WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Season 1 of The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, now streaming on Netflix.
In Netflix's The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, there are quite a few comedic arcs that poke fun at movies in this genre regarding snoopy housewives. As Kristen Bell's Anna blurred the lines between dream and reality, though, the wine-addict began investigating a possible murder mystery that veered more into the psychological drama/thriller realm. In the process, the eight episodes of Season 1 turned its longest-running gag into a very dark twist.
This revolved around Buell, the handyman, and Anna's mailbox. For the entire season, Buell worked on it, which was weird as he never got it fixed. Anna, who lost her daughter Elizabeth, and got separated from her therapist husband, Douglas, didn't mind though as she liked having his comforting presence around.
Still, it was odd that Buell never made progress and was always there, hovering as if he was spying on Anna. But things got way creepy in Episode 7, when Anna realized her rival next door, Lisa, was truly murdered and someone framed her by putting one of her kitchen knives at the scene. This had her wondering who'd have access to her kitchen.
When Anna finally worked up the courage to go into her attic upstairs, she called Douglas as she discovered Buell had been sleeping there all along. This wrecked her because she thought there was a ghost upstairs, but the noise was Buell scurrying and hiding out for months.
Thinking Buell was the one who rescued her from the rain when she passed out a couple times, she envisioned him, with his gloves, being the one who killed Lisa out of jealousy that she was encroaching on Anna's territory, especially as Anna had a crush on Lisa's boyfriend, Neil, and got along with his daughter, Emma. This caused Anna to ask her ex, "Is there anything about Buell that you didn't tell me back when you hired him to fix our mailbox all those years ago?” -- a meta jab on the ridiculousness of Buell having been working on the mailbox for the entire season.
Shockingly, Douglas admitted Buell was his very first patient when he began working on criminals. He got him rehabilitated and released early from a state hospital after he murdered his entire family with a claw hammer. It was mind-boggling, though, as Douglas played this off like it was no big deal to hire a violent murderer as their handyman, even though he was "rehabilitated."
Anna was livid over the betrayal as Douglas left her with a potential danger in her midst, which caused a tense scene as she assumed Buell was the killer. As the unsettling thought of him living in her attic all this time manifested, she saw him going out in the rain to the house next door to possibly hurt Neil. She was convinced Buell regressed to his old ways, leaving fans curious why Douglas was so nonchalant and sure Buell was cured, and also, wanting to know how the heck Buell snuck in every night. After all, there were nights when Anna wasn't blackout drunk. That said, Anna, despite her fear of the rain, rushed out to go stop Buell because she didn't want Neil or Emma becoming another set of fatalities due to Douglas' dirty secret.
See how Buell's macabre past is revealed in Season 1 of The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, now streaming on Netflix.