The Perfect Couple on Netflix, with its impressive cast, has become the must watch series of the weekend and had us all binging it and romping through the entire thing to urgently find out who the hell killed Merritt. But in case you didn’t even know this info, The Perfect Couple is actually adapted from the book of the same name by Elin Hilderbrand. And whilst the Netflix version of The Perfect Couple is a pretty faithful adaptation from the source material, the killer ending does completely stray from the book and here’s why it all got changed when it was made for TV!

MAJOR spoilers for The Perfect Couple ahead.

How The Perfect Couple wraps up in the book

In the book version of events, it is still Merritt who dies and who is still the focus of the entire mystery of the plot – but with one massive change. Instead of it being an intentional murder, the death of Merritt is actually an accident. Abby is still the one who drugs the drink, but she didn’t actually mean to do it. Abby’s target is a character in the book called Featherleigh who didn’t exist in the Netflix version.

Featherleigh returns to the house after a few are having a last drink and Abby believes that she’s getting a drink for herself, but she’s actually getting it for Merritt. It’s too late though, Abby has already put the pill in the drink.

How The Perfect Couple wraps up in the Netflix show

During the TV adaptation, it is obviously still Abby that kills Merritt but she does so with malicious intent. She does so because Merritt is pregnant with Tag’s baby, so she plans to get rid of her so she can inherit the money when Will turns 18. The money from the Winbury brothers’ trust fund would have been kept away for another 18 years if Merritt gave birth.

Right… but why the change?

Well, we’ve actually got an explanation on why this change was made from the cast and crew of The Perfect Couple. Director and showrunner Susanne Brier explained to Tudum that she “wouldn’t have done the series if the murder wasn’t intentional.” The team were free to make the change with the blessing of Elin Hilderbrand. Nicole Kidman revealed “Whenever you’re translating something to a series, you do have to have some creative license. Which is what Elin said, ‘Please, take it and create it in its own form.’”

Jenna Lamia, showrunner and writer, revealed that during production all the produces reached an agreement and “all agreed right then and there [that] there needed to be a murderer, and there needed to be a motive for that murder.”

The Perfect Couple changing the ending from the book does make it much juicier, tbh. I’m team Netflix on this one.