Netflix Echoes recap guide: All 7 episodes explained

Echoes is the newest Netflix original mystery-thriller limited series that will have the entire world sitting on the edge of their seat looking for clues. The series stars Michelle Monaghan as twins Leni and Gina, who switch lives to seemingly the point of no return.

When one of the twin sisters goes missing, the other is left to play both parts. For years, Leni and Gina have shared two lives, two homes, and two husbands, but Leni’s mysterious disappearance knocks down the first domino that unravels the tangled secrets of their past and present.

In her absence from the small town of Mt. Echo, a steadfast detective looks to put the messy pieces of Leni and Gina’s lives together. However, the twins have made sure to leave some key pieces of the puzzle out of reach, making for a gripping and shocking binge-watch.

Netflix Echoes recap guide

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The following episode guide contains heavy SPOILERS from the limited series, so make sure to read along as you watch. We’re breaking down all seven episodes of the new miniseries, so if you have questions or want to learn more about the show, dive right in!

Netflix Echoes episode 1 recap: Home

Echoes episode 1 introduces us to Gina McCleary (Michelle Monaghan), an in-demand publisher working in Los Angeles, happily married to her doting therapist husband Charlie (Daniel Sunjata) and in near constant contact with her identical twin sister, Leni (also Monaghan).

At least, she normally talks to Leni every single day, until recently. Leni has been off the grid for 36 hours and her husband, Jack (Matt Bomer), calls Gina to tell her the worst possible news one could get about their sibling: Leni is officially missing and Jack fears she’s been taken. Gina immediately hops on a plane to Mt. Echo, Virginia where Jack and Leni live on a peaceful and picturesque horse farm with their daughter Mattie (Gable Swanlund).

On the plane ride over, Gina continues searching for her sister anyway she can, leaving her voicemails until her inbox is full and checking Leni’s online diary, which hasn’t been updated in days.

Upon arriving, Gina immediately finds lots of things amiss at Leni’s, like her best friend, Meg, not helping with the search party and a young, blond pretty babysitter named Natasha (Maddie Nichols) looking after Mattie. She also notices that Mattie’s room has been moved down the hall since the last time she was there.

Outside, Gina catches up with Jack, who isn’t all that happy to see her there. He wants to know what Leni has told her. The last time they talked, Leni mentioned breaking in their new colt. That’s odd. Jack says they got the new colt over a month ago. It’s clear something else is amiss between Jack and Leni, but he’s not saying what just yet.

There’s also tension between Gina and the Mt. Echo sheriff, Louise Floss (Karen Robinson). It’s clear there isn’t much love lost between them and Floss alludes to Gina having gotten into some trouble when she was a teenager living in Mt. Echo with her sister and family. Floss mentions that the bolts to the stables were cut and the horses released.

There is evidence there was a least one intruder on the premises with footprints matching size 13 shoes. The stable office was also ransacked, though Jack says nothing was stolen. Leni might have been kidnapped or she could have tried rounding the horses back up and gotten lost or hurt.

Afterward, Floss fills her deputy, Paula Martinez (Rosanny Zayas), in on the McCleary family gossip. According to the town rumor mill, Gina is the troubled one, not Leni, though she does mention that there is “more than one story,” which will be a theme throughout the season. Floss says there is a good deal of silence around the McCleary family, always has been.

On the way off the property, they notice a man getting into his pick-up truck and Floss notes that she doesn’t recall seeing him at the search party. “Let’s just remember that vehicle, shall we?”

Gina stays with her dad Victor (Michael O’Neill) and other sister, Claudia (Ali Stroker). If you thought the tension between Gina and Floss was bad, it’s even worse between her and Claudia. Claudia is a wheelchair-user and I kind of get the vibe that something might have happened during the girls’ childhood that led to her being that way. Even though their dad begs for civility, Claudia ends up leaving the dinner table in a huff.

Afterward, we get an idea of what Floss meant when she said the McCleary family was surrounded by sadness. A flashback shows young Leni and Gina with their mom, who appears to have died from cancer at an early age.

