📌 In This Deep Dive
Netflix’s psychological thriller The Perfect Lie expands Saskia Noort’s 2004 novel The Dinner Club into a web of suburban arson, money laundering, and staged accidents. While Evert’s death stems from Babette’s desperate attempt to control her marriage, the series leaves Hanneke’s fate hanging on a calculated cliffhanger. This breakdown unravels who pushed Hanneke off the balcony, decodes the hospital room intruder in the finale, and highlights key differences from the original book.
Historically, the plot of The Perfect Lie has always been considered pretty complex. The series is adapted from the book The Dinner Club, published by Dutch author Saskia Noort back in 2004, which was already turned into a feature film directed by Robert Jan Westdijk in 2010. So it’s a very familiar story in the Netherlands, one that global audiences are now discovering through the series on Netflix.
That original complexity is still very much intact, and if anything, the series takes it even further. Significant changes were introduced to the storyline for The Perfect Lie, and behind those tweaks lie the answers to our biggest lingering questions: we know clearly how Evert died, but who actually pushed Hanneke off her balcony? Who is the shadowy figure entering her hospital room in the series finale, and how does that detail differ from the original story?
The Perfect Lie Character Guide: Who’s Who in the Netflix Series
The Perfect Lie opens with the critical event that sets everything off: the fire that destroys Evert’s home and kills him. From there, through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Evert was part of a close-knit group of friends made up of four couples. Here is a breakdown of each main character:
- Evert: The man who dies at the start of the series. He co-owns a gym with Simon and, as we later discover, was dealing with deep marital problems with his wife, Babette.
- Babette: Evert’s wife, with whom he shares two children.
- Simon: Co-owner of the gym alongside Evert and the man behind the circulation of illegal performance-enhancing drugs within the business. He is married to Patricia.
- Patricia: The daughter of a wealthy businessman with ties to organized crime.
- Hanneke: Married to Ivo, though the romantic spark between them has completely burned out. She is drawn to Evert, who confides in her about his personal struggles.
- Ivo: Hanneke’s husband, trusted by Babette. He has a secret as well: he’s secretly attracted to men and uses his visits to the gym to pursue those relationships behind his wife’s back.
- Karen: The protagonist whose perspective we share as viewers. As the newest addition to the circle, she is a journalist recently hit by a media scandal that unfairly painted her as a toxic manager. As she tries to uncover the truth, she ends up developing a brief affair with Simon.
- Michel: Karen’s husband, a strictly law-abiding accountant. Following Karen’s job loss and the surrounding scandal, he feels forced to accept Simon’s offer, disguising the money laundering flowing through the gym’s accounts.
The lives of these eight characters are constantly intertwined, with every single one of them harboring dark secrets that leave them vulnerable to blackmail. That is precisely why the truth has such a hard time surfacing.
How Did Evert Die?
Evert dies in the fire at the start of the series, and investigators soon discover that both his wife, Babette, and their two children had traces of sleeping pills in their blood. After a quick investigation, the authorities rule that Evert acted intentionally, attempting to take his entire family down with him. On the surface, it gets framed as a tragic outcome of severe depression following his and Babette’s decision to get a divorce.
That official explanation never sits right with anyone who truly knew Evert. Everyone saw him as a fighter, making it hard to believe he would simply end his own life. Hanneke, in particular, shared a close bond with Evert and slowly begins picking up on suspicious details. For starters, Babette is far from innocent: she acts manipulative and aggressive toward Evert, even threatening him physically over his decision to walk away. Their dynamic is volatile, complete with recorded conversations that reveal just how aggressive both of them could get when things hit a breaking point.
Then there is the situation at the gym with Simon. While the two are co-owners, Simon manages the financial books entirely on his own, using the business to launder profit from the illicit substances he sells to clients. Evert is kept completely in the dark, but as he starts digging for clarity, he becomes a major liability for both Simon and Patricia. Patricia’s father, a criminal figure who financed the gym, puts pressure on them to keep Evert under control and safeguard his investment. To make sure of it, he plants his own son on the gym staff to keep watch while pushing Patricia to publicly expose Evert’s alcoholism, forcing him to take a step back from the business.
Karen discovers the truth in the final episode through one last recording saved on the smartphone now in the possession of Evert’s son. That night, Babette had invited Evert over to give him one last chance to back down and reconcile. Evert reluctantly tells her he can’t, prompting Babette to set her plan in motion: she gives the children milk laced with sleeping pills and spikes Evert’s tea as well. As the sedative takes effect, she sets the house on fire.
Her son Beau, however, never drank his milk. The smoke wakes him up, and he tries to save his father. The police arrive, but it is too late. Evert dies in the blaze set by Babette, which was originally an attempt to murder her entire family, though Evert ends up being the sole casualty.
