The Missing You Book Ending, Explained

One year ago, Netflix released an adaptation of Harlan Coben’s novel Fool Me Once, which quickly became one of the streamer’s most popular English-language series of all time. This year, Netflix is back with another adaptation from the New Jersey author’s oeuvre: Missing You.

Based on the same-named 2014 novel, Missing You follows a detective named Kat who sees her long-lost ex-fiancé on a dating website. This jarring discovery leads her on a journey that connects his disappearance to her father’s murder, and also to a separate missing person’s case.

So there’s a lot going on! To break it all down, here’s the Missing You plot summary and ending, explained, because those last few pages are a doozy.

Swiping On A Secret

Nearly two decades after Kat’s fiancé, Jeff (named Josh in the series), mysteriously disappeared from her life, she sees him on a dating website.

As she attempts to reconnect, she’s approached at work by a young man, Brandon, who believes his mother, named Dana, is in danger. (In the series, his name is Brendan.) Dana is ostensibly on vacation with a new boyfriend, but Brandon is concerned by mysterious details, such as changes in the way she texts and the withdrawal of a large sum of money.

Kat realizes that Dana’s purported boyfriend uses the same photo as Jeff on the dating site, which leads to the discovery that — unbeknownst to Jeff — his visage is being used in a “catfish” scheme, in which unsuspecting suitors are held captive, and many killed, unless they pay their way out.

How It All Ties Together

Kat is able to rescue Dana and stop the operation, but there’s still a separate, personal mystery at play: What happened to Jeff, whose disappearance occurred around the same time as the death of Kat’s father?

In the final pages of Missing You, Kat and Jeff finally reunite, and she learns the truth: The mob hadn’t killed Kat’s dad, Henry, as she’d previously believed. Instead, Jeff had killed Henry. Jeff’s roommate at the time, named Aqua — with whom Kat had also been friends — had seen Henry at a club popular with LGBTQ+ communities. Henry was with a man named Sugar, with whom he’d been having an affair. To prevent Aqua from revealing this secret, Henry broke into Aqua and Jeff’s home and nearly beat Aqua to death. To save his friend, Jeff shot and killed Henry.

Captain Stagger, Henry’s friend and colleague, had been waiting outside and knew he’d be implicated if the truth of the attack got out — so he helped cover it up, and procured Jeff a new identity.

After learning the truth, Kat seems willing to move forward with Jeff, understanding that his role in her dad’s death was only out of defense, and that he’d never wanted to abandon her.