Gina goes into Leni’s old bedroom and finds a doll that appears to hold some meaning to her, except its been torn apart. She confronts Claudia and her dad to find out who did it. They mention that Jack sometimes goes into that bedroom and so does Mattie, and Natasha for that matter. Gina decides to go stay at the Riverside, a motel in town, despite her father’s protests. “Something’s wrong here.”

She relays the weirdness of the situation to Charlie. He agrees that there’s a lot of weird stuff going on, like Jack hiring a babysitter with a belly piercing, moving Mattie’s room down the hall, the fact Meg is no longer speaking to Leni and now the doll, and Leni didn’t tell Gina anything about it.

But things are about to get even weirder! After calling Charlie from her car, Gina looks at the doll again and gets a sneaking suspicion related to a tree in the front yard with a pair of swings. She goes digging into the tree hollow and finds one of the doll’s missing arms with a small cross charm tied around it. Why that tree? What significance does it hold?

Once she’s at the hotel, Gina leaves another message for Leni. Since her voicemail is full, Gina records herself talking and sends an audio message through Leni’s online blog. She watches another one of Leni’s video diaries where she talks about missing Gina, wanting to give her a birthday present, but before then it’s back to working 12-hour days because they have a “lot to get ready for.” Gina hones in on Leni mentioning “12-hour work days” for some reason and then goes to take a bath.

Before she can get into the water, we see another flashback. It seems like Gina witnessed something horrific involving a bathtub drowning when she was younger.

The next day, Floss starts organizing another day of searching for Leni when a horse returns with human blood on its side. Jack and Gina ride horses into the woods to look for answers and find a dead horse, shot in the head. Even stranger is that the horse had its microchip removed. Jack reveals this horse isn’t one of theirs, but they board her.

Floss can still sense something is off with this horse. The microchip was removed a while ago and Jack gets weird and touchy when she asks about why that could be and whether he has paperwork for this horse. It sounds like they were boarding a stolen horse and that Jack knew it was stolen. Floss advises him to find the paperwork since then they can track down its owners… which, if it is stolen, could pose a problem.

Floss asks Gina to take a walk with her after and presents her theory that Jack might be caught up in some criminal activity. Gina argues that Leni would never let Jack get involved in something like that.

Gina and Jack discuss what’s been happening and Gina mentions the video diary she saw and the 12-hour work day thing. Jack says that’s not true. Leni hasn’t been working 12-hour days, she’s barely been around at all. She’s in and out at all hours, doing god knows what. That’s why Jack hired Natasha. He needed the help.

Spiraling, Gina reaches out to Charlie for help. But she can’t make sense of what Leni was thinking. We see some flashbacks again to when Leni and Gina were kids and how they always seemed attached at the hip. Gina realizes something related to an old photo of her with her sister in front of a waterfall and heads out to that spot, but not before Jack catches her in the hallway and starts kissing her. Gina reminds him that she’s Gina, not Leni, but he doesn’t seem to care.

She pushes him off of her and goes to the waterfall, stepping into a cavern hidden behind it. Something happened there when the girls were kids. A series of flashbacks shows that Gina and Leni often switched places, as kids, as teens and… as adults. They’ve certainly got a twisted relationship.

We learn that Gina and Leni have been switching places on their birthday every year so the “Gina” we’ve been following throughout this entire episode is actually Leni. Gina is the missing twin. Leni has spent the last year in Los Angeles pretending to be Gina and Gina has been in Mt. Echo pretending to be Leni. They planned to meet again in a few days to switch again on their annual birthday vacation, this year in Lake Tahoe.

So, Leni is the one who goes into the cavern and finds that Gina has left her several mysterious clues, including more doll parts, clothes and the book she wrote called Echoes. Inside, Gina wrote a message for Leni, “Happy Birthday. You get both lives. Choose.”

Leni is thoroughly confused by this message and no closer to figuring out what her sister wants or is planning. But now she’s going to have to play both parts and the first thing she needs to do is bring Leni home so people stop looking for her. Leni ditches her Gina clothes, puts her hair in her trademark side braid and starts heading back toward the farm, stopping to knock herself out with a big rock so she can make it look like she really has been lost and injured in the woods for days.

Written by Maddy Lennon