🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Or maybe it was whoever wrote the Pretty Little Liars theme song. Either one. Regardless, the adage holds especially true in Dead to Me, which is on one hand a thoughtful meditation on female friendship, grief, rage and vulnerability, and on the other, a series about two women who have a lot of secrets and are extremely bad at keeping them.

To catch you up: Oddball caretaker Judy (Linda Cardellini) accidentally kills Ted, the husband of Southern California realtor Jen (Christina Applegate), in a hit-and-run, then befriends Jen out of guilt. It takes less than one season for Judy to admit the truth to her new friend, and not quite another season for Jen to reveal a different major homicidal secret to Judy. But they’re not the only ones on this show who hide important things from the people they love: Read on as we tally the first two seasons’ worth of secrets and find out who is holding on to the most incendiary intel.

Secret: Ted’s killer is actually Judy (and Steve).
As we learn in the second episode, Judy was behind the wheel when she accidentally hit and killed Ted. As we learn later on in the season, she would have stopped the car, but her controlling fiancé Steve (James Marsden), who was in the passenger seat, urged her to flee the scene. Judy eventually confesses her involvement in Ted’s death to Jen, fracturing their relationship, but they do reconcile.

Keeper: Judy and Steve

Secret: Judy’s fiancé isn’t dead.
Jen and Judy meet at a grief support group after both losing their partners — only Judy’s ex, Steve, is not dead at all. It takes less than an episode for Jen to discover Judy’s lie, although it’s later revealed that Judy has in fact experienced serious loss, in the form of multiple miscarriages.

Keeper: Judy

Secret: Jen’s husband is Ted.
The audience knows this already, but Steve doesn’t learn the truth for several episodes, well after hiring Jen to sell his house. Judy keeps this secret for a reason: She knows he’ll hold it over her head when he finds out the truth (and that’s exactly what happens).

Keeper: Judy

Secret: Ted was cheating on Jen.
When Jen logs in to her husband’s gaming account, she discovers messages from a woman with the screen name Bambi88. Jen and Judy learn that Ted had been cheating on her for a year and a half — and that he had lied to Bambi, too, telling her that his very alive wife had died of cancer.

Keeper: Ted

Secret: Ted wasn’t out jogging the night of his death.
It takes until nearly the end of the first season for Jen to admit what happened the night of her husband’s death: They’d had a huge fight about Ted not wanting sex after she’d undergone a double mastectomy, and Jen punched him in the face. That’s why he left that night — and one of the reasons Jen’s taking his death so hard is because she feels responsible for it. It’s this revelation that inspires Judy to confess that she’s the one who killed him.

Keeper: Jen

Jen and Judy’s Mega Messy Friendship in Dead to MeLies, guilt and secrets build a totally healthy relationship, right?

Secret: Jen killed Steve.
Judy, who has information about Steve’s criminal activities, tips off the cops, then cleans out their shared bank account. Steve storms into Jen’s yard looking for Judy, and Jen pulls her gun on him. When Judy arrives at Jen’s house, she sees Steve floating facedown in the pool, dead. Keeping (and covering up) this secret motivates much of Season 2’s action.

Keeper: Jen and Judy

Secret: Steve has a twin brother, Ben.
Okay, so it’s not like anyone purposely keeps this first secret of Season 2 from Jen — it’s not the kind of thing that would’ve come up in conversation, really — but it’s still shocking when someone with the face of the man she killed shows up on her doorstep.

Keeper: Judy (seriously, Judy, let’s try to be a little more forthcoming)

Secret: Steve laundered money for the Greek mafia.
Detective Perez (Diana Maria Riva), who is investigating Ted’s death, warns Jen that Judy has more red flags than your roommate’s ex and that Steve is bad news. After she leaves, Judy confesses that Perez was right, at least on the Steve front: He was in deep with the Greek mafia. This certainly feels like something she should’ve shared with Jen at some point. Ideally before Jen, y’know, killed Steve.

Keeper: Judy, again

Secret: The location of Steve’s body
The deep freezer in the garage might be the most logical place to store a dead body, but it’s certainly not the safest. Jen and Judy ultimately bury him in the Angeles National Forest.

Keeper: Jen and Judy

Secret: Jen is $30,000 in debt.
When you’re dealing with grief, some things fall by the wayside. Even (or especially) important things, like paying your bills. Jen stops paying hers, to the tune of about $30,000 — and her mother-in-law Lorna (Valerie Mahaffey) isn’t helping much. (Steve screwing Jen out of a condo deal doesn’t help either). This isn’t the worst secret of the bunch, but it’s definitely relevant to Jen’s state of mind.

Keeper: Jen

Secret: Detective Perez knows the truth.
Overcome with guilt, Jen confesses to Steve’s murder. She and Perez head to the forest to try to find his body, but they can’t. Perez knows Steve was a bad guy — all of his criminal associates are in jail — and essentially tells Jen that she’s going to step back from this case and let karma work itself out.

Keeper: Perez

Secret: Judy has a stash of money.
Judy spends the second season searching for her paintings, which were seized from Steve’s art gallery. When Perez finally returns them, Judy proceeds to destroy them — revealing many $100 bills inside. Like the Bluth family’s banana stand, Judy’s paintings stored value in a very literal sense. Judy uses the cash to buy out Lorna’s share of Jen’s house, and to buy Jen’s teenage son Charlie a car.

Keeper: Judy

Secret: Jen didn’t kill Steve in self-defense.
It makes sense for Judy to assume that Steve, an established bad guy, had threatened Jen’s life the night she killed him — and that’s what Jen leads her friend to believe. But it’s not true, as she eventually confesses to her bestie — she’d hit Steve over the head in a fit of rage. It isn’t an easy truth to hear, but Judy reassures Jen that Steve had goaded her with abusive language similar to how he’d always treated Judy.

Keeper: Jen

Secret: Ben relapses and crashes into Jen and Judy in another hit-and-run.
In the second season finale, as Judy and Jen drive Charlie’s new car back from the dealership, a driver slams into them. It’s Ben, and there’s a bottle of whiskey in his passenger seat. He drives off before the women regain consciousness.

Keeper: Ben, a newcomer in the secret-keeping club

So, who’s keeping the most secrets? 

Steve - 1

Ted - 1

Det. Perez - 1

Ben - 1

Jen - 5

Judy - 8

Plenty of people in this show are keeping things from each other, but none are as secretive as Judy. Although Jen has been keeping five secrets, and Steve, Ted, Ben and Detective Perez have one (important) secret each, the mysterious Judy’s eight secrets (and counting) make her by far the most burdened member of the Dead to Me gang. Whether she’s actually good at keeping those secrets is up for debate. Many of the truths she reveals are inconvenient specifically because she’s kept them under wraps for so long. But on the other hand, sometimes she can’t help herself from blurting out potentially incriminating information. You win some, you lose some.

Dead To Me Season 2 RecapCatch up on everything that happened before season 3.