Breaking Down the Ending of Netflix’s Twisty Mystery Thriller Missing You

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Missing You.

It’s the start of a new year, which apparently now means it’s also time for a new Harlan Coben adaptation on Netflix. In the wake of the viral popularity of last year’s release, Fool Me Once, mystery thriller Missing You has rocketed up to number two on the streamer’s most-watched charts in the days since its Jan. 1 debut, second only to Squid Game‘s new season.

Based on Coben’s best-selling 2014 novel of the same name, the five-part limited series, which switches the story’s setting from New York City to Manchester, follows police detective Kat Donovan (Rosalind Eleazar) as she descends back down the rabbit hole of mystery surrounding the murder of her father, Clint Donovan (Lenny Henry), after stumbling on the dating profile of her ex-fiancé Josh (Ashley Walters). While Kat believes Josh ghosted her 11 years earlier following the night that career criminal Monte Leburne (Marc Warren) allegedly killed her dad, she soon begins to realize there may be more to both stories.

After taking on a missing-persons case involving a man named Rishi Migari (Rudi Dharmalingam)—and later, a woman named Dana Fells (Lisa Faulkner)—Kat visits a terminally ill Monte in prison and learns that he was paid to take the fall for Clint’s murder. Despite being suspended from the force after her boss, Clint’s former partner Stagger (Richard Armitage), finds out she gained access to Monte through unofficial channels, Kat continues to pursue the truth about her father, Josh, and the strange disappearances at hand. Her investigation leads to a series of shocking discoveries that threatens to upend everything Kat thought she knew about the people around her.

“She gets revelation after revelation, and she doesn’t really have time to breathe,” Eleazar told Netflix’s Tudum about her character arc. “You almost want her to just stop and take a breath, take stock and move forward. But she doesn’t. She literally doesn’t have a moment to reflect on how much trauma she has been through, and how much trauma she’s still going through.”

How does Missing You end?

While Josh’s dating profile turns out to be a fake created by the same crime syndicate responsible for the disappearances of Rishi and Dana—an organization that uses the app to lure in wealthy singles, kidnap them, and then extort them for all they’re worth—the real Josh is still around, and it turns out he did in fact have something to do with Clint’s death.

Kat eventually learns that not only was her police officer father secretly in league with renowned crime boss Calligan (James Nesbitt), he was also having a longtime extramarital affair. However, Clint wasn’t cheating on Kat’s mom with another woman, but rather a man, Parker (Cyril Nri), with whom he was truly in love. Calligan was using this information to blackmail Clint into working for him, so Clint had decided to break things off with Parker.

On the night Clint died, Kat’s friend and Josh’s flatmate Aqua (Mary Malone) had seen Clint and Parker embracing on the street, prompting a panicked Clint to call Stagger to get Aqua’s address and then follow her home. When Clint arrived and saw that Aqua was (coincidentally) getting a call from Kat, he got physically aggressive with her, forcing Aqua to grab a knife to defend herself. Clint wrestled the knife away from her but Josh arrived home at that moment and entered the fray, resulting in him accidentally stabbing Clint. Stagger burst in just as Clint was dying and made them all agree to cover up what had happened in order to protect Kat and her mother from the truth about Clint. Stagger and Josh arranged for Monte, who was already set to be sentenced to life in prison, to take the fall, and Josh fled town because he couldn’t bear to be with Kat knowing what he had done.

However, Josh never stopped loving Kat and after he finally reveals the whole story to her, the series ends with a distraught Kat brushing her pinky finger against his. “There’s something quite nice about her reaching toward him in the end,” Eleazar told Tudum. “I think you could read that in many ways.”