Why did Lexy hate Anna in His & Hers? We analyze the psychological battle between them, the truth of the 16th birthday party, and the meaning of the ending.
Even before its Netflix debut, His & Hers had all the ingredients for a massive hit. A top-tier cast, a psychological thriller with deep emotional undertones, a mysterious plot filled with dark twists, and a set of profoundly complex characters whose nuances unfold episode after episode: viewers have gone wild for the series, and their questions have literally exploded online.
Based on Alice Feeney’s 2020 novel of the same name, the series takes some liberties, altering several aspects of the plot to make it even more intricate. Naturally, the major final twist remains, serving as the focal point for most online analyses: the killer who murdered the three women in Dahlonega is not Lexy, as the evidence seems to suggest, but Alice, Anna’s mother—a final act of vengeance intended to give her daughter her life back.
In this article, however, we will focus on a subtler aspect: the psychology of Anna and Lexy and the nature of their rivalry in His & Hers. Anna and Lexy are the series’ most complex figures, both haunted by a traumatic past as victims of bullying and lives marked by tragedies that left deep scars. These two women represent two opposite ways of surviving past trauma; their rivalry is not merely a struggle for a news anchor position, but a way of reclaiming their place in the world.
His & Hers Plot & Ending Explained: The Dahlonega Mystery
The series begins with Anna returning from a dark period in her life: the death of her young daughter, Charlotte, destroyed her, and Anna literally vanished without a trace to live through her grief. Her mother, Alice, is also devastated for several reasons. Primarily because she lost a granddaughter, but also due to a sense of guilt she can never escape: Charlotte died while spending the evening with Alice. Although the grandmother was not at fault, she feels entirely responsible for the tragedy.
The murders in Dahlonega
When Anna returns to the news station, she discovers her position has been taken by Lexy Jones, a young woman who has always sought a career in that world. The rivalry between Lexy and Anna is evident from the start, initially appearing as a typical office “catfight.” Anna rolls up her sleeves and tries to claw her way back into the world that once belonged to her, volunteering as a field reporter to cover the murders in Dahlonega.
The crimes in Dahlonega escalate sharply: first Rachel, then Helen. Meanwhile, we begin to discover ancient ties between them and the rest of the community. Rachel and Helen were part of a small group of “mean girls” who bullied everyone else. Their malice was evident during school and continued into adulthood, with both involved in blackmailing a mysterious figure known as “C,” whose identity is revealed at the end. Further complicating matters, Rachel was chronically unfaithful to her husband; the man she met the night she died was Jack, Anna’s husband and the detective handling the murders.
The group of students involved in the bullying consisted of five girls: besides Rachel and Helen, there was Zoe (Jack’s sister), Anna (the least involved of the four), and finally Catherine, a girl who wanted to be accepted by the group but was actually their primary victim. Anna did not share their cruel practices but lacked the strength to pull herself away. Catherine saw Anna as the closest person to her in the group—the only one who could help her in difficult moments.
The 16th Birthday Reversal (The Book vs. Show Friction)
The truth about what happened to these five women is revealed in the finale of His & Hers. On Anna’s 16th birthday, Rachel and Helen organized a celebration in the woods. Unknown to the others, Rachel had involved three men with the promise they could have sex with Catherine, intending it to be an organized assault on a girl who would be drunk and unable to defend herself. Anna was unaware of this plan. When she saw her birthday party turn into a sexual assault, she intervened to defend Catherine. Catherine escaped, but Anna became the victim instead as the men turned their instincts on her. Anna was raped on her 16th birthday while Rachel, Helen, and Zoe laughed. Catherine fled but would always view Anna as the friend who lured her into a trap, hating her for the rest of her life.
A small detail: the book is slightly different regarding the girls’ past. In the novel, it is Catherine who is actually raped. Even though Anna didn’t help organize the assault, her silence was reason enough for Catherine to hold her equally responsible.
The Plot Twist and the Final Awareness
The twists are explained in the finale. After that traumatic event, Catherine grew up determined to distance herself from the girl she was in school. Through a strict diet and intense exercise, she transformed into an attractive woman and developed a drive for success against all odds. She changed her identity to Lexy Jones—the girl who does everything to steal Anna’s job. She grew up hating everyone responsible for her scars: Rachel, Helen, Zoe, and Anna. Additionally, we discover that Rachel and Helen were still harassing Lexy as adults: Lexy is the ‘C’ Rachel and Helen were blackmailing (‘Catherine’), threatening to reveal her involvement in her sister’s death years earlier.
However, Lexy is not the killer, even though the police find planted evidence in her home. As revealed in the final scene, the killer is actually Alice, Anna’s mother, who confesses via a letter. Alice discovered the truth by watching old tapes Anna recorded as a teenager. From those tapes, she understood how her daughter’s life was destroyed by those girls and decided to become an “Angel of Vengeance.” She murdered Rachel, Helen, and Zoe for being the primary perpetrators of her daughter’s rape and planted the evidence at Lexy’s house to send her to prison (a lighter punishment, as she wasn’t the organizer). Lexy dies at the hands of the police, but in Alice’s plan, her fate was jail while Anna reclaimed her life.
