Julia Seiden

On Feb. 27, Hulu released a documentary called “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.” The three episode documentary goes through interviews with the two oldest Franke kids (who are both adults) and Ruby’s husband, Kevin Franke, in addition to showing unseen footage from their YouTube videos. I give this documentary a 10/10.

If you told 10 year old me that my favorite YouTube family was not only broken apart, but that one of the members of the family is in prison for child abuse, I probably would have laughed at you. Who would’ve ever guessed that this seemingly perfect and influential family was actually hiding something so sinister behind the lens? That is the unfortunate truth for the former YouTube channel “8 Passengers.” 

The “8 Passengers” channel, run by the notorious Ruby Franke, started out as a vlogging channel that followed the Franke family throughout their daily lives. After years of vlogging their seemingly normal lives, Ruby Franke was arrested in August 2023 for four counts of child abuse according to Forbes. After one of the two youngest Franke kids, with duct tape around their legs and clearly emaciated, escaped their house and told a neighbor about the situation at hand, police went to visit the house and found the other kid locked in a room. With this family being pretty popular on the internet, the case was heavily scrutinized online, with countless conspiracy theories about what may have happened flooding social media. 

On Feb. 27, Hulu released a documentary called “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.” The three episode documentary goes through interviews with the two oldest Franke kids (who are both adults) and Ruby’s husband, Kevin Franke, in addition to showing unseen footage from their YouTube videos. After months of waiting to hear from their perspectives, I was ready to hear what they had to say. 

The documentary started out by describing how they even began the YouTube channel, with Kevin explaining how quickly Ruby became obsessed with fame. He described how she would always be filming every little thing, and how these daily little vlogs quickly became a way for her to exploit her children for money. There was also unseen footage shown of Ruby switching up her personality for the camera, which was probably one of the most shocking things to see visually. 

After years of family vlogging, Ruby began to start making videos with former counselor and YouTuber, Jodi Hildebrandt. The documentary goes into detail about how they even became involved with each other and how they started to get into business together. Eventually, Ruby ended up abandoning the 8 Passengers YouTube channel, and fully went into business with Jodi. During this time, speculations about where Kevin went and even the morality of their advice were flooding the internet. The documentary goes into detail about how she gradually drove Kevin out of the house, which was definitely another part that appalled me, especially because most of this wasn’t shared on the internet. 

I would say that the most surprising part of the documentary was just how brainwashed everyone was, both religiously and psychologically. One of the main excuses that Ruby used for abusing her kids was the fact that she believed that they were possessed. Jodi also thought that she was possessed herself, and that there was going to be some kind of second coming. Kevin was brainwashed into thinking that Ruby was just doing what was best for the kids, and even her own kids were brainwashed into thinking that the abuse was normal. This was definitely one of the most mind-boggling things about the situation in my opinion, because I just can’t even fathom how Kevin or even the kids could ever trust anyone again, and I can’t stop thinking about how much trauma each person will have.     

Now a lot of people, including myself, are questioning Kevin’s involvement in this. When the kids were found tied up, he technically wasn’t around at the time because Ruby had kicked him out, so he wasn’t even tried. But his innocence is still being questioned by people following this case because he did mention knowing about Ruby’s obsession with filming everything and how he could see that she was crossing a line by exploiting her kids. The interviewers even asked him if he still loved Ruby after everything that she had done, and he said that he did. In my personal opinion, I think that is messed up, and I do feel like he needs to be tried for at least neglecting his kids. The fact that he stood by Ruby’s side and didn’t defend his own children speaks volumes to me on his “innocence.”

Overall, I believe that this documentary is so interesting to watch. It’s short, it gets right to the point and it reveals things about this family that I had so closely followed for so many years that I couldn’t even believe were true. I definitely recommend this documentary for anyone, even people that didn’t follow this family prior to this, because it’s honestly just so fascinating to hear what her husband’s perspective was, and also her own kids.

I give this documentary a 9/10.