The Big Little Lies finale blew viewers out of the water with the ridiculously heightened tension it managed to maintain throughout. (Spoiler alert!) But Sunday night's revelatory episode wasn't surprising to everybody watching. Those who read the Lianne Moriarty novel upon which the HBO series was based knew what was coming — and so did eagle-eyed viewers with a penchant for solving murder mysteries and a special eye for deciphering the silhouettes of very tall Swedish actors.
You might remember that back in the second episode, Jane had a flashback/nightmare where she saw the man who sexually assaulted her, portrayed only in silhouette with his face not visible. If you already knew who it was — Celeste's abusive husband Perry — you might be able to tell it was Skarsgard; otherwise, you were kept in the dark. "We obviously had to shoot it in a way where I was slightly obscured" Skarsgard exmplained to TVLine. "You can’t really tell that it’s me because, obviously, you ruin the show if you find that out early on...we tried to do it in a way that didn’t [spoil] it."
But people familiar with Skarsgard's outline became suspicious that the Swede was the man in the shadows. "A lot of friends reached out after watching that episode and were like, 'Hey, wait a minute…,' the actor said. More surprisingly, one of interviewer Michael Ausiello's colleagues at TVLine recognized Skarsgard in that scene. "Wow, she knows my silhouette pretty well," Skarsgard laughed in reaction. "I don’t even think my mom recognized me when she saw that episode."
Something tells us he is underestimating his mother. Maybe Mrs. Skarsgard was just trying to spare her son's feelings in playing along with the charade all season.