Don’t Worry, All Your Questions About Pieces Of Her Will Be Answered

Spoilers ahead for the Pieces of Her book.

After starring in Unbelievable, Toni Collette is back to headline another Netflix thriller: Pieces of Her, an eight-episode series set in a sleepy Georgia town. It kicks off with Andy (Bella Heathcote) going to a diner to celebrate her 30th birthday with her mom Laura (Collette), who works as a speech pathologist and is a generally respected member of the community. When a gunman appears and shoots his ex-girlfriend, all hell breaks loose and Laura skillfully kills him before he can hurt Andy. The incident sets off a chain of events that sends Andy traveling across the country in search of answers about who her mother really is. With every bit of new information, she realizes she never really knew her mom at all.

The show is based on a 2018 crime novel by Karin Slaughter and was billed as a limited series, so it’s unlikely that Pieces of Her will return for Season 2. The novel jumps back and forth between the past and the present, and by the end of the book, Andy has figured out that her mom was in a shady cult in the ‘80s and had Andy with its leader. But once Laura realized she was pregnant and that the cult was killing people, she turned all the members over to law enforcement in exchange for witness protection. The reason she sends Andy on the run after the restaurant shooting is because the incident went viral online, and she knew the cult would find her. But Laura saves Andy in the end, and eventually gets Andy’s father to confess his crimes over a hidden wire, ensuring he’ll never be let out of prison.

Pieces of Her producer Bruna Papandrea (who also worked on Big Little Lies and The Undoing) was instantly drawn in by the mystery. “I knew I wanted to adapt this one within reading the first 20 pages. You’re like, ‘What the f*ck is happening here?’” she told Forbes. “I’m fascinated with stories of identity and of people who are not who they seem to be. This one also has that complex mother-daughter relationship at its heart. It’s just a great mystery.”

However, the show covers all of the events from the book, and things are pretty tied up by the end. It’s not impossible that Netflix might try for a second season if the series is wildly successful — maybe Andy’s father somehow breaks out of jail? But that would make it a very different story at that point.

Whatever happens, Slaughter seems happy with the final product. “I know that their vision for this is really well-thought out and designed to honor what I’ve put on the page,” she told Mystery People. “I feel like the story is in very capable hands.”