Emily's Fate in 'A Simple Favor' Is Truly Shocking — the Plot Twists Are Just as Unpredictable as the Characters

Spoiler alert: This article contains MAJOR spoilers for the 2018 film A Simple Favor.

One of the most anticipated films to go to Netflix is the Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick–led film, A Simple Favor. For fans of stories like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, A Simple Favor is adapted from Darcey Bell’s debut novel and features everything we could ever want from a “girl thriller”: complicated friendships, a murder mystery, and even mistaken identities.

The story starts off innocently enough with the perfect-seeming Emily (Lively) befriending Stephanie (Kendrick). But it quickly turns sinister when Emily goes missing, and as the story unravels, the ending becomes quite convoluted. So what happened to Emily at the end of A Simple Favor?

When Emily first goes missing, everyone in the fictional New York City suburb of Warfield, Conn., is concerned. But Stephanie realizes something is up since Emily had asked Stephanie to pick up her son from school — Emily must have known she was going away, which rules out the foul play many are suspecting.

But when Emily’s body is found with signs of heavy alcohol and heroin use, people suspect Emily’s husband, Sean, murdered her because of her $4 million life insurance policy. Stephanie, however, doesn’t buy it so she decides to dig. And what she finds is truly unpredictable.

Stephanie travels to Squaw Lake Bible Camp and finds that Emily’s real name is Hope McLanden and that she had two sisters, Faith and Charity. Charity passed away when she was a baby, but Faith and Hope were identical twins. The sisters had an abusive father, so they burned down the house and went on with their lives separately.

Hope changed her name and identity, and found success in doing so. Faith on the other hand came back to blackmail Hope/Emily, so Emily needed to do something about it. Instead of reconciling, she decided to drown her twin and make it look like she died so that her family could get the life insurance money.

If you thought Emily murdering her twin sister and framing it so that her family could collect insurance money was convoluted, just wait until we get to the ending of A Simple Favor. When Stephanie figures out the truth, Emily tries to get her on her side to frame Sean as an abusive murderous husband. But Stephanie can’t do that, so she bugs the house and gets Emily to confess.

While Emily knows it’s bugged, she removes all the equipment, but Stephanie smartly live-streamed everything, including when Emily shoots Sean in retaliation. As Emily tries to escape, one of the parents from the school runs over her, but she survives and is sent to prison for life. Sean survives as well, caring for his and “Emily’s” children at the end of the film.

A Simple Favor is now available to stream on Netflix, although we’ve already spoiled it for you!