Fool Me Once episode 3 recap: who is in Maya's house?

Emmett J Scanlan as Shane Tessier and Michelle Keegan as Maya Stern in Fool Me Once episode 3
Maya is getting closer to working out what happened to her sister. (Image credit: Netflix)

Fool Me Once episode 3 sees the plot thicken as Maya tries to work out how her sister Claire and husband Joe's murders are connected. 

Ever since the police told her the ballistics report showed that Claire and Joe were killed with the same weapon, Maya has been on a mission to find out what events led to their deaths and how they are connected. 

Episode three of the thrilling Netflix drama opens right after Maya found out at the end of episode 2 that the Burketts have been paying DS Sami Kierce every month. Still at Farnwood, Maya confronts Judith about why they are paying off the man who is investigating Joe's death, but she claims she has no idea what Maya is talking about just as Joe's brother, Neil, walks in and asks Maya for a word. 

Taking her to another room, Neil tells Maya to stop digging and not to listen to Caroline, before promptly telling her to leave. 

Meanwhile, it seems Maya isn't the only one looking into Claire's murder, because her teenage kids, Abby and Daniel, are now on a mission to find out more about their mum's past after finding photos of her pregnant back in 2003. 

The pair work out the mystery man with Claire in the photos is called Alexander Dosman and find he works at a huge company just 15 minutes from where they live. 

Michelle Keegan as Maya with a mother in law from hell, played by Joanna Lumley.

Maya confronts Judith about her family finances.  (Image credit: Netflix)

Meanwhile, Sami and Marty decide to question Eddie about Joe's death, convinced that he could be a missing link between Joe, Claire and their deaths. But when they find him, he claims he was at the gym the night Joe was killed. But is he telling the truth? 

Maya talks to her friend Eva about the fact Claire was speaking to someone on a burner phone at a games arcade, and they're both baffled until Maya realizes that all Claire's calls to the number were in the morning, and the arcade doesn't open until 1 pm. Thinking this is odd, Maya goes back to the arcade place to find out more and is shocked to find the red car that has been following her in the car park. But before she can find out more, she's stopped by someone who works there who's suspicious after seeing her hanging around for a second consecutive day. 

Maya apologizes and leaves, but before she does so, she manages to plant a tracker on the red car and is soon following it after a mystery figure wearing a baseball cap gets in. A car chase starts but before Maya can get a look at the driver's face the car turns off the road and she loses them.

After asking Shane to keep an eye on her tracker on the red car, he calls her while she is teaching a helicopter flying lesson and discovers the car is only a mile from where she is. She follows the map that Shane has sent and soon is following the car from the air, but loses sight of it once again when it goes into some woodland. 

Landing the helicopter Maya follows on foot and soon finds herself thrown to the ground by two mystery men before coming face to face with Corey the whistleblower, the man who has made her life a misery since releasing video footage of a mistake she made in combat. 

Corey shocks Maya by revealing that he had been working with Claire before her death and seems genuinely upset she's dead. It turns out that Claire had gone to Corey to ask him to not release the audio part of the video of Maya, and in return, she had been giving him intel on Burkett Global, where she worked. 

Fool Me Once on Netflix stars Michelle Keegan as a grieving wife with a puzzling mystery to solve.

Maya is shocked when she finds the car that has been following her in a game arcade car park.  (Image credit: Netflix)

Corey then shocks Maya even further by revealing that after Claire's death, Joe also came to see him, but was killed just a few days before they were due to meet up in person for the first time. 

Corey is convinced that Claire and Joe had both found something incriminating at Burkett Global and that could be what led to their deaths. He also says that Claire worked out that Sami isn't the only person the Burketts have been paying off because they also have been paying someone called Tommy Dark £9000 a month for the last 26 years. 

Maya is determined to find out why and goes to see Tommy Dark at the shipping company he works for, but he isn't there. She only finds a frazzled secretary who confirms that Claire had also been there to see Tommy, but that he hasn't been at work for months and has vanished. 

Richard Armitage as Joe Burkett.

What has Joe's death got to do with Claire's murder?  (Image credit: Netflix)

Back at Bimbal, the company Claire's ex, Alexander Dosman, works for, Abby and Daniel are trying to get answers about their mum's past. They manage to track Alexander down but he doesn't seem pleased to see them and tells them to meet him at an address that evening. Which they do - but Abby goes in alone. 

Meanwhile, Sami and Marty get a match with the motorbikes that Maya said her husband's killers were riding, one has a fake number plate but the other is registered to an address which they go and visit... only to find it's Abby's football coach, Phil, answering the door. 

At the end of the episode, we see Caroline find a green shirt in Judith's house, the same one that 'Joe' was wearing in the nannycam video and was missing from his wardrobe when Maya looked in episode one. 

Later, Maya is sleeping after putting Lily to bed but has another night terror about what happened when she was in the army, and wakes to hear Lily crying but not in her bed. Terrified about what is happening to her daughter, she grabs a secret gun and heads downstairs... but what will she find?

All 8 episodes of Fool Me Once are now available to stream as a box set on Netflix. 

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Claire Crick
Assistant Managing Editor at What To Watch

Claire is Assistant Managing Editor at What To Watch and has been a journalist for over 15 years, writing about everything from soaps and TV to beauty, entertainment, and even the Royal Family. After starting her career at a soap magazine, she ended up staying for 13 years, and over that time she’s pulled pints in the Rovers Return, sung karaoke in the Emmerdale village hall, taken a stroll around Albert Square, and visited Summer Bay Surf Club in sunny Australia. 

After learning some tricks of the trade at websites Digital Spy, Entertainment Daily, and Woman & Home, Claire landed a role at What’s On TV and whattowatch.com writing about all things TV and film, with a particular love for Aussie soaps, Strictly Come Dancing and Bake Off

She’s interviewed everyone from June Brown — AKA Dot Cotton — to Michelle Keegan, swapped cooking tips with baking legend Mary Berry backstage at the NTAs, and danced the night away with soap stars at countless awards bashes. There’s not a lot she doesn’t know about soaps and TV and can be very handy when a soapy question comes up in a pub quiz! 

As well as all things soap-related, Claire also loves running, spa breaks, days out with her kids, and getting lost in a good book.