Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Echoes.Identical twins are fascinating. I get it. But having actually experienced life as a twin myself, a lot of movies and TV shows make it seem far more interesting than it actually is. Case in point: the Netflix hit showEchoes. StarringMichelle Monaghan(as both twins, of course, because there’s apparently a shortage of identical twin actors), this limited series tells the story of Gina and Leni, a pair of twins who trade lives every year on their birthday. One goes to live Gina’s glamorous life in Los Angeles, while the other stays in their hometown of Mt. Echo, Virginia, enjoying the simpler surroundings of a horse farm. The plot thickens when one twin goes missing on the eve of their birthday celebration.
As a twin, the question we’re probably asked the most is, “Have you two ever switched places?” Short answer: No. It just doesn’t work that way in real life, at least not for us. We are identical, but every time we tried to trade lives as kids, we were found out. Most people couldn’t tell us apart, but they knew when I was pretending to be my sister Amy, and she was pretending to be me. Even twins have small differences, like a freckle under the eye or a scar — or hell, even slightly different noses. I guess that’s not a problem when the same actress plays both twins. Conveniently, inEchoes, the girls' mom dies when they are young, and it’s said she was the only one who could tell them apart. Dear old dad (Michael O’Neill) apparently wasn’t nearly as observant, nor was their sister, Claudia (Ali Stroker). In this show, the only difference is that Leni wears her hair in a side braid, whereas Gina always wears her hair down in perfect blown-out waves.
That’s not to say the show isn’t entertaining… if you suspend disbelief. There is no way a husband isn’t going to notice when the person pretending to be his wife is actually her twin sister. It doesn’t matter if they inspect each other’s bodies for new freckles every year… and if there is a new one, what do they do, Magic Marker it on? That’s never explained. Even with the going over each other’s bodies (which is kind of creepy, no?), there are just certain things that a husband would notice. The sex, inevitably, is going to be different. One of them (Daniel Sunjata) does notice, but the other (Matt Bomer) is as clueless as Dad and Claudia. How could this be? Doesn’t he have to know on some level that his wife is different? My twin sister and I are best friends, extremely close, and we share everything… but noteverything. There’s definitely a cringe factor involved when you think about each twin having sex with the other’s husband. Ew.
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What ‘Echoes’ Gets Right About Being a Twin
There are some things that the show gets right in its depiction of twins, however, one being the closeness. There’s no way to adequately describe the bond that twins have. We were in the womb together, so we kind of know each other’s thoughts. I’ll probably never be closer to another person than I am to my twin. I fully understood how, in the first two episodes, Gina (… or was it Leni, playing Gina?) becomes instantly concerned when her sister doesn’t return her text messages or calls and doesn’t respond to an online diary the two share. She just knows something isn’t right with her twin. It’s an intuitional bond that we share. In another scene, Gina tells her sister in a voicemail, “There is no world without you,” and I can definitely understand that sentiment. We are our own people, with our own lives and jobs and relationships — which most twins don’t share, mind you, but we are so connected that if God forbid, I was to lose my twin, I don’t know what I would do. There wouldn’t be a world for me anymore.
By far, the best installment of this series is Episode 5, “Gina,” which gives the real Gina’s backstory. It’s a lot more interesting and easy to follow than the previous twisty, turny episodes and the ones that follow it. Gina — the original Gina, not Leni playing Gina — is conflicted about continuing to switch lives. She decides she doesn’t want to do it anymore, and for good reason. Because it’s completely freaking insane, for one, and for another, she wants to make her own life, with the person she truly loves, which isn’t the husband she left back in L.A.; it’s Dylan James (Jonathan Tucker), her teenage boyfriend. There’s a lot of action in this episode, and the twists aren’t as wholly unbelievable as they become. When her one true love dies, she doesn’t exactly grieve the way one would think. If she’d kept to the emotion she showed in Episode 5 in the following two episodes, it would’ve made more sense.
Where ‘Echoes’ Stumbles in its Depiction of Twins
The show kind of falls apart when it becomes good twin vs. evil twin. There’s always gotta be that trope in stories about twins, doesn’t there? Nothing against Monaghan, who does give some solid performances in this series, but it would be great to see actual twin actors portraying twins for once. But then, that whole identity switch wouldn’t have really worked, would it? So I can see why the showrunners made some of the decisions they did, and I can appreciate the things they got right about twins. We do have an unbreakable bond. Yes, we did have a secret language when we were kids. We can look at each other and know what the other is thinking. And we do look a lot alike — but not so much alike that we could live each other’s lives, even for a day, much less switch it up every year for 10 years.
Kudos toEchoesfor giving us a twisting, turning, just plain crazy storyline that’s obviously kept people hooked long enough to finish the series and make it #1 on Netflix for several weeks now, and the show does end in such an ambiguous way that there could conceivably be a Season 2. There’s no telling what those crazy twins will be up to next, but here’s hoping they’ll be living their own lives from now on.
