between him and Molly.
Why is the reading of Joe’s last will and testament postponed?
Shane discovers that the red VW following Maya is leased by a company called WTCX Limited, which doesn’t mean anything to either of them since it’s wrapped in layers of anonymity. Maya is on her way to a will reading at Farnwood — she was made to sign a prenuptial agreement, but Joe created a trust fund for Lily — but Shane cautions her that she might need the money after all, since Corey the Whistle, the whistleblower who got Maya fired, is back and apparently still has the audio of the tape that implicated her in the first place. There’s clearly more to reveal here.
At the reading, Heather — presumably the family lawyer — arrives to tell everyone that it’ll have to be postponed since they don’t have access to Joe’s death certificate.
How does Fool Me Once Season 1 Episode 2 end?
Fool Me Once Episode 2 ends with a couple of bombshell reveals.
In the first, Abby and her brother, who earlier found an old camera in Claire’s belongings and go to get the film developed, inadvertently discover that Claire was pregnant in 2003. That predates Abby by quite a while, so the obvious questions are who was she pregnant to, and where is the kid now?
Elsewhere, Joe’s sister Caroline confesses to Maya that she never got over the supposedly accidental death of their brother Andrew since she was never allowed to see his body, having been deemed too young. (We see in a flashback that Joe had told Maya that Andrew threw himself off the yacht deliberately, but she keeps this to herself.) To avoid history repeating itself, Caroline wanted to see Joe’s body, but Judith wouldn’t allow her. Now, with the news of the missing death certificate and Maya’s claims about him being on the nanny cam footage, Caroline thinks something is afoot.
With this in mind, Caroline shows Maya the private family bank account, which has been making regular payments on the tenth of every month to… DS Sami Kierce.
What did you think of Fool Me Once Season 1 Episode 2? Let us know in the comments.