We piece all of this together gradually as the story unfolds. Because Hanneke was a trusted confidante to Evert in his final days, we have to assume she eventually uncovered, or at least strongly suspected, what was happening to him. Which brings us to the other major mystery of The Perfect Lie…
The Perfect Lie Ending Explained: Who Pushed Hanneke off the Balcony?
A few days after Evert’s death, Hanneke suffers an accident that nearly claims her life. She falls from the balcony of Patricia’s house where she was staying, and the police quickly realize that someone else was in the house that night.
Who actually pushed Hanneke off the balcony? As we get closer to the finale of The Perfect Lie, both the audience and the characters start suspecting Babette. Her jealousy over the growing connection between Hanneke and her husband Evert gives her an obvious motive. Babette eventually gets arrested for setting the fire, making it easy to assume she was also the one who tried to murder Hanneke.
But Babette denies it, both officially to the police and privately to her friend Karen. And honestly, we ought to believe her. Just as Hanneke is about to wake up from her coma, a sinister figure sneaks into her hospital room, clearly there to finish the job and keep her from talking. The series cuts to black the exact moment that figure steps through the door, leaving us without a direct answer. It falls on us to piece together the clues and draw our own logical conclusions.
If we assume that the mysterious figure is the same person who pushed Hanneke and is now there to finish her off for good, we have proof that it isn’t Babette, who is sitting in prison by the series finale.
There are three people who lied when giving their alibis for the night of the incident: Karen, Simon, and Patricia. Karen and Simon were together pursuing their secret affair, so everything points toward Patricia as the one who pushed Hanneke off the balcony and shows up in the finale of The Perfect Lie to silence her permanently.
Patricia actually has plenty of reasons to view Hanneke as a threat. If Hanneke really did uncover the drug ring at the gym and Simon’s involvement, it wouldn’t have taken long for the truth to come out. So Patricia acts once again to protect her husband’s business and her father’s investments, getting rid of a dangerous potential witness. After all, Hanneke’s fall happens right at Patricia and Simon’s house, and the couple claims to police that Hanneke was only there because she had a set of spare keys.
The Perfect Lie vs. The Dinner Club: Differences Between the Series and Saskia Noort’s Book
Anyone who read the original novel will have noticed a few key changes in the series. In the book The Dinner Club, Simon’s money laundering scheme takes place offshore, but every husband in the group had invested in it. That made it a collective nightmare for the entire circle, not just Evert. However, Evert’s fate remains the same: he still dies in the house fire started by Babette.
Hanneke, on the other hand, is the one who uncovers concrete proof of Simon’s financial fraud, and that is what ultimately seals her fate. The original novel ends with Hanneke actually dying, leaving readers with the grim realization that Simon and Patricia work as a unit, systematically eliminating any threat that might expose what they’ve done.
An Ensemble Story Where No One Comes Out Clean
Everyone is guilty of something in The Perfect Lie. The series ends with Karen trying to rebuild her relationship with Michel after everything that went down, while Simon and Patricia walk away completely scot-free thanks to the powerful connections of Patricia’s father. Babette is the only one who will actually pay for what she did, while Hanneke’s story cuts short the moment that mysterious figure enters her hospital room.
An aggressively open-ended finale is a trick that modern series rely on more and more to keep the door open for potential future seasons. We have seen this trend take a sharp turn lately in shows like The Beauty, Scarpetta, and The Shards. Here, though, the goal was to tap into our natural detective instincts and challenge us to figure out the second culprit using the clues at our disposal. The story of The Perfect Lie ends right here, there will not be a second season, and it is up to us to connect the dots.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. The series is adapted from the 2004 Dutch bestselling psychological thriller novel The Dinner Club (De eetclub) by Saskia Noort. The book was also previously adapted into a Dutch feature film in 2010.
Evert died in a house fire started by his wife, Babette. After he refused to reconcile their marriage, Babette spiked the family’s drinks with sleeping pills and set the home ablaze. Her son Beau avoided drinking the spiked milk and escaped, leaving Evert as the sole casualty.
The series doesn’t give an explicit answer, but the evidence points directly to Patricia. Hanneke was closing in on the illicit drug distribution and money laundering happening at the gym, which directly threatened the financial interests of Patricia’s father and Simon’s operation.
The shadowy figure must be Patricia. With Babette locked up in prison and Karen and Simon holding a mutual alibi from their secret affair, Patricia goes to the hospital to finish the job before Hanneke can wake up and expose the crime ring.
In the original 2004 novel, Hanneke dies, and the story reveals that Simon and Patricia operate as a ruthless pair who eliminate anyone in their way. The Netflix adaptation changes this to an open cliffhanger in the hospital room to let viewers deduce the culprit themselves.
No. The series was designed as a limited adaptation of Noort’s story. The unresolved hospital scene is an intentional creative choice rather than a cliffhanger for a second season.