Becoming the Monster: Why did Lexy hate Anna?
Initially, Catherine/Lexy is a victim. She is relentlessly bullied at school, primarily by Rachel and Helen, while everyone else remains heartless toward her. Even at home, her sister Andrea offers no support; instead, she frequently criticizes her, treating her with an air of superiority.
All of this causes a deep hatred to fester within her—a hatred directed at the world in its entirety. Catherine feels unjustly treated, believing she deserves more than the unfair hand she’s been dealt. The incident surrounding her sister’s death is emblematic: just before going out on a boat, Catherine intentionally empties Andrea’s inhaler as a petty act of spite following a sharp comment. The empty inhaler leads to her sister’s death, as she fails to survive an asthma attack while out on the water.
As she morphs into Lexy, Catherine continues to nurture this universal hatred. Coming from a wealthy family, she treats Alice—who cleans for her family—with utter disdain. As an adult, she sees the women who defined her childhood traumas all finding success in one way or another: Rachel marries a rich man, Helen becomes the school principal, and Anna becomes a famous news anchor.
Tired of always being steps behind and determined to prove her worth to the world, the transformation into Lexy is finalized. Lexy is a ruthless woman who stakes everything on her career. She has no intention of making concessions for others and is willing to fight anyone to get what she wants.
So, why does Lexy hate Anna? Even though Anna was not responsible for the planned assault against her, Lexy will forever view her as an accomplice, accusing her of knowing what was about to happen. The fact that Anna became the actual victim of that rape does not change Lexy’s opinion of her: the monster inside her is already growing, fueled by a devouring hatred.
Lexy’s hatred toward Anna also serves as a psychological survival mechanism. Mentally, Lexy can never accept Anna as a victim because doing so would imply her own personal guilt for fleeing on the night of the birthday party. For Lexy to survive mentally, she must paint Anna as a villain. In Lexy/Catherine’s eyes, Anna is just another example of what a wicked world has done to her.
The transformation from Catherine to Lexy also serves to “erase” the image of the victim from her life. For Lexy, Catherine must cease to exist. Even as an adult, the past continued to haunt Lexy, with Rachel and Helen threatening to reveal the truth about Andrea’s death. While Lexy is not the killer in the series, she makes no secret of her satisfaction in seeing that someone is eliminating the people who caused her pain.
Anna Andrews: Anger as Armor
Anna chooses a diametrically opposite way of surviving. She has lived with anger since she was a teenager, having also been a victim in her youth—the victim of a rape that occurred during her 16th birthday while Rachel, Helen, and Zoe chanted “Happy Birthday.” She, too, nurtured hatred for those responsible for her trauma, but she fought to prevent that hatred from turning her into a “bad” person.
Anna marries Jack, has a daughter, and tries to build a healthy life. As she often reminds herself, anger is not a consuming emotion for her, but a fuel that gets her out of bed every morning, giving her the grit to carry on. Through anger, Anna builds a suit of armor to protect the fragile part of herself and prevent the world from hurting her once again.
After years of effort, fighting against the weight that marked her life, and settling her social and family situations as best she could, life deals a final blow to her mental health: her daughter dies, leaving her with no one to blame but a cruel fate. At that point, Anna collapses; she feels she is facing a ruthless destiny that is impossible to beat. She distances herself from everyone, trying to find herself again while fighting the black hole threatening to swallow her.
In the deepest depression following her daughter’s death, Anna doesn’t try to fight the causes of her fall. She simply retreats even further into her armor, rebuilding her strength. When she feels ready to face the world again, she slowly begins to fight back. She tries to reclaim her job and restore her relationship with her mother. With great effort, she even reconciles with Jack, and together they try to put the pain of grief behind them.
At the end of His & Hers, everyone who hated her is dead. She is starting to rebuild her life with Jack, her mother Alice, and her niece Meg when she reads the letter in which her mother confesses everything. She discovers that Alice is responsible for all those deaths, having faked dementia to deflect all suspicion. In certain respects, Anna’s discovery at the end of His & Hers is similar to what we see in another major recent thriller series, The Girlfriend, where the protagonist discovers that the person they trusted was actually evil.
The Meaning of the Final Smile
Just as her life has finally started moving in the right direction, Anna discovers that all this was only possible thanks to the trail of revenge executed by her mother. After an initial shock, we see Anna express a relaxed smile in the final image of the series, communicating a very specific meaning: Anna chooses to accept her mother’s actions as an act of pure love, and the events in Dahlonega as a necessary—albeit terrible—redemption to allow her to take back her life. In a sense, Alice grants Anna the ‘victory’ that life had previously denied her.
Anna manages to survive, and by the end of the story, perhaps she no longer needs her anger. Compassion and empathy might become her new companions to cement this new phase of her life.
