'A Murder at The End of The World': Signals
When crafting a whodunnit, you really have to give the characters equal time or it’s too easy.
NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
Right up front, I’m going to be transparent: I only guessed half of the solution correctly in A Murder at The End of The World. The writers (mainly creators Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij along with a few other people1) definitely fooled me on half of it, devising a twist that was both kind of great and also kind of plausible ... as long as you accepted all the batshit stuff that had already been established2.
The urge to try to outfox a writer and guess their ending is always strong, of course, but it’s even more pronounced when the story in question is a whodunnit sort of mystery. You know the writer(s) are trying to fool you, misdirect you, surprise you, so your lizard underbrain kicks in and starts trying to rain their parade—they will not be smarter than you, not this day!
Of course, the only thing worse than not guessing the solution is half-guessing the solution, because it means you lost the battle of wits. You’re the dumb one.
A Murder at the End of the World was competently plotted and paced—a bit bloated, a little meandering, and it struggled to connects its two timelines in significant ways. But a fun show, especially if you enjoy mysteries. But it made one crucial mistake—a mistake that it only salvaged via its unexpected and somewhat brilliant twist: It ignored the characters who weren’t directly involved with the mystery.
Hoe Many Times Can You Use the Word “Hacker” in a Script?
A Murder at The End of The World follows Darby Hart through two timelines. In the first, she’s a teenager in high school who accompanies her coroner father to crime scenes and eventually becomes obsessed with a body that may be the victim of a serial killer. She connects with an older dude named Bill who begins assisting in the investigation, and they slowly fall in love. In the present day, Darby has written a book about that experience but hasn’t seen Bill in years. She’s invited to a strange retreat in the icy wilderness of Iceland by billionaire Andy Ronson (an Elon Musk sort3), joined there by folks way higher on the achievement scale than her—including Bill, who has refashioned himself into the Banksy-like Fangs, an artist-cum-disruptor4.
Everything’s kind of ... off. The site for the retreat is a weird, brand-new hotel, but they’re the only guests, and they’re miles from civilization5. The whole place is infested with Ray, a super-advanced artificial intelligence who can appear via holographic projection and who seemingly knows everything6. Andy and his wife, Lee (an infamous hacker Darby reveres who vanished years ago) seem tense, and they’re both super weird around their son, Zoomer7.
And then Bill turns up dead, and Darby, heartbroken and uncertain of herself, has to dive in to solve the murder.
This is a pretty solid setup—the remote location, slightly belligerent rich dude, and disparate group of people gathered together is classic, a very Christie-esque premise. The show has has some fun tweaking Andy’s dignity despite his wealth and power, and the hotel is an effectively creepy but just-this-side-of-plausible setting.
You may have noticed that I didn’t bother to mention any of the characters aside from Darby, Bill, Lee, Andy, and the AI8, Ray. There are eleven of them, but by around the halfway point you realize they don’t matter, really, at least in terms of the central mystery. You know they don’t matter because the show sure treats them that way.
Try, At Least
The whole point of a whodunnit is to give you a lot of red herrings and keep you guessing, and the reason you set up a Christie-esque country manor mystery like this is to muddy the waters with characters who not only draw the eye and provide interest and entertainment but also act as plausible suspects9. Without plausible suspects, you’re not telling the same sort of story—it becomes more of a straightforward thriller, because your audience becomes reasonably certain who the killer must be.
In A Murder at The End of the World, that’s what happens. The show only demonstrates real interest in about six characters: Bill, the victim, Darby, the detective, Andy, Lee, and Zoomer, the family, and Ray, the AI. By about halfway anyone paying attention knows the killer is going to be one of these people, because anyone else would be a cheat.
As we approached the last few episodes, I had thoughts on how the crime went down. I figured I could eliminate Bill and Darby—a suicide or a self-inflicted accident would be an interesting twist, but ultimately unsatisfying, and having the detective be the killer would also be an ambitious swing, but it’s rarely effective, and there were zero hints that Darby was more than just a brilliant and slightly broken person. So that left just four potential suspects, and I discounted the child because he was a child10. I figured it had to be the AI, Ray, because the show had put in a lot of work pointing out how the hotel was run entirely by Ray, and it had access to everything, every system, and also had endless mounds of data on each guest.
I figured Ray needed a physical ally, but Ray’s henchperson could be pulled from the vague ranks of the other characters without feeling like a cheat, so it could literally be anybody.
And yeah, I was half right11: Ray was the killer, and he did have a henchperson: The kid. The show got me, halfway. Ray manipulated an innocent child into committing several murders, and I’ll admit I didn’t see it. But I did know with certainty that the killer would be one of four people, and I was right, because the show demonstrated so little interest in the other characters you would be forgiven for forgetting they even existed. If you’re engineering a whodunnit, you really have to dive into every single potential suspect and give them some real weight as red herrings, or your readers/viewers will get ahead of you, every single time12.
Of course, when every house is equipped with an AI shell that does everything for you like in There Will Come Soft Rains there will be a cottage industry hiring folks to hack your friends’ homes to change the default voice and holographic skin of the AI to various ridiculous, infuriating, and horrifying things13, and it is going to be glorious.
NEXT WEEK: Aftersun tells a story in details.
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Including Rebecca Roanhorse, which blew my mind.
Luckily, I grew up Catholic, so I am well versed in accepting batshit stuff.
I.e., not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. But, also, definitely as rich as he thinks he is.
This show suffers from the very common problem of having characters who are supposed to be brilliant artists whose art, as glimpsed on the show, is not very good. Either don’t show the art or hire Banksy, guys. There’s no in-between.
Would you trust Elon Musk to be responsbile for your safety, security, and the prevention of you freezing to death in the barren tundra? I’d be suspicious he invited me so he could hunt me for sport in some sort of Congo Free State he’d purchased.
Just like me, but useful.
'Zoomer’ as a name is, of course, a <chef’s kiss> of a character detail.
I hereby volunteer to be the model for future home AI systems. Wouldn’t you love to have a prompt like “WHERE ARE YOU, YOU BASTARD?” and a hologram of me in a bathrobe, holding a whiskey bottle, appears and I say “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?” and then do digital chores for you?
This is why, whenever I’m invited to parties or weekend trips, I wander around saying things like “My word, there’s a lot of violence in the air” until I’m no longer invited.
Forgetting that a sugar-high child is an Apex Predator and one of the world’s most efficient killing machines, if memories of my childhood are any guide.
Similarly, when I told The Duchess I was going to be a wealthy professional writer I was also half right. <stares into middle distance, drinking whiskey>
As a writer, let me tell you: There is nothing worse than excitedly reciting a story idea to someone and they casually guess the huge, mind-melting twist you’ve cooked up. I once sent a manuscript to my agent and she joked in her response email “As long as the secret isn’t zombies! LOL” and I had to request she discard the file and wait for a revision.
This will be my time to shine, because how hilarious will it be to change your friend’s AI to me in a bathrobe drinking whiskey? EXTRA HILARIOUS, according to science.