Harlan Coben Reveals the ‘Final Twist’ Premiere Moment That Made Him ‘Well Up’ (Exclusive)

Many of the cases in Harlan Coben’s Final Twist do not have hopeful endings, but Season 2’s premiere, “Betsy’s Trust,” concluded on a relatively high note — considering there were still multiple murders involved in the story. “Some episodes don’t have any light, but this one had a little bit,” Harlan Coben said to TV Insider.

In keeping with the styling of the mystery author’s first docuseries, the episode was filled with surprises — especially for those who didn’t follow the case at hand in real time — right until the very last moment.

Tracing the complex case of Betsy Faria, a terminally ill woman whose husband came home from a night out with friends to find his wife stabbed to death and suspected it was a suicide. Despite having an airtight alibi, he, Russell Faria, was convicted of her murder in 2013, despite insisting he had nothing to do with it.

Later, while Russell’s defense lawyer mounted a case for appeal, the unexpected happened: Another woman, Pam Hupp, emerged as a key suspect in Betsy’s murder after she called 9-1-1 to report being attacked in her home, and police later concluded that she’d staged the scene by luring an intellectually disabled man to her home, stabbing him to death, and making it look like he was getting revenge against her on behalf of Russell. Why would he do this? Well, as it turned out, Hupp had been renamed as the beneficiary of Betsy’s life insurance claim.

To make the entire thing even weirder, Hupp was videotaped luring another woman, Carol, from her home, claiming she was going to pay her to create soundbites for a news program. Fortunately for that woman, she managed to outwit Hupp and get back to her home in one piece, with her newly-installed video cameras proving to be vital in more ways than one.

CBS

The capper of it all was that, after Russell was later exonerated of the murders, he and Carol fell in love and got married to each other after being connected by the case.

For Coben, this development was the thing that really made him emotional about the story.

“This particular case, especially, it had craziness. There’s moments of genuine emotion, a final twist… Even I didn’t see coming. The first time I read that story, I was like, ‘What? He found what at the end?’” he remembered. “Even though I knew the story and all that, when I watched the episode cut up, and I saw it in that part where Russ just comes in and sits down, I actually welled up when he finds love… I know love in this one seems to me to be the biggest surprise here. While this is a devastating tragedy for, obviously, for all involved, there sometimes can still be a little light in that dark, and that was really important for us to represent it in this particular episode.”

Harlan Coben’s Final Twist, Mondays, 10/9c, CBS