Mystery girlies: The next great crime thriller has finally arrived on Netflix. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder made its highly-anticipated worldwide debut on August 1, a month after it was released in the U.K. to instant acclaim. The BBC series, based on Holly Jackson's YA novel of the same name, stars Wednesday star Emma Myers as the fictional teen detective Pippa “Pip” Fitz-Amobi, who unravels the dark secrets of her small U.K. town as she investigates the murder of Andie Bell (India Lillie Davies).
Back in 2019, Pip was one of the last people to see Andie Bell alive, hours before she disappeared. Though the entire town of Little Kilton assumes Andie was killed by her boyfriend Sal Singh (Rahul Pattni), who later died by suicide, Pip never believed that Sal did it. Now, five years later, Pip teams up with Sal's little brother Ravi (Zain Iqbal) to investigate the case and find out who killed the schoolgirl, revealing all of the townspeople's deepest secrets along the way. The mystery includes several twists, so for anyone with lingering questions, here's a recap of the ending to A Good Girl's Guide to Murder.
How did Sal Singh die in 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder?'
In episode 5 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, Pip's investigation into the murder of Andie Bell turns toward Elliot Ward (Mathew Baynton), Pip's English teacher and her good friend Cara's (Asha Banks) widowed father. At the start of the episode, Andie learns that Sal's good friends Naomi Ward (Yasmin Al-Khudhairi), a.k.a. Cara's sister, Max Hastings (Henry Ashton), and Jake Lawrence (Ephraim Sampson) were in a hit-and-run car accident on New Year's Eve five years ago, where Max was drunk driving and left the other driver to die. Months later, when Andie went missing, the trio received a blackmail note and ordered to ruin Sal's alibi on the night of Andie's death. Though they told the police that Sal left them in time to kill Andie, he was really with them at the time of her death, and there's a picture proving it.
With this new information, Pip posts on social media that she plans to upload the whole story the next day, goading the real killer to reveal themselves. The intention is that Pip would find a way to go to the police without telling the truth of the hit-in-run, but this backfires when the killer texts her again, telling her to drop the case or she'll never see "him" again. She fears that he means her half-brother Josh (Kamari Loyd), but instead, the killer murders the family dog Barney(!) and thoroughly pisses Pip off.
However, Barney's death leads to another break in the case when she receives a call from the same phone number that the “Secret Older Guy” Andie once dated had left in a hotel guest book. It's Naomi calling, and she tells Pip that she's borrowing an "ancient brick" phone of her dad's that she found in a drawer. That means Elliott was the one dating Andie when she was underage. Pip finds out moments before she gets into Elliot's car with her friends, and it coincidentally comes up that he tutors a ton but his family doesn't have any more money because he has "many mouths to feed." (Is this a hostage situation? They never found Andie's body.)
Pip uses the phone to track Elliot to the family's old house on Berners Lane, and though she texts Ravi to call the police, she can't help but go herself. Elliot admits that he slept with Andie and that they were together at the Ivy House Hotel, but he says that she broke it off because she was in love with Sal. At the hotel, Andie asked Elliot for money, and a couple of days later, she came to his house asking for 5,000 pounds to help her run away from home, or else she'd tell everyone he took advantage of her, using a risque photo she took at the hotel. In an ensuing scuffle, he pushed Andie and she hit her head on the countertop and started bleeding. He says she ran as he was going to call an ambulance, and that was the last time he saw her.
It's hard to say if Pip trusts him (if I were her, trusting anyone ever again would be a struggle), but their conversation is interrupted when Pip hears clanging from the pipes and heads upstairs, looking to see if Elliot's been keeping Andie captive for five years. Instead, she finds a strange girl who does look a lot like Andie. Elliot locks Pip and the stranger in the attic, giving the new girl, Isla (Georgia Lock), enough time to explain what happened: She was unhoused when Elliot found her while he was looking for Andie. Though he realized she wasn't Andie, he offered Isla a place to sleep for the night. Later that evening, Isla tells a drunk Elliot he's a good person, and he asks how she'd feel about him if he'd killed a person.
