A Murder at the End of the World, Episode 2 recap
Warning: Once again, I give detailed recaps for this show to help you develop your own theories about the mystery. SPOILERS, obviously
Episode 2: The Silver Doe
We find Darby right where we left her. She stumbles off in shock and makes her way back inside the hotel, screaming for help. She asks what I guess is the night manager (where is Marius? She bumped into him earlier) for a doctor. Dude only speaks Icelandic. Hmm, if you invited a group of people who all spoke different languages but had English in common, seems like you’d also hire staff who could communicate in English. I call bullshit.
He sputters out “the storm…” so I guess he knows some English? EMT, she asks? Then Darby lands on the idea of asking for Sian and says, “The astronaut. Sian Cruise. Do you know what room she’s in?” He isn’t any help so she goes behind the counter and takes control, looking up Sian’s room, “Room 4.” She tries to tell him she needs him to get them into Bill’s room, 11. Darby sprints to Sian’s room. As she runs in the round hotel, passing openings and slats representing doorways, the scene brightens to daylight between the openings…we’re back in time, folks.
I figured we’d get more backstory of her childhood in this second episode. And I’m right. We’ve arrived with a young Darby in a vehicle with her dad. Intercut with Darby at the hotel knocking on Sian’s door. She tells Sian it’s Bill and she thinks it’s bad, please come. As they hurriedly go downstairs to Bill’s room (again, 11 is DOWNSTAIRS, 8 and 4 are UPSTAIRS, is it even/odd location?), we go back to young Darby and her dad.
We’re just 3 minutes in. Darby’s dad gets out of the car, grabbing his bag. He tells her, “Sit tight.” Bet she doesn’t. We’re back to the desk clerk opening the door to Bill’s room and Darby rushing in with Sian behind her.
Now, there’s lots to see here in the room. Some of this will not be here later so let’s take note now. Darby stops in her tracks seeing Bill on the floor. Sian rushes past, leaping over the fallen lamp, to Bill, who is still lying lengthwise along the back window. Sian begins chest compressions, counting as she goes. Night Desk Dude has a walkie talkie and we hear someone speaking Icelandic over coms. Darby looks like she’s having a panic attack. She turns back to him, breathing heavily. We jump to her dad striding along with a walkie on his hip.
We find she did not sit tight because we see young Darby walking a few paces behind him, past cops. Are we at the scene of a crime? Jump to hotel Darby. Someone rushes by. Sian says she thinks it’s morphine and he needs Narcan. EMT says, “Got it.” Okay, so they did have an EMT on site.
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Darby begins shaking her head. She sees something on the floor. Is it a pen? Syringe? Her eyes move over the scene. A chair is knocked over. Some clothes rumpled on the floor. Her book is open, cover up, with blood on it, sort of underneath the rockers of a rocking chair. As she walks across the rug, we flash to her feet walking through mushy ground as a young girl. Young Darby arrives at the edge of some water and there’s a dead body partially submerged.
Her father is saying, “Two, two and a half days. No fluids or foam. ID?” Someone named Joe (thanks, subtitles) replies, “Leann Duffer. 28. Lived out past the old high school.” Darby looks over the body in the water. “Looks like suicide.” Another officer, “Jesus. You brought your kid?!”
Her dad takes a beat, looking hard at Darby to see how she is, then says as he nods, “It’s okay. She’s not hurting anything.” She almost gives a little smile.
We hear Sian calling her name. “He’s gone,” she says wearily, with tears in her eyes. Darby is in shock. We see that she’s left her headphones outside on the snow on the other side of the window.
Marius arrives. “Good god, I’m just being called now?” Security guy arrives and asks, “has anyone else been in here?” Someone says, “no.” Andy strides into the room. He, Sian, and Darby are standing over Bill. He demands, but softly, “Sian. Tell me.” She responds, “He didn’t have a pulse when I arrived. I tried CPR for around seven minutes.” Andy: “and the blood?” Sian: “possible seizure caused the head injury.” Marius creeps up. Andy turns and shouts an order: “Someone get Eva.”
