A Murder At The End Of The World recap: Darby makes “the big old mistake”

[Editor’s note: This recap, like all recaps on The A.V. Club, contains spoilers.]

Since episode one, A Murder At The End Of The World has been a show about victims. Though we’re on the hunt for a killer, the show separates itself from the pack through Darby’s power to piece together the crime by understanding the life taken, not the one who took it. And although the flashbacks have illuminated this attribute ad nauseam, Darby seems to have forgotten her training. After five weeks, Darby admits she made “the big old mistake,” focusing on catching a murderer when she should be trying to understand the murdered. This realization is a revelation for the show, allowing writers Marling and Batmanglij to announce their thesis on whodunits: Victims matter, killers don’t.

When we first get to Darby, she’s also a victim. Trapped under the pool cover, which may or may not have been hacked, she waits for someone to save her or death to claim her, whichever comes first. David, of all people, comes to the rescue. As she often is, Darby is in a daze, and her wooziness presages some of the turns the show’s about to throw at us—namely, a recontextualization of Lee and David.

At 46 minutes, “Crime Seen” is the shortest episode to date, and Marling, who directed the episode, streamlines things to the show’s benefit. With only three primary locations in the ep, Darby finally gets time to question Lee and investigate Bill’s room. The penultimate episode puts the show in wrap-up mode, homing in on resolution and setting up its finale, giving a last push that the show desperately needed after last week.

Within a few minutes, we get a flurry of answers. David and Lee are working together! Lee’s been trying to keep Darby safe! Lee’s been communicating with Darby through the lamp because it’s out of the hotel security system’s purview! The reason Lee has been so cagey, weird, and suspicious is that she’s been trying to flee with Zoomer. Andy is abusive toward Lee and obsessive about Zoomer’s life, counting every calorie, tracking every wink of sleep, increasing the boy’s alpha waves, and creating a tomb for his son to ride out the end of the world in. Lee recalls one afternoon when Zoomer was riding his bike, Shining-style, around the hotel. She took her eyes off him for one second, and the boy fell, sending Andy into a rage that he took out on Lee, slapping her across the face and pushing her into a wall.

The show makes an excellent point to focus on this common scene of domestic violence (again, victims matter, killers don’t). As Lee says, the lessons learned in those moments cannot be unlearned. She knows this because Andy’s crimes are unremarkable. Like many, he’s a powerful man who took advantage of his position to woo Lee while she was undergoing the doxxing that sent her into hiding. Darby frames this correctly: The wealthiest, most powerful man on Earth promised to care for her, and she believed him. What was Lee supposed to do?

But Lee messed up. Prior to the retreat, Lee attempted to escape with Zoomer. She picked him up from school one day, switched cars at Six Flags, and drove to a high school friend’s cabin in Nova Scotia. When she arrived, Andy was waiting for her. “You can go,” he told her on the private-jet ride home, “but Zoomer stays.” Lee’s story formalizes the resistance against Andy, a resistance cemented by Oliver, who finally enters the game officially and should’ve been there the whole time. This is when Darby realizes she made “the big old mistake.” She’s spent so much time thinking about the killer that she forgot to investigate the victim. It’s time actually to explore the scene of the crime.

The Scooby Gang heads to Bill’s room, where Darby finally gets a good whiff of her dead ex-boyfriend’s sweater. It’s hard to believe that this is the first earnest investigation we’ve done of Bill’s death. Granted, Darby hasn’t always had access to the deceased’s former lodgings or his body, and the show has smartly misdirected our attention, relying more on the hotel’s state-of-the-art surveillance than the tried and true methods of deduction. Bill’s belongings were brimming with clues for Darby to follow. For example, I think this is the first time we learned that it was the hit on the head, not the heroin, that killed Bill, accounting for all that blood in the room. Darby’s big whiff (that Oliver hilariously calls her on) also helps recenter Darby, allowing her to finally “find” Bill as she said she would in the previous episode. However, it’s a bit of a mixed bag getting there, with Darby stumbling over herself to explain why she excludes the bloody passage from her live readings. Oliver provides some much-needed audience surrogacy by reminding her, “That’s where all the blood is.” At this point, Darby’s apprehension is the show dragging its feet.

The conclusion of Darby and Bill’s Silver Doe mystery fits the theme of “the big old mistake,” too. Returning us to the show’s opening minutes, the Silver Doe Killer puts a gun to his head as Darby and Bill recite the names of his victims. The blast leaves Bill covered in blood and frozen in shock, but finding the killer’s identity doesn’t satisfy Darby. Her deflation at the realization that he’s just some guy, another domestic abuser in a world filled with them. When she knocks on the neighbor’s door, it’s only when Darby says the victim’s name that the neighbor calls the police.

Back at the motel, she continues to express curiosity about the killer, why he did it, and what was in his eyes. It’s Bill who reminds her that killers aren’t remarkable. They’re simple, boring, and unworthy of Darby’s fascination and near fetishization. It’s the victims that matter. In death, the women pointed our investigators to the conclusion. The killer was merely another thing that linked them together. Darby doesn’t seem satisfied, and in the morning, he’s gone, dumping Darby’s electronics in the pool and disappearing into the art world.

Ultimately, that’s why Bill leaves Darby. Or, as Darby put it, she avoided reading the passage because she wasn’t ready to face all the ways she already left him. It is a testament to the work Corrin’s done all season that this lands as well as it does. We watched two versions of Darby grow over the season: the headstrong and reckless teen detective of the past and the apprehensive, introverted writer of the present. They’ve both forgotten themselves. In death, Bill points her to the correct path. By reading the passage she’s avoided since she wrote the book, Darby accepts her role in Bill’s leaving. Though, I’m still confused about what Bill wanted out of her. He was so into their serial killer investigation until he wasn’t. We’ve been seeing little drips of Bill throughout the season, encouraging Darby to continue the case. Whenever his change of heart occurred, it didn’t leave an impression.

This show works so much better when it has some constraints. The hour-plus-long episodes seemed to wander in circles, failing to build sustainable tension across the runtime and returning to the same point repeatedly. With less time to act, the show moves much faster, the revelations hit harder, and points aren’t belabored. Furthermore, now that we know more about Andy’s relationship with Lee and the threat he poses, his showing up at Bill’s door creates a recognizable danger for the show’s finale. We still don’t know the killer, but by allowing the drama between the living characters to drive a bit, the show reveals a zippier, more confident version of itself.

Stray observations

• I am curious about what Lee told her high-school friend about her and Zoomer’s visit. It’s a pretty big ask to harbor the child of the world’s richest man, who is also a paranoid doomsday prepper.
• Overcoming some of the episode’s clunky dialog, Brit Marling is pretty great in the escape with Zoomer scene. I especially liked how she laughed off her son’s protests that this new car wasn’t as good as the old one.
• Ryan J. Haddad had me laughing a lot in this episode. Not that every TV show needs a Deadpool to point out every implausibility the show makes, but Haddad’s gentle deflating of Corrin and Marling’s apprehension served the show. This show needs more funny characters or at least one around more often.
• So David worked with Lee the whole time, including when he made a quick pass at Darby? Keep your hands to yourself, bro.
• Other people were living in that cul-de-sac! Were they confused that all of their garage doors opened simultaneously?
• Bill’s passage points to the killer being a hacker. This part is difficult to swallow because it’s hard to imagine a concussed, overdosing Bill pointing to his favorite passage in Darby’s book. Stranger things have happened, sure. But it’s another example of the show setting itself up for failure. If the other elements were more potent, there’s no doubt this wouldn’t stand out so much.

A Murder At The End Of The World is available to stream now on Hulu.