ALL HER FAULT

Every once in a while, a show completely gets me, and All Her Fault was that show for me. It became one of my favorite series of the last few years very quickly because the story starts with something so simple and normal and turns it into every parent’s nightmare.

Marissa arrives to pick up her son from a playdate, but the woman who opens the door is a stranger and her son is gone. From that moment, everything changes. The show is obviously about finding out what happened, but what interested me just as much is everything around that mystery: motherhood, guilt, judgment, relationships, secrets, and the pressure to keep life looking normal when it is anything but normal.

Sarah Snook is incredible as Marissa. I already loved her in Succession, but this role feels completely different. She shows the panic of a mother who realizes something is terribly wrong, but also how quickly that panic can turn into focus when she knows she has to do something.

What I liked is that Marissa never feels like a perfect character. She is scared, exhausted, angry, desperate, and sometimes not sure who she can trust. That makes the story much more believable because nobody would behave perfectly in a situation like this.

The suburban setting makes everything even more uncomfortable. On the outside, the neighborhood looks safe and normal, but very quickly we see how little people actually know about one another. And I think this is one of the most interesting things to talk about with mature teens. We all see certain versions of people. Friends show us one side, neighbors show us another, and even families can keep things from each other.

Teens know this very well because so much of their social life also happens through carefully chosen versions of people. Someone can look happy, confident, successful, or completely fine while something very different is happening underneath. We can talk with our teens about how much they think we can really know someone from what they show us. And what makes them start feeling that something about a person or situation does not feel right?

The show also made me think a lot about intuition. Marissa has to decide very quickly who to trust, what to believe, and when something feels wrong even before she has proof. I think that can be an important conversation with teenagers because we want them to think critically, but we also want them to trust themselves when a situation feels uncomfortable. We can ask them what they would do if something did not feel right, even if everyone around them was saying everything was fine. Would they speak up? Call us? Leave? Or would they worry about seeming dramatic?

Another part that really stayed with me is the judgment Marissa faces. When something goes wrong with a child, people are very quick to ask what the parent did wrong. And I think the show understands that pressure very well. As parents, we can carry so much guilt about tiny decisions. What if I had done this differently? What if I had checked one more time? What if I had said no? All Her Fault takes that fear and pushes it to an extreme.

That can also be interesting for teens to see because they often think parents are supposed to know everything and prevent everything. But we do not. We make decisions with the information we have at that moment, and sometimes things can still go wrong. We can talk with them about that and ask if they think parents should always be responsible when something bad happens to their children, or if sometimes terrible things happen even when someone tried to do everything right.

The show is also very much about the pressure to look like everything is fine. Families, marriages, friendships, and homes can all look completely normal from the outside while something much more complicated is happening underneath.

That part felt very real to me. We are all so used to seeing polished versions of other people’s lives that it can be easy to forget how little we actually know.

For mature teens, this can be a good way to talk about appearances and how quickly we judge people based on what we see.

The emotional intensity is high, so I would not recommend All Her Fault for every teenager. The subject of a missing child is very heavy, and some teens may find it too upsetting. But for mature teens who are comfortable with darker thrillers, I think there is a lot to talk about here around trust, intuition, family, guilt, judgment, and how people behave when their normal life suddenly disappears.

For me, Sarah Snook is one of the biggest reasons the show works so well. She carries so much of the fear and emotional pressure without making it feel exaggerated.

All Her Fault is tense, emotional, and very difficult to stop watching. But what stayed with me most was not only the mystery. It was how quickly one moment can change the way we see the people around us and how much strength people can find when they are forced into a situation they never imagined.