It makes sense that with only two episodes left to go, the info dumps have begun. A Murder at the End of the World has never moved like a typical murder mystery, so most of the actual present-day detective work has been left for the final few episodes. In “Chapter 6: Crime Seen,†we’re starting to get answers, but it all feels slightly anticlimactic — especially when the characters continually refuse to see what’s right in front of their faces. (More on that later.)
The episode begins as you would expect: with Darby immediately being rescued from the pool after the previous episode’s cliffhanger. Her saviors are David and Lee, the latter of whom sent the message to meet there in the first place. Combined with Lee’s new ID and her generally shifty behavior, this makes her the prime suspect in Darby’s eyes. Lee isn’t the only hacker at the retreat, but she’s the best. Hacking the pool cover couldn’t be difficult, especially for someone capable of erasing people from doorbell-cam footage.
But Darby always seems as if she’s looking for reasons to trust Lee despite the red flags — probably because Lee influenced her so much as a young hacker. For those who can’t stand Darby’s crappy detective skills, there’s plenty to criticize in her total lack of caution here, but it’s mainly in service of setting up Lee’s story. It turns out that Lee, sick of dealing with her husband’s increasingly controlling behavior, had been planning to run away with Zoomer for years. Andy’s single-minded obsession with protecting his son from the apocalypse has turned him into an abusive tyrant enabled by his infinite money and influence.
Lee’s first attempt at escape seemed promising: She somehow managed to lock down some new identities by hacking the DMV to find a mother whose license was about to expire and then taking a photo for a new license in her place. She picked Zoomer up from school, took him to an amusement park, passed off her tracked phone to someone else, and drove through the night to hide out at her off-the-grid friend’s place. But by the time they arrived, Andy was already there. “There is no leaving him,†Lee says.
This story pretty much tracks with what we’ve seen of Andy and Lee’s marriage, even going back to her uncomfortable forced laughter and excessive politeness at the dinner table in the first episode. And the info dump continues, this time more directly relevant to the present-day plot. It’s no coincidence that both Darby and Bill were invited to the retreat: Whether out of hatred or curiosity or some sincere desire to understand Zoomer, Andy wanted to see Bill, and Darby was the bait he used to accomplish that. Once Bill accepted his invitation, Lee reached out and they put together a plan for Lee and Zoomer to escape. David and Rohan joined the team, each making important contributions: David provided new passports and passage to Buenos Aires, while Rohan (a friend of Bill’s) provided the Zodiac to scoop them up a short hike from the hotel. That’s why Bill, David, and Rohan were supposed to meet on the night Bill died.
It’s hard to know how much of this to take at face value; some wild twist in next week’s finale could upend everything, and Lee still seems capable of murder. For the time being, the story ostensibly shifts the suspicion back to Andy, who could be behind all this through some trickery. While David distracts Todd and Andy finishes up treatment, Darby and Lee, joined by Oliver, pop over to Bill’s room to investigate further.
All of this stuff is engaging enough, but it takes up a lot of time in a relatively short penultimate episode. (Next week’s finale is the shortest yet.) The prior episode, my favorite of the season, finally spent some real time with the supporting cast, so it’s odd that so many of them are totally absent this close to the end. (We get a decent dose of Oliver, which just feels kind of arbitrary.) There’s also little of the visceral paranoia and intense stress I felt last week; this episode dispenses plenty of information but not in a very dynamic way. The tension should be even higher than it was last week, but the mood here is almost relaxed.
On a character level, the idea is that Darby has realized she’s making the same mistake as before: fixating on the killer instead of understanding the victim. She never likes to acknowledge that tendency of hers; after all, she prides herself on her ability to communicate with the dead in her own abstract way. She’s not supposed to be the one who gawks at serial murderers, perversely delighted by creatively fucked-up kills. She’s supposed to be the one who gets justice for the women left behind and forgotten by the system.
