Note: The following story contains spoilers from the final episode of “A Murder at the End of the World.”
“A Murder at the End of the World” revealed the identity of its elusive killer. The FX limited series resolved its central mystery with a heartbreaking reveal that led to fires, answers and a quick getaway.
The start of Episode 6 picked up with Darby (Emma Corrin) convinced that the abusive billionaire Andy (Clive Owen) was the culprit of all the deaths at the retreat that started with the murder of Bill (Harris Dickinson), but she quickly learned that the answer was a lot more complicated and disturbing. Further sleuthing revealed that Zoomer (Kellan Tetlow), Andy and Lee’s (Brit Marling) son — who was revealed to be Bill’s biological son in an earlier episode — was tricked into killing Bill by Ray (Edoardo Ballerini), the artificial intelligence assistant at the retreat.
Darby learned that Andy had been using Ray as his personal therapist, and accidentally corrupted the AI with a combination of his maker’s darkest thoughts that led Ray to think Bill was a security threat. Ray used the Zoomer to poison Bill and cause other havoc across the retreat, by manipulating his VR adventure game to incorporate the killings into the story he was following. After the tragic reveal, Darby and Lee joined forces to destroy Ray’s main operating system by setting the room on fire.
Zal Batmanglij, who created the show with Marling, said that the surprising twist was their way of giving audiences a clear answer to the show’s central mystery, while also commenting on the nuances of the problems of the internet era.
“A lot of the time with these mysteries you identify the bad person, put them in prison and then you can go to bed knowing that you’ve gotten rid of the bad apple, but I think the messes that we’re in right now are not so easy to [solve]. ” Batmanglij told TheWrap. “I think we’re all sort of guilty these days. It’s systemic. We’re all part of it in some way or another, so we wanted to sort of convey that emotionally.”
Corrin called the resolution to the mystery “one of the best twists I’ve read in a long time.” The actor praised the “Murder” creators Batmanglij and Marling for writing a story that essentially predicted some of the concerns surrounding the rise of AI technology in the world.
“It’ll be a very sobering warning about this kind of technology that we’re about to probably allow into our homes, and into our lives in a greater way,” Corrin told TheWrap.
After destroying Ray, Darby helped Lee and Zoomer escape Andy’s compound so Lee could take her son to a new place with a new identity and leave her abusive husband’s grasp. They all went their separate ways and Darby returned home to the United States having solved her first solo murder investigation.
The end of the finale leaves the door open for more Darby Hart adventures, which both Corrin and the creative team behind the series said they’d be open to exploring in the future.
“Much of this story is just about Darby understanding the experience of first love and first heartbreak, and coming into herself as a sort of full blown detective. So in some ways, it’s a real coming of age story. And obviously that leaves a lot of room for the other chapters of one’s life,” Marling told TheWrap. “We always try to tell a story by testing the weather first and being like, ‘what’s the climate like? What stories does it feel like the time wants or needs? So who knows what’s coming next, but we’re certainly open to the possibility.”
All episodes of “A Murder at the End of the World” are streaming now on Hulu.