As Darby shakes her head and says, “No. Nothing about this is right,” Marius makes his way to her. Taking her by the upper arms with both hands, he tries to turn her away from the body. He asks, but almost as a statement rather than a question: “You’re Bill’s girlfriend?” Darby, shaking her head again, no. Marius: “You were with him just now?” and after she says no again he asks more pointedly, “Do you have any knowledge of what just happened here?” It’s interesting the words chosen in this scene.
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She insists she tried to get help but Marius tells her it’s a private matter. She gets louder, shouting, “he’s my friend!” She backs out of the room and into some staff member bearing a tray. Geez, another scene with broken ceramic items. The staff keeps saying it’s his fault. Marius turns back into the room, having gotten Darby out of there successfully. Darby looks down at the guy trying to pick up the broken pieces of what looks like tea cups or bowls. Hey, venture capitalist guy is creeping in the background. Darby asks if that tray was going to room 11. Staff guy answers that he needs to clean it up and for her to watch her step. And then he doesn’t clean it up entirely. What?
Andy comes out of the room and tells Darby he’s so sorry that this is “fucking awful.” He tells her, with the security guy standing behind him, that they are contacting the Icelandic authorities blah blah blah. Clive Owen towers over Emma Corrin! Darby looks like a little girl here. He asks if she’s okay. She shakes her head, on the verge of tears. He steps to the side, introducing Todd Andrews, his head of security. They’ve met. Up walks a woman as Andy says that Todd and his wife Eva will take care of her while he sorts things out.
She says she should stay with Bill because he doesn’t like to be alone. Todd very gently says that he won’t be. The two take her to her room and as they arrive at her door, we can see what the camera picks up from inside. After opening the door, Darby goes inside while Eva holds back her husband, “Maybe just…” Todd leans in and slowly closes the door. Eva tells Darby to sit, saying she is trembling. It’s snowing heavily now outside. Eva says, “ we lose our legs in moments like this.”
She goes around the room, drawing curtains, moving Darby’s laptop from the bed, getting her a glass of water from the bathroom tap. Eva tells her that she can call on her if she needs anything. She commands AI Ray to set up a direct line so Darby can contact Eva on her mobile phone. Something sparks Darby’s interest here and I’m not sure if it’s editing gone wrong or a continuity error or SIGNIFICANT. Then she’s back to shock mode.
Eva leaves some meds to help her sleep and then she leaves. Darby freaks out a bit, trashing the room a little bit and opens the curtains. Then she decides to take the meds. She curls up with the duvet on the bed and watches the snow falling outside before finally closing her eyes. There’s a lot of drugs in this show.
We jump to her riding along with her dad. She’s older now, a teen at least. They pull up to what look like rows of greenhouses. He tells her he’s sorry and that it will just be a moment. She doesn’t mind. There are cops already at the scene. Contrasting with the first time we see her come along with her dad, the cops now have a sort of attitude about her being there.
As the two head over to a digger and a cluster of cops hanging around, one cop argumentatively tells her, “Shouldn’t you be in school?” She rebuts, “Shouldn’t you?” while pulling a face. Looks like she’s used to this reaction. Also, I suppose her father was driving her to school when he got a call.
They walk up to a divet in the earth. There are bones slightly unearthed. Darby and her dad each walk into the divet from opposite ends, like equals. I like that moment. We see how far she’s come and how much her father trusts her. They glove up and start to examine the bones. A cop thinks it’s a kid but her father corrects him that it is likely a teen. Some long hair still clings to some spots on the skull. Her dad confirms it’s a female as Darby begins to brush away some dirt.
The cops start to talk about mundane, everyday things while Darby and her dad go to work. She uncovers earrings, long silver dangly earrings. Darby asks if the cops have seen them and then asks if there was a wallet or ID with the bones. The cop says, “no, just those, Sherlock. And a hole in her skull.”
