What You Never Noticed About The Colors In Behind Her Eyes

Contains spoilers for Behind Her Eyes.

Netflix's psychological thriller limited series Behind Her Eyes has what may go down in history as the most mind-boggling TV twist of 2021 when it's revealed that Adele (Eve Hewson) is not Adele at all but Rob (Robert Aramayo), who has placed his consciousness into her body via astral projection. When it happens on the show, it seems to come out of nowhere, but it's actually cleverly foreshadowed throughout the series through the use of certain colors.

Before we get into how Behind Her Eyes hinted at what was going to happen the whole time, though, let's back up and describe what actually happens on this wild show.

A single mother named Louise (Simona Brown) gets romantically involved with her boss David (Tom Bateman) while having a friendship with his wife Adele, each one secret from the other. Adele seems to have some kind of dark recent past and was institutionalized for mental health issues a few years prior. That's how she met Rob, a heroin addict from an impoverished, loveless family who became obsessed with her.

Something is off about Adele throughout the whole show, and the mystery is what's really going on behind her eyes. By the end, it's revealed that Rob taught Adele and then Louise how to astral project — to send one's consciousness outside of one's body — and then put his own consciousness into their bodies while their consciousnesses were outside, which forces them into the body he was in. He then murders them and takes over their lives because he wants to be with David. He did it to Adele years ago, and he does it to Louise, too. The whole time we thought we were watching Adele, we were actually watching Rob.

The twist feels completely unexpected, but Behind Her Eyes actually drops a lot of hints about what's really going on throughout the show. There are clues in the dialogue (Rob saying that Adele is an "escape" from his miserable life, for one) and visual clues (just about every scene with David and Louise has a shot from a very high camera angle, which is Rob's astrally projected point of view). And there are clues in the show's color scheme.

Astrally projected consciousnesses on the show are depicted as glowing orbs. Adele's is pink, Louise's is green, and Rob's is blue. But before we even learn about the colors of the characters' souls, there's a shot of Louise's son Adam's (Tyler Howlitt) color-changing nightlight turning from green to blue. As BuzzFeed observed, this foreshadows Rob taking over Louise's body.

What's really going on is hidden in the costume choices as well. Rob-as-Adele is usually wearing blue, Rob's color. Sometimes, the blue is paired with pink, which hints at the fact that she's really two people. Louise, meanwhile, usually wears something green.

The most obvious color hint about the astral projection comes right before we see Rob and Adele's blue and pink souls, when there's a shot from Rob's floating POV where some blue light is visible around the edges of the frame. That light is even hinted at in the show's poster, which has Louise's green light front and center.

Behind Her Eyes does a great job of hinting at the truth in a way that doesn't give it away. The clues are only super-noticeable in retrospect or on a second viewing, and it's a totally different experience watching the show knowing what's really going on.