He wasn't talking about Andie. Instead, Elliot explained that it was a kid named Salil Singh, that Elliot had drugged him then smothered him, that the teacher could see in Salil's eyes that he was scared in his final moments. Isla tried to run, but Elliot caught her, and he'd been keeping her there for five years. Luckily, that night would be Isla's last night in captivity; Ravi called the police and they arrived to arrest Elliot. There's the murderer captured ... with 45 min left in episode 6? This mystery isn't over yet.
Who killed Andie Bell in 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder?'
Eventually, Pip realizes that though Elliot did leave her a threatening note during Cara's birthday, he couldn't have killed Barney, because he, Cara, and Naomi were in Oxford the day the dog went missing. So Elliot wasn't Pip's stalker, and someone else murdered Andie Bell. When Pip goes to visit Elliot at the police station, he tells her that Andie's father Jason (Matt Chambers) was abusive and that he had lied about his alibi because Elliot saw him driving a blue van that night. (Elliot also admits he blackmailed Naomi and co. after learning about the hit-and-run in her diary, so there's that hole filled.) However, Jason turns out to be a dead end; he was said to be driving to his work because the security alarms went off, and he went immediately back to his dinner afterward. Pip learns that from Jesse (Oliver Wickham), Andie's sister Becca's best friend, but he does note how controlling Jason is, which he knows from when they used to go to Calamity's parties together.
Back in 2019, Becca (Carla Woodcock) went with Andie to a party and tried to keep up, though Andie partied hard. There, Becca was roofied and raped, but Jesse says that she couldn't recall who attacked her. Pip connects the dots that Andie used to sell Rohypnol to Max, who must have used the drugs to rape Becca. This tragic secret is the final clue that helps Pip put everything together.
When Andie arrived home after the fight with Elliot, Becca told Andie about the incident and asked her to go to the police with her. However, Andie told her sister that she couldn't go to the police because she was the one who had sold Max the drugs. Andie claimed that she'd needed the money to help herself run away from home and her dad's temper. (It turns out her dad had found out about Sal and stolen Andie's savings on the day she died.) Andie was going to head out the next day, leaving Becca to deal with their dad alone, and in her anger, Becca lashed out and pushed Andie. After the second blow to the head wound, Andie began seizing and vomiting, but Becca says she "just stood there and watched her die." Pip tells Becca it isn't her fault, but Becca says it doesn't matter.
Becca then offers to show Pip where Andie's body is, and of course, the teen detective goes with her to the creepy sewer. It turns out Becca had already roofied Pip's tea and was going to just leave her there to die. Luckily, Ravi decides not to head out of town and Cara has a tracker on Pip, so the pair can find her and stop Becca.
What's next for Pip in 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder?'
Having survived near death several times, Pip's school project (God, this all started with a school project!) about solving a murder is completed. Pip also admits to her mom that she isn't sure whether she wants to go to Cambridge or if her dad's legacy is hanging over her. Leanne (Anna Maxwell Martin) tells Pip to do whatever she truly wants to do, so the Gen Z Nancy Drew has some big decisions to make.
The next thing we see is Pip confronting Max Hastings, telling him to fuck himself (hell yeah!) and likely remembering what Becca said in the sewer—that nothing ever happens to the Maxes of the world. Max keeps claiming that he and Becca had consensual sex and that she and anyone who believes her over him are psychos. But Pip's undeterred, as she tells him that he's "nothing." She continues, "I am not going to stop until every single person you have ever hurt gets justice." She leaves Max with a pat on his shoulder and goes straight to the pond, where she finally kisses Ravi!
Will there be a 'Good Girl's Guide to Murder' season 2?
Fans of Holly Jackson's book trilogy already know that there are two more books' worth of Pip's adventures to follow, and the show's executive producers, Matthew Read and Frith Tiplady, told Variety that any subsequent seasons would cover the later novels. However, the pair are also clear that whether the story continues depends on its popularity. (Hopefully that means we'll get some good news in the coming months!)