Darby counters: “You don’t think it’s strange that these are the only things with her body?” Joe (I think) says with a dismissive gesture, “Girls wear earrings.” She and her father share a look. Joe then tells her to bag the earrings and keep them with the body.
We cut to Darby with earbuds in, listening to some Tricky as she walks the halls at school. She appears to be checking out earrings that the other high school girls are wearing. The bell rings.
We’re back at the morgue. Darby has on gloves, and is helping her father process the body. “Probably someone she knew, right?” Her dad replies that he’s not here to speculate about her relationships, kiddo. She correctly assesses that the assailant was right-handed by examining the blow to the head. Her father is so proud of her, you can tell. As he tests her on what she can glean from the body, they end by saying that since there was no ID, there will probably be no justice. This will not be investigated. There will be no case.
She questions him on whether dying is fast and he stops her short by saying, “It’s not professional.” “It’s just how I think,” she quietly says, almost to herself.
So we see here that Darby is interested in the story that bodies tell, not just the facts or science. Her father is all business. She boxes up the remains and takes it to storage, as her father has instructed. We see she is very interested in those earrings.
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She wrestles with putting the box in storage as asked but goes back and we know she got those earrings. We see her biking home with her pants tucked into her socks. Smart girl. She arrives home to a dark house so her dad must be at work still. She runs upstairs and starts to research the earrings. We can tell even here that her tech skills are above average. She’s fast and thorough.
In the course of her research, she finds other cold cases with mention of silver earrings. This leads her eventually to reddit and a post by a user named KILLBILL. Guess who that is, you guys? She comments on the post and adds an image of the earrings. She gets a private message from KILLBILL and he pushes her to reveal what she’s “got.” It’s very cute. She really grabs his attention when she reluctantly and bravely types, “The dead talk to me.” Ooo an infinity symbol. Her room is 8 at the hotel, remember? An 8 on its side = infinity? Maybe.
They live chat. The first thing he says is, “So the dead talk to you?” “Yeah.” "What have you heard?” So cute, these two.
Back to the icy isolated hotel by the hot springs. Darby awakens. She seems upset at the time and the fact that she’s slept. She gets dressed and heads to breakfast. Everyone is joking around because they don’t know what has occurred. Lee walks over and gives her a tight hug, whispering, I’m so sorry. She seems sincere but we don’t really know yet, do we?
Lee leads her to the head of the table and Andy makes the announcement. “Apologies for the delayed breakfast but I wanted everyone to be here to meet some truly awful news together.” Lee stares hard up at Andy. Todd has his hand over his mouth and looks sober. Andy announces that Bill passed away last night.
Ziba seems shocked. Lu Mei asks what he means. When Andy tells the group that it appears Bill overdosed in his room, Darby looks bewildered. Ziba’s dishes clatter as she reacts. Andy has contacted the police and he relays that they will be at the hotel before nightfall.
It’s odd how everyone reacts…or doesn’t. As Andy continues, he informs everyone that he spoke with Bill’s mother that morning. He doesn’t want anyone to say anything to anyone until all of Bill’s family has been contacted. Rohan starts to cry. No one speaks. David says, to no one but really to Rohan, that they all need to keep it together. Rohan starts to stand up but David tells him it will be okay. I feel like this group mostly know each other, which is weird. Rohan apologizes then sits back down. He almost sheepishly asks if they can see him. Jesus, Rohan. Andy tactfully squelches that idea by saying that it’s best to let the police handle everything.
Note: there is a symmetry here that, I think, reproduces the earlier bit with Darby and her dad each at one end of the bones in the divet. She and her dad are equals. In this scene at the table, I wonder if no one dared sit at the other end of the table knowing that Andy would take the head. But Lee leads her there or is it because it's the only available seating? Darby does not think she is beneath Andy. She stands up directly across from him at the end of the table. Just something to ponder over. I love blocking!
