Who is the killer in The Crow Girl? The twist, explained
Paramount+'s six-part Bristol-set thriller, released on 16 January 2025 and based on Erik Axl Sund's bestselling Swedish trilogy, saves its biggest reveal for the final minutes. If you've finished it — or just want the answer — here's the twist, unpacked. Spoilers, obviously.
The short answer
The killer is Victoria Burkeman. The twist: Victoria and Dr Sophia Craven (Katherine Kelly) — the psychologist helping the police hunt the killer — are the same person. Victoria has dissociative identity disorder, and "Sophia" is one of her identities. DCI Jeanette Kilburn (Eve Myles) has been working the case alongside the murderer all along.
How the twist works
Throughout the series, Victoria (played in flashback by Clara Rugaard) appears to be Sophia's mysterious, damaged patient. The finale reveals there is no patient. Years of horrific childhood abuse fractured Victoria's mind — her father, Ben Burkeman, assaulted her repeatedly, fathered her daughter Madeleine, and told her the baby had died. When Ben killed Madeleine by pushing her down the stairs, Victoria took her revenge.
Her kills, as far as season 1 shows:
- Ben Burkeman — her abuser father, burned alive in the house that was her prison.
- Carl Lowry — a self-confessed paedophile, stabbed to death in his hospital bed.
- The bodies she moved — she planted the corpses of three murdered asylum seekers (Daniel Rexha, 17; Faisal Qureshi, 21; Samuel Osman, 18) to point police at the men responsible.
Revenge kills, all of them — aimed at men who, in her mind, deserved it.
Even the cast were floored
Eve Myles didn't see it coming either. Speaking to TV Insider in 2025, she recalled her reaction when she and Katherine Kelly read the script:
"Wow, that is cheeky. That is cheeky, cheeky."
The last minutes pile it on.
Jeanette — marriage over, partner exposed as corrupt — kisses Sophia, falling for the very person she's been hunting. And then the camera shows us what Jeanette can't see: Sophia has her own mother tied up in a hidden closet. The credits read "to be continued".
What it sets up
Series 2 — confirmed by Paramount+ in September 2025 and arriving on 20 July 2026 — picks up the morning after, with Jeanette in bed with Sophia and a new case involving a mummified body in a church wall. Sophia's secret is still intact.
For the record: the source novels were originally a trilogy, later merged into one volume — so the show has plenty of darkness left to mine.