But when Oliver speculates that Bill might have spent some of his final moments leaving her a message in his copy of The Silver Doe, Darby is finally forced to revisit the passages that reveal that side of herself. As usual, this flashback sequence is the strongest part of the episode, especially because it’s a real culmination, closing the loop on the Darby-and-Bill story as Darby finally reads the end of her book. (I’ll be curious if the finale even features any flashbacks.)
We get a little bit of repetition bringing us back to that scene from the premiere: Darby and Bill staring down a serial killer at the top of the stairs, reciting the names of his victims as he aims a gun at them. But the gunshot we heard before was self-inflicted; it seems that with Frank Bell’s trail of breadcrumbs completed by the two amateur sleuths he spent months observing, he had nothing else to live for.
It’s a harrowing scene, especially with Bill panicking and struggling to hear, eyes wide and face splattered with blood. And Darby getting help from a neighbor is haunting in its own way: When the woman calls the police, the first thing she says is “They found Patty,†dazed with the newfound knowledge of what happened to the nice lady across the street who disappeared.
With the case finally over, Darby joins a traumatized Bill in the bath to speculate about what was going on in the killer’s head. She’s fascinated by the idea that he could have been following their investigation on Reddit and appreciating the attention. But Bill is quick to cut Darby off, upset at the implication that they were honoring a monster in any way. To him, Frank Bell isn’t interesting, even in a sick way. “You want the killer to have meaning, and he doesn’t have meaning,†he says. “He’s just a killer.â€
This is a continuation of the same conflict we saw last week: The case has become everything to Darby, and she’s too obsessed to step outside and check in with herself about how she’s actually feeling (or how her partner is feeling). At any moment that final night, she could turn over in bed and open up to Bill, truly being there for him and letting him truly be there for her — but they both just lie awake facing away from each other, and the next morning he’s gone, leaving his electronics behind in the bath.
Another effective cut brings us back to the present, connecting two images of Darby crying over the loss of Bill. She has experienced it twice, six years apart, and blames herself for both. But then everyone starts acting idiotic fast. Oliver manages to catch that Bill’s blood splotches pointed to the phrase “faulty programming,†which leads everyone to consider … Lu Mei!? And Eva!?
First of all, let’s be real: Lu Mei didn’t kill Bill, and the main reason I know that is she simply wouldn’t be a satisfying answer to the central mystery. The same is true of Eva, Oliver, David, Ziba, and maybe even the Ronsons. In fact, I almost felt insulted watching that final conversation; they managed to find a vague message in the blood pointing to “faulty programming†and correctly connect it to hacking, yet they didn’t think of Ray even once?
If Ray is responsible for these murders, it’s very possible he’s either being controlled by someone (like Andy) or controlling someone. Either way, it seems more and more obvious that he was involved somehow. He’s the most thematically appropriate culprit given the show’s distrust of AI. All this belated theorizing about Lu Mei’s highly surveilled smart cities and Eva’s apparently being in love with Andy is almost laughable in comparison. And while “There’s my wife†is a chilling note to end on, it’s just another case of Andy serving his regular role of red herring (even if he is an awful man in his own way).
But hey, maybe there’s something meta about Darby’s pattern of considering the killer instead of the victim. It’s fitting that she might finally put everything together by focusing on Bill, rather than on his killer. A Murder at the End of the World has always been more concerned with its central victim than its central killer. That was a bold creative choice, and it paid off with a good love story. But it may result in a finale that doesn’t offer any truly mind-blowing revelations. Enjoying this show means accepting that sometimes it’s both too much and not enough.
Zeroes and Ones
• It feels as if there’s a slight lack of clarity sometimes in what the characters know about one another. What exactly was David’s plan in distracting Todd, and why did Oliver know about it? It’s almost framed like they’ve all agreed to revolt, but the vibe isn’t giving “high-stakes heist†at all. And again, the perspectives of people like Lu Mei and Martin are totally missing here.
• Where’s the New Girl–style spinoff with Lee, Bill, David, and Rohan?
• How long did Bill make it without having a phone or laptop?