(Credits: Netflix)

Fresh off a high-profile case, investigative journalist Laura ‘Lo’ Blacklock embarks on her journey, smugly assuming the story to be a puff piece and looking forward to it serving as a much-needed break. But once you get on board the Aurora Borealis in The Woman in Cabin 10 on Netflix, you start with more questions than you can find answers for.

Speaking to Tudum about her character arc, Keira Knightley says, “She’s a very serious journalist who initially is incredibly embarrassed about going on a superyacht cruise and writing about these people, and then discovers that there’s more to the story than she thought.”

After a night of drinking, Lo hears a faded kerfuffle in the cabin next to her, which leads her to witness a woman falling overboard, but when she informs the cruise workers and the guest, she finds it hard to have them believe her, with some even questioning her credibility following the last case she took up.

But how does she get out of this trap, and how does it all end for Lo in The Woman in Cabin 10 on Netflix? Let’s dive in.

Is there really a woman in cabin 10?

When Lo arrives on the Aurora Borealis in this psychological thriller, she’s already grappling with a lot. She saw her lead from the last case being murdered in front of her eyes, and somehow, she feels the need to shoulder the blame. “She has that career-low moment that people have. That’s it, it’s over for me, I can’t recover from this,” director Simon Stone explains.

To offer her a moment of respite, Lo’s friend and editor Rowan suggests she take the cover story for the Aurora as a distraction and distance from the negativity she’s been steaming in. But upon reaching, she becomes embroiled in a mystery she can barely wrap her head around. While going out for dinner, she suddenly spots her ex-boyfriend Ben with another woman, and to avoid bumping into them, she sneaks into the door right behind, which turns out to be the titular cabin 10. There, she has a chance encounter with an enigmatic woman in a hoodie whom she doesn’t really pay much attention to until she falls overboard at midnight.

Lo doesn’t waste any time calling the security team, led by Sigrid, but when they find no discrepancies in the headcount, they cease the investigation. In fact, after Lo tells them about the guest in cabin 10, she’s told that nobody had been in the cabin as the booking had been cancelled just two days prior, leaving her fellow passengers to raise eyebrows about the truth of her claims.

She still holds on to what she saw, and what convinces her even more is when someone writes “STOP” on her spa-room mirror, followed by a near-fatal push into the pool in an attempt to drown her. Even in that, owner of the yacht Richard Bullmer and Lo’s fellow passengers keep questioning her sanity, blaming her for being drunk.

Showrunner Stone never really wanted the audience to think twice about the protagonist’s convictions, and soon enough, it becomes clear that Lo isn’t seeing things, and this isn’t just another episode, as she spots the woman from the cabin in a photograph Ben clicked at one of Richard’s parties.

Who killed the woman in cabin 10?

Before Lo saw the woman fall overboard on the fateful night, she met with Richard’s wife, the cancer-stricken Anne, on the cruise headed to a charity gala in Norway to raise funds for cancer research. Anne was the one who had invited Lo, being a fan of her work, but also with the intent of asking her for a favour: she wanted Lo to read her speech for the gala, which declares that she intends to give away all her fortune to the charitable cause.

But when Lo meets Anne after the incident, she’s shocked to see the latter behaving differently, which was because it was not the real Anne after all. The woman in cabin 10 was actually Carrie, who had been swapped with Anne after the cruise incident, meaning it was Anne who died that night after being overthrown and killed by Richard in an attempt to reclaim the fortune she intended to donate.

Richard found Anne’s doppelganger Carrie with the help of Lars Jensen’s facial recognition software, hiring her to pose as his wife, rewrite her will, and allocate Richard as the heir to the full allowance of her estate. However, a murder was never part of the plan for the impersonator, so in a desperate attempt, Carrie abducts Lo, putting her in the below-decks cabin to prevent her from searching for answers, before she finally manages to escape. Yet, the conversation she has had with Lo keeps ringing in her ears before she signs the will, making her hesitant about believing whether she would live once she had done the deed.

What happens to Lo?

During her attempt to escape the yacht and find her way to the gala, something truly tragic takes place. Ben, who’s still doubtful about Bullmer’s explanations, decides to stay back and finds her amidst her struggle to escape Richard’s men, who are on a mission to silence her. However, Mehta ends up stabbing him with a syringe meant for Lo, leading to a tragedy we weren’t prepared for.

Lo somehow manages to swim to the shore to the gala, where she goes through the speech Anne intended her to deliver before she was murdered. Although Bullmer tries to reassure the guests that it’s not a story to be believed, Carrie, who’s still impersonating Anne, confesses to the truth. In a fit of rage, Bullmer takes her hostage with a knife to her neck and tries to escape, but Sigrid ultimately takes her shot with a hunting rifle while Lo knocks him out.

Despite how everything turns out, Lo and Carrie both have a clean slate to start on, and Anne’s estate is donated to charity, as per her wishes.