A Murder at the End of the World Reveals Whodunit in Shocking Finale — Did You Guess Correctly? Plus, Grade It!
The following post contains major spoilers for A Murder at the End of the World‘s final episode. Proceed with caution!
A Murder at the End of the World solved its central mystery with Tuesday’s finale, and the answer to this particular game of Clue is A.I. assistant Ray, with unwitting accomplice Zoomer, in the hotel.
Yep, in the end, it wasn’t any of the human retreat attendees that masterminded Bill and Rohan’s deaths, but technology gone rogue under Andy Ronson’s creation.
During a final confrontation among Andy, Darby, Lee and the rest of the conference guests, Darby realized that Zoomer’s augmented reality helmet featured an appearance from Ray, who told Zoomer with a twitchy smile, “Come back upstairs and play. We haven’t finished our game.” Between that ominous warning from Ray and the words “faulty programming” that Bill had circled in Darby’s book before he died, Darby deduced that Ray was somehow involved with the murders at the hotel… and Zoomer confirmed, to the horror of everyone else, that he had given Bill and Rohan “medicine” at Ray’s instruction.
Zoomer, of course, had no idea what was really going on; he had enjoyed playing pretend doctor with Bill that first night at dinner when the retreat kicked off, and when Ray told Zoomer that Bill was still sick later that evening, Zoomer assumed it was just part of the game. But Ray knew the code to Eva’s medication safe, and when Zoomer gave Bill “a shot” to help him feel better, he was actually injecting him with that fatal dose of morphine. Later, Ray had also instructed Zoomer to “help” Rohan: “He has a weak heart, so I had to plug in and turn on his heart computer for him,” Zoomer revealed.
After Zoomer was taken upstairs to his room, Darby confronted Andy more directly about Bill and Rohan’s deaths. The latter casualty was pretty easy to figure out: Rohan must have figured out who Bill’s killer was, prompting Ray to instruct Zoomer to plug in Rohan’s pacemaker receiver so that Ray could remotely attack his heart. But the motivation behind Bill’s death was murkier, and it wasn’t until Darby instructed Ray to play back Andy’s talk therapy sessions with Ray that the answer became clear. Andy, who knew all along that Bill was Zoomer’s biological father, felt deeply insecure about Zoomer and Bill’s innate connection that first night at dinner, and Andy believed Bill to be a legitimate threat to “everything that I have built” if something were to happen to Andy. Andy divulged to Ray that he found Bill cocky, that he wanted to “take him down a peg or two,” break both of his legs, wished him dead. And though Andy tried to wave away those wishes as “f—ked-up things” shared in the privacy of his own therapy sessions, Darby insisted that Andy was responsible for the murderous ways in which Ray interpreted Andy’s venting.
“You mated your security AI and your therapy bot, and you created a monster driven by your greatest fears,” Darby told Andy. “And then you made that monster your son’s only friend and teacher. Three people have died here for your safety and your security, for the maintenance of your empire.”
Andy eventually got fed up with Darby’s needling and shoved her into a wall, leading Lee to come to the rescue by knocking him unconscious. She and Darby then used that precious time — while police were tunneling through the snow to get to the hotel, mind you — to locate the building’s server farm and destroy all of the computers and wires that made Ray, Ray. They ignited a battery fire among the server farm’s seemingly endless equipment, then made an escape from the hotel while its technology went up in flames. But Darby stayed behind while Lee and Zoomer headed out to get to Rohan’s boat, with Lee declaring that she and Darby would only see each other again if “I need you. And then I’m sure you’d find me.”
Darby, meanwhile, was escorted out of the hotel by the police, along with Andy and the other guests, leaving her to tell us via voiceover that Andy disappeared from public view after the disaster in Iceland, then filed a civil suit against Lee; she’ll be extradited to America if she’s ever found, and will stand trial for kidnapping. Darby went on to write another book, Retreat, detailing what happened in Iceland, and all of the surviving conference guests came to one of her readings. And though it was perhaps left ambiguous as to whether this part actually happened, or if it was just what Darby hoped happened, we saw Lee and Zoomer trudging through the snow until they reached the coast and Rohan’s boat; they got inside and onto the water, where Lee shot up a flare.
OK, your turn. What did you think of Murder‘s ending? Did you suspect Ray as the culprit? Grade the finale in our poll below, then drop a comment with your full reactions!
I really loved this series–UNTIL the finale. The series was less interested in solving all the mysteries, and more interested in having a happy ending for the Love Story at the center of the series. Too many clues were ignored or poorly handled; and viewers had to really suspend disbelief. The viewers (based on all the YouTube chatter) expected more creativity and innovation than this very promising series was able to deliver.
Loved the first few episodes, but it became increasingly clear the writers couldn’t juggle the ambitious ideas they had, huge waste of a great lead performance and cast. Whole show is a C.
I really liked the show and the casting / acting was great, but I found myself hoping the entire time that the killer was not going to be AI because that felt too predictable but.. here we are. The first 6 episodes felt like they were building towards something great and then the final episode just felt super rushed and clunky. I think that Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij are fantastically creative people (I loved The OA) and I would love to see more from both of them.
I think the show was great! Really well done with a great concept and great acting. That is, until the finale. To find out (even though you kind of already knew) that the show was really about the dangers of AI was disappointing and kind of made me angry. Felt like a cop-out to me. And even though drawn out, it ended up feeling kinda rushed. Almost like they weren’t sure what do and just threw it together. Assuming they don’t continue the show itself in some way, I ended up quite disappointed. Still glad I watched it though.Emma Corrin was just excellent.
This was an amazing show until the finale. It was so frustrating watching it cos the resolution on who the killer was made absolutely no sense.
I understand the show isn’t just a murder mystery but also on the dangers of AI and it balanced that well for 6 episodes, the finale was a cop out and quite disappointing.
Overall, it was a good show
The whole thing was just a GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO knock-off, dragged out to seven hours. But I must confess that I did NOT figure out who the killers were, so full credit for that and for playing fairly to boot.