While actress Michelle Keegan is all the rage right now for her fantastic turn as the convoluted Maya Stern in Netflix’s Fool Me Once, the eight-episode series packs enough mysteries to ensure you are not just invested in its lead star — particularly the nerve-frying puzzle of Claire’s story.
Spoilers ahead for Fool Me Once because we are here to unravel this web of questions once and for all.
In short, it was never a robbery though it was staged to look like one by none other than the shady Joe (Richard Armitage) and he does meet his final fate for every crime of his he tried to hide with another calculated evil. But why did he murder Claire (Natalie Anderson), his wife, Maya’s sister?
Well, unless you gleaned off the fact that dear Joe was one mean, selfish, and manipulative soul, let me briefly rewind to point out that Claire was hardly the first person he killed for his nefarious motives. He killed his brother, Andrew Burkett, to keep the lid on another murder he played a big role in — frankly, given his track record, he didn’t even need a solid reason to drop bodies anymore. But definitely didn’t kill Claire because the mood struck him.
Why did Joe kill Claire in Fool Me Once?
You know the saying that lie once and you will have to spin more lies to cover up the first one? That’s the fate that befell Claire when she finds herself roped up in the dark past and present of the Burkett family.
As the story of Fool Me Once, we, along with Maya, learn that Claire, who was an employee at Burkett Pharmaceuticals, caught wind of how they were introducing harmful, failed, and even deadly drugs in the market. Along with Corey the Whistle, she went after the company’s secrets only to discover Joe’s in the process – how he killed his brother to ensure that the murder of his schoolmate named Theo Mara that he committed back in 1996 (along with Andrew) remained a secret. Joe now had two reasons to kill Claire – to protect his family’s crime and those he brazenly committed.
Call it Karma or straight irony, Joe meets his maker at the hands of the same gun (wielded by Maya who suspected him for a long time) he used to kill Claire.
All episodes of Fool Me Once season 1 are streaming on Netflix.