Darby presses Andy that there will be an investigation, right? Lee starts to answer but Andy interrupts her. Andy keeps pushing the addiction/overdose narrative. Darby says Bill was scared as he died. She is standing at one end of the table, mirrored by Andy standing at the other end. They go back and forth but Andy says he knows addiction because both his bio parents were addicts.
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Darby says Bill got sober, though, years ago. Sian says Darby told them she hadn’t seen him in six years. “Maybe you didn’t know him anymore.” Lu Mei stands, rubs her shoulder and says, “Poor girl. You’re in shock.” She tells someone to get her some tea (David does). I feel like this was to diffuse what clearly could have devolved into a shouting match. Darby sits back down but narrows her eyes at Sian like she can’t quite believe what she’s saying.
Martin wants to cancel his presentation. Ziba says she assumes they will all be leaving. Lu Mei agrees. Andy gives a little speech, trying to get them all back on track. Basically, don’t be quitters. Some weird dialogue for a bunch of grownups. He says it took two years to get everyone there together. Lots of looks around the table. Andy says Bill’s death is the era they are living in…there’s fucking death everywhere. Again, Darby down there at the end of the table narrowing her eyes. Andy spins it all as something linked to climate crisis. He manipulates everyone into staying, starting with Lee. And it’s her vote to stay that turns the group. Darby gets up and rushes out, pissed.
In the nearest bathroom, she splashes water on her face. She suddenly gets an idea. Spitting, “you smug little fucks,” she crams balls of toilet paper down into the toilet, making sure it’s clogged and overflowing. She heads downstairs (they were upstairs eating? I want to take another look at the schematic) to Marius. Darby is not on his good side but says that since the breakfast meeting is adjourning, people might want the toilet…and she’s the only one with footwear for feces. She tosses her foot down on the front desk and we see her hightops are dripping wet. This gets Marius in gear.
As soon as she sees him go upstairs, she goes behind the desk and into the controls, resetting her ring to let her have access to places she didn’t before. She’s going to investigate the scene, guys!
We’re roughly at the halfway mark for the episode.
Darby opens the door to room 11. She sort of stands there a minute before going inside and shutting the door. She gloves up. This must be so very difficult for her. She sees the black syringe on the floor still. But the book is missing and the rocking chair has been moved. The pile of clothes don't seem to be where they were before.The lamp is still overturned. Bill’s body is underneath a clear plastic sheet. She looks at his arms and sees track marks on his right inner elbow.
She consults AI Ray who is always ready to help. She asks what data from this room is being stored. After he tells her, she says to disable audio command recording. Now, they have some privacy. Or so it appears. She asks Ray to help her. She asks about the stats on addicts injecting in their dominant arm. He says non-dominant is preferred, at 98%. She asks about the other common injection sites.
She searches the common sites on Bill’s body. But she becomes understandably emotional and sits back to cry a bit. She whispers, “Someone killed you.” Then stronger, more sure, “Somebody killed you!” Using supplies from the complimentary bathroom basket, she dusts the syringe but sees that there are no prints. That means someone was wearing gloves when they used the syringe. And that’s what she asks Ray. And again, we’re reminded that AI Ray is literal. You have to be very clear when you ask him what you need him to answer.
She hears footsteps so scrubs off the powder on the syringe and hides in the bathroom. It’s Lee. Darby watches Lee as she first looks at the body, then begins to search the room and its contents. She even flips through papers on the desk and we clearly see a sketch of Darby. So she must be looking for a piece of paper. The book?
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Lee hears applause and then leaves. I think she saw Darby in the bathroom but we don't know for sure. Darby waits a few seconds then leaves. We hear Martin giving his pitch. He reveals he’s written a script…with Ray! Ziba says AI isn’t art. It isn’t good. He does some parlor tricks with Ray, asking him to rewrite the opening of the first Harry Potter book in the style of Ernest Hemingway. I think that’s a weird choice. Ziba says she doesn’t quite believe it. Lu Mei sleepily says that everything is in collaboration with artificial intelligence.
Andy pipes up, again, that he prefers “alternative” intelligence. Martin rolls the first few minutes of the film he’s made with Ray. But not before we get another reminder that AI Ray is literal. “Not good with poetry,” says Andy.
While the movie rolls, Darby moves to Lee and sits beside her in the dark. They whisper loudly. I'd hate to sit behind them in a movie theatre. Darby tells Lee about Bill not killing himself, injection site in dominant arm, and no prints on the needle. She defends this by saying it’s her 57th crime scene. Someone in the room they're in right now injected Bill. Darby then confronts Lee about being in Bill’s room and searching for something. Lee spins it that she just needed to see for herself.
Someone please make a meme of Clive Owen turning back to glare at Lee and Darby.
They continue whispering loudly. Lee admits that after the breakfast meeting, an overdoes did in fact seem strange. She claims to be looking for signs. Darby seems to believe her. Lee defends Andy wanting to continue the retreat. But Lee then gives Darby some tips: cameras are wireless, on their own VLAN, and Darby could see doorbell cam footage of Bill’s room. Darby says surely they won’t let her have the SSID and password. Lee reminds her of her book and how Darby used some of Lee’s old hacks. She ends with, “Just…don’t get caught.”
Ok, we’re going to get some tech stuff that I do not understand. I’ll try to explain as best I can. On the Lee Anderson Archive site, we see again that Lee used to have short hair like Darby’s. Or rather Darby has hair like Lee used to have. Hmmm. Idolization or something else?
Darby talks to herself about what steps she needs to take now to figure this out. She smokes a joint, hoping it will calm her and give her some clarity. She has a gorgeous lighter! She is looking out the window, smoking, and we are taken back to Bill and Darby live chatting. He asks her if she’s smoking a joint. She responds that it relaxes her and makes her think differently. I wonder if he’s using during this time.
Bill tells her they need a new approach…look for a living Jane Doe, someone who got away. Product placement: Coke. We see Darby doing a test in class but texting Bill as he talks to her through the earbud. He suggests they hack into the databases of other states. She tells him she’ll take Illinois. He should take Ohio. They make it a competition. She says she will let him dream up a prize when she wins.
Darby is back home, cooking some delicious mac and cheese in the microwave while talking with Bill. He’s asking about her “the dead talk to me” comment. She says it’s like putting your hand in a glove and animating the fingers. Like she’s compelled to get the dead what they want.
She asks why he’s doing this. He says he just likes puzzles, he isn’t noble like Darby. But we get some insight into Bill here. He talks about liking hacking too. “The walls of the world always seem so fucking high, so impenetrable. Like the world just has to be this one dumb way it was built forever ago.” He goes on to talk about how he and a friend in 2010 (Lee?) found “a vulnerability” that connects two-thirds of the internet. He said they could have shut down half the internet, punk kids having this kind of power is new. Bill says, “on a computer, I can build my own drawbridge into anything, anyplace, anyone.”
She takes one mac and cheese to her dad in his study then goes out onto the porch to eat while talking to Bill. She asks, “Is that how you see me?” but he says she is not hackable. “A man would die trying.” Aww.
Darby starts checking the Missouri records. She finds an attempted abduction record from a Marta Diaz. It mentions silver earrings. She Skypes Bill, attaching the file. He wakes up but it’s 3am. He sleepily reads it and says they should go talk to Marta in person. Bill says he will drive to Iowa and pick her up. She gets flustered and signs off saying she will call him. I believe she’s nervous about meeting in person.
Later we see her helping out at the morgue. Her phone buzzes. Her dad makes a face. Surely he knows she’s been talking to someone exclusively and for a while now. Bill says, “You never called me back.” Then he says there’s something he wants her to see. She has to go now. And she has to turn on Find My Friends so he can follