The Girl Before Ending Presents a Vital Truth About Abusers

Warning: contains spoilers for all episodes of The Daughter Before, available to stream at present on BBC iPlayer.

If you had to place a bet on the more likely murderer between a) a wealthy perfectionist who's creepily obsessed with decision-making women who look exactly like his dead married woman, or b) some sadsack everyman who got dumped for being too needy, your money would clearly be on the rich weirdo.

In BBC thriller The Girl Before , builder Edward Monkford played by David Oyelowo is the one who sets off the danger siren. Handsome, moodily intense, wearer of designer suits… with his quasi-contractual sex activity arrangements and expensive gifts, this mod-mean solar day Bluebeard is your classic on-screen danger to women (which is to say, the perfect 1980s romantic film atomic number 82). When his tenant/lover Emma dies subsequently falling downwardly the stairs of his chic, minimalist home, of course he was the one who pushed her. Who else would it be? Her mopey ex, Simon?

Information technology was her mopey ex, Simon, played by Ben Hardy. Until the finale, compared to the evident threat posed by Edward in The Girl Before , Simon had set off no alarm signals. He was the undecayed 1 that Emma (played past Jessica Plummer) tossed bated for a sexier and more thrilling option that she'd surely come to regret. Simon would never hurt Emma, he worshipped her. He thought she was perfect.

The Girl Before David Oyelowo as Edward Monkton

While Edward'southward every motility with Emma and her successor Jane (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) in his scarily pristine property screamed 'NOPE' – in the JP Delaney-written book, he takes them to a eatery that serves live seafood. A nonetheless-flapping fish and squirming new-born shrimp. I ask you lot – Simon seemed similar the safe selection. Emma and Jane'south therapist warned them well-nigh the control freak stuck in a bicycle of repetition coercion, simply said not a word about the flowers-and-pining guy waiting effectually for a second run a risk. All the improve for a thriller to surprise an audition with. The Girl Earlier 's Simon revelation though, is more than only a twist– it's instructive. It teaches that men who kill women aren't larger-than-life villains bedecked in red flags. They can be ordinary. They tin exist nice guys.

In The Girl Before 'southward finale, Emma and Jane'south timelines play out next as Simon is revealed to be Emma's killer. Abandoned by Edward, traumatised from her sexual assault by Saul and the burglary, and threatened by Ray Nelson and his associates, Emma turned to Simon for back up. He'd engineered things to make Emma need him, using a replacement bracelet to enter the house and graffiti it to scare her. He fought off an attack by Ray Nelson in the middle of the night, which he could do because he was the one secretly sleeping in the service cupboard, which he'd dressed to make information technology look like Emma was hiding from Edward there, scratching the word 'Assist' into the wall.

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As the dark of Emma's expiry plays out, years later, a significant-by-Edward Jane welcomes Simon over for dinner. He brings flowers and talks virtually how much he loved Emma. He was planning a big wink mob-style proposal. "She would definitely have said yep with all those people watching," he tells Jane, which rings a that'due south-a-weirdly-manipulative-way-to-put-information technology warning bell in the viewer'due south mind.

That alarm bells prompts viewers to remember Emma telling Simon that she felt trapped in their relationship, that it was suffocating for him to put her on a pedestal. We remember him calling her a supermodel and repeatedly telling her she was perfect. We remember the jokey 'Best Girlfriend Ever' mug he unpacked when they moved into One Folgate Street. Nosotros remember his response to learning that she'd been raped – insecurity that she hadn't felt able to tell him rather than business organization for her. We remember the fact that he couldn't perform sexually subsequently he knew about her set on, because the idea of her rapist put him off. And then at that place were the obsessive phone calls, flowers and refusal to have her conclusion on their relationship. And there was Emma telling her therapist that Simon seeing himself every bit her protective hero started long earlier the burglary from which he fantasised about rescuing her. And the fact that Simon's best friend Saul was a rapist. And the 'test' Simon set for Emma to prove her loyalty, when he propositioned her by text posing equally Edward…

All of those 'ands' add together upwardly to an insecure character who idealised Emma and didn't care for her as a person in her own right, only every bit a perfect prize to boost his ego. When she told him how he felt, he wouldn't credit it, only telling her she was vulnerable because of her set on. Her mind had been poisoned, said Simon, not entertaining the possibility that she knew what she wanted and it wasn't him. How unlike is that actually, asks The Girl Before , from Edward Monkford's obsessive perfectionism and inability to take that Emma and Jane as people rather than prop-replacements for his dead wife? Simon may not take come with all of Edward'due south scarlet flags, merely in the end, he was just as dangerous.

The Girl Before Jessica Plummer Ben Hardy

Simon's misogyny erupts in the finale after Jane realises what he is, and runs to hide in the service closet. "Yous're a good liar, aren't you? Just like every woman I've e'er fucking met," he shouts. "Really, you lot're the ones with all the fucking power." That comment prompts Jane to retrieve she'south in the room with the server, which Simon had pre-emptively used to turn off the house's cameras, only as he did on the night he killed Emma. Jane uses the controls against Simon, turning off the lights and diggings Joy Sectionalization'due south 'Beloved Will Tear Us Apart' (nothing'southward as well on-the-nose for this high-contrast thriller) to distract him while she tries to escape. As he prepares to burn down the business firm, she runs out, they fight, she hits him with her pearl necklace and he falls down the stairs but similar Emma, dying instantly on the flooring. Poetic justice.

After Simon dies, Jane calls Edward but refuses his suggestion of covering it all up and pretending that Simon killed himself. She wants there to exist no more than secrets and plans to tell all to the police. Later, Edward takes Jane to a termination clinic, promising that they'll try for another infant at a better fourth dimension. She opts out of the procedure and leaves Edward a note and her house security bracelet along with the number of the therapist who knows their whole story so he can get help breaking out of his repetition compulsion. Some fourth dimension later, Jane's had their son Toby, and is living happily alone away from Folgate Street, with a new chore working for a still-birth charity. Did Edward intermission his cycle? Judging from the letting agent spiel that ends the serial equally information technology began, he did not.

In the end, Jane kept Emma's quartz stone – the only of Emma'southward possessions to remain in the house and a kind of talisman for both women – resting on the framed footprint of her still-born daughter Isabel, the daughter before. Thanks to Jane, Emma's rapist Saul was arrested, and her true killer was revealed – non the obvious lights-flashing, sirens-whirling villain but the supposedly nice guy who worshipped the ground she walked on, and wouldn't permit her belong to anybody else, least not herself.

The Girl Earlier is bachelor to stream now on BBC iPlayer.