The Boneheaded Ending of Harlan Coben's 'Just One Look' on Netflix Explained

If anything, I’m a completist, and having outlined the plots of the omnipresent Harlan Coben’s previous Netflix hit series—Missing You, The Stranger, Stay Close, Gone for Good, Fool Me Once, and The Woods—I’m not about to stop just because the latest is Polish and, honestly, the dumbest one yet.

Spoilers

“Just One Look,” as we find out in the sixth (and mercifully final) episode of the series, is… the name of a song. I’m not going to recount all the people who were murdered and tortured over the six episodes, but I will say that— in the end—it was all over song royalties. No, really.

It all started with a photo. Greta (Maria Debska) receives a picture one day of several people she doesn’t recognize, except for one man who looks eerily similar to her husband, Jacek (Cezary Lukaszewicz). She shows Jacek the photo and asks if he knows anything about it. Jacek pleads ignorance but then abruptly leaves the house. He makes a phone call, and then he is abducted.

I should mention here that, 13 years prior, Greta was involved in a fire during a concert that killed several people. She survived with some burns but has no recollection of the event—because amnesia is an easy crutch for mystery writers.

Within a day, Greta is freaking out because her husband has gone missing. What she doesn’t know is that a man named Robert (Mirosław Haniszewski) has kidnapped Jacek and stuffed him in the trunk of his car. While Jacek is trapped, Robert swipes right on an attractive woman and stops for a booty call. But when she hears a thump from the trunk, Robert violently murders her and continues to beat the sh*t out of Jacek. Because everything in a Harlan Coben series relies on random coincidences, the murdered woman happens to be the next-door-neighbor of Greta’s best friend, Kamila (Marta Malikowska).

Greta and Kamila set out to investigate not only Jacek’s disappearance but also the murder of this attractive woman, whom Kamila didn’t personally know but had been watching have sex with men through her window every night. Kamila masturbated during these encounters because her husband was depressed and she was lonely. (Later, her depressed husband is shot in the neck and nearly killed by Robert.)

Another key figure is Sandra (Monika Krzywkowska), Jacek’s estranged sister. Jacek called her right before he was abducted, but she refuses to answer any of Greta’s questions.

Meanwhile, a mysterious, unkempt man, Jimmy D, is following Greta around, while another man, Borys (Mirosław Zbrojewicz)—a former prosecutor—tries to help Greta solve the mystery. Borys lost his daughter in the concert fire and still doesn’t understand who caused it, though a man who took the fall for it has just been released from prison after 13 years (he, too, is killed). Oh, and of course: another shady guy, Karol (Andrzej Zieliński), lost his son in the fire. He’s involved in organized crime and also wants to know what happened. Greta is the only one who knows, but she has no memory. There’s also a detective investigating all of this. He’s in the show a lot but, weirdly, isn’t actually that important.

OK, that’s the setup: Greta’s husband, Jacek, is missing; Robert (an obvious henchman) took him; Jacek’s lawyer sister isn’t answering questions; and the mother of a band member involved in the fire, Adam, is also withholding information.

Here’s what happens: Through a combination of investigation and memory triggers, Greta pieces it all together (but not before being kidnapped by Robert and ultimately killing him). Jacek confesses his role in the mystery before dying from the injuries Robert inflicted.

Jacek was actually Adam. The real Jacek, a member of the band, got into a fight with the lead singer, Jimmy D, over the songwriting rights to their song, “Just One Look,” which was apparently a huge hit. During the fight, Jimmy D accidentally killed Jacek and inadvertently started the fire that killed several people. Adam, the band’s drummer, assumed Jacek’s identity through an arrangement orchestrated by Jacek’s sister, Sandra. In exchange for the songwriting royalties being funneled to her, she provided the money for an operation to save Adam’s mother’s life. Adam—now living as Jacek—later fell in love with Greta, whom he had originally met at the concert. They got married, had two kids, and lived happily ever after… at least until that photo showed up.

That photo was actually slipped into her other pictures by Borys, the prosecutor who lost his daughter in the fire. He knew the truth all along but wanted Greta to discover it herself. His decision resulted in several deaths—including that of Greta’s husband—but in the end, she not only uncovered the mastermind behind it all (Sandra) but also figured out who took the photo in the first place: Greta herself. It was one of the many things she forgot that night.

It’s convoluted, nonsensical, and full of plot holes — for one, how did Adam — the drummer of a band famous enough to have a monstrously popular song — pass for Jacek for 13 years, but there it is: The latest Harlen Coben. You’re welcome.