The concept of the show involves weekly eliminations, where one person leaves and the rest can form new pairings. Shortly after settling in, one contestant is voted off, and the production team leaves the island for the night, heading back to their boat.
That same night, a heavy storm swept through, causing major destruction on the island and leading to the deaths of one contestant and one crew member who remained behind. With eight contestants left, they find themselves trapped without sufficient food, water, or equipment, and no way to contact anyone.
No phones, no help, just eight strangers and rising fear (Photo: One Perfect Couple/Netflix)As they try to endure the hardship and hold on to the hope of being rescued, they begin to die one after the other. Someone among them has no intention of letting them all survive.
Key characters involved
Baz acts as the executive producer of the show, while Camille holds another producer role. The story is narrated by Lyla, a virologist with a PhD, who is in a relationship with Nico, an actor trying to revive his fading career by joining the show.
Four other couples are part of the cast: Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana. Angel, a stylish woman from France, once dreamed of becoming a Formula One driver. Her partner, Bayer, has dark hair, a very muscular build, and talks about his weightlifting routine during their first conversation.
Romi, who has a cheerful personality and blonde hair, is a YouTube content creator. Her partner Joel is an academic, wears glasses, and works as a university lecturer. Santana, who is visually appealing and has strawberry blonde hair, is diabetic.
Her partner Dan has a relaxed surfer style. Lyla discovers early that Dan is gay and only pretending to be with Santana so she could be cast on the show. Conor stands out physically as a tall and athletic man known for running a YouTube channel filled with controversial opinions.
His partner, Zana, is the youngest cast member and generally quiet.
Events in Part I and Part II of One Perfect Couple
Upon arriving at the island, the participants are made to complete a challenge that tests how well they know their partners. Lyla emerges as the winner for correctly answering the most questions about Nico, but Nico ends up eliminated. While departing, he lashes out at Lyla for ruining his chances.
Nico boards the crew boat, which is set to return the following morning. Lyla and Joel are sent to a special location—the water villa—situated across a jetty from the island’s main area. A terrible storm hits that night, isolating Lyla and Joel in the water villa when the jetty collapses.
The next morning, they swim across and find that the villa where Joel and Romi stayed has been destroyed, and Romi is dead. They also discover a deceased crew member—the only one who didn’t leave the island. After burying the two bodies, they realise only eight contestants are left.
With the crew boat missing and no communication, the group searches for necessities, managing to gather only limited food and fresh water. Lyla stumbles upon a radio but cannot get it to connect to anyone. Arguments arise between Bayer and Conor regarding how the supplies should be handled.
Conor insists on strict rationing, but Bayer disagrees. Conor uses boards to partially repair the jetty, making it risky but passable. That night, Conor transfers all supplies to the water villa, gaining full control over them. When Bayer confronts him, they get into a physical altercation that ends with Conor beating Bayer to death.
The rest are shaken and fearful of what Conor might do next. Seven contestants now remain. Dan becomes increasingly wary of Conor having full control over the resources. When Santana discovers her insulin is missing, Dan becomes enraged and goes to challenge Conor.
He later goes missing, and Conor denies seeing him. Dan’s body later washes up on the shore. During his burial, Lyla finds a vial of Santana’s insulin in his hand, indicating that Dan was deliberately killed. She informs Joel, who behaves in a way that makes Lyla suspect he might be assisting Conor.
Only six contestants remain now. Joel eventually disappears, and the women start thinking he might be dead. Conor refuses to give them water unless they gather eight coconuts, which are still unripe. Lyla observes that Conor appears better nourished and hydrated than everyone else, suggesting he’s consuming more than his share.
While Zana climbs a tree to collect coconuts, she spots a boat in the distance. The women quickly build a fire to send smoke signals, but Conor doesn’t participate. The boat sails away without stopping.
Events in Part III of One Perfect Couple
Once Zana is seen with a bruise on her eye, it confirms what the women feared—Conor has been abusing her. They begin to understand that Conor might be willing to eliminate all of them just to preserve the remaining supplies and ensure no one can reveal his past actions, especially Bayer’s murder.
Santana decides to use her last insulin vial as a weapon to kill Conor. She stabs him with the syringe, but he wakes and viciously beats her. Zana then attacks him and pushes him into the sea, where she drowns him. Lyla joins in to help Zana and later wakes up on the beach. Conor and Joel are both dead now.
Four people are left. Angel makes use of her knowledge about vehicle batteries to generate a weak power supply for the radio, and she’s able to connect with a small ship that agrees to come help. Zana starts to worry she’ll be charged for killing Conor, and the women decide to create a story that would clear her name.
They ask Zana to write a fake diary where the events are portrayed as accidents, and Conor is presented as a heroic figure. This way, the authorities will have no reason to suspect that anyone had a motive to kill Conor.
What follows after their rescue
A ship eventually reaches the island and evacuates the remaining four survivors to Jakarta. There, they discover that the crew boat had gone missing at sea. They also learn that Baz had a personal vendetta against Conor because his niece had taken her own life due to something Conor did.
Baz had designed the show in a way that would make Conor expose his true character by surrounding him with people who would draw it out. Unfortunately, with Zana’s false diary now accepted as truth, the world will never discover who Conor was.
When Lyla gets back home and reactivates her phone, she is overwhelmed by a flood of messages. Among them are several from Nico, sent hours after his elimination. In those, he expresses regret, apologises for his behaviour, and says he still loves her but understands he must let her go.
The story ends with Santana reaching out to Lyla to ask if she is alright. For the first time, Lyla feels like she might be okay.
My thoughts about how One Perfect Couple ended
You shouldn’t approach this expecting any surprise revelations. After Dan is found dead, it becomes obvious that Conor is the killer, and the author doesn’t attempt to hide that from the audience or the characters. What keeps the tension alive is Conor’s menacing presence and the constant threat of hunger and thirst.
A love story turns survival tale under a shattered sky (Photo: One Perfect Couple/Netflix)Conor is not portrayed as cunning, but he’s frightening in how he only thinks of himself and his intimidating physical build. Apart from Bayer, he’s the most physically dominant man there, and he eliminates the male contestants first, leaving the women vulnerable.
Conor is eventually shown to be a prejudiced and misogynistic online figure, making it difficult to feel any sympathy for him. His death doesn’t stir any sadness. I did find it odd that it took so long for anyone to realise he was hoarding more than his share of rations.
His actions made that obvious. The sequence of deaths also lacked tension. Each time someone left the group, it was safe to assume they wouldn’t make it back. Although the book is marketed as drawing inspiration from Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, it does not carry the same weight as that classic.
Both stories take place on islands where people start dying, but Christie’s version featured complex planning and strong motivations behind each death, along with a gripping mystery about who the culprit was and how everything was done.
In this case, Baz simply brought the cast together to expose Conor’s behaviour, with no murder plan involved. Conor took lives when it suited him, such as in the cases of Dan, Joel, and Bayer. The marketing comparison to Christie’s novel feels misleading and doesn’t reflect the actual tone or structure of this story.
The most striking part of the book comes from the way it paints the setting and details the emotional and physical breakdown the characters go through in their struggle to survive. You could feel the desperation as food and water supplies dropped.
Although some wild fruits and fish were available, there was no proper source of clean water and no method for desalination, which made survival look almost impossible. The deaths didn’t leave a lasting impression—except for Bayer’s, which was deeply disturbing because Lyla witnessed it directly.
The other deaths happened away from the reader’s view, and that made them feel vague, especially in Dan’s case, where the murder wasn’t immediately confirmed, and Joel’s death wasn’t known until after Conor had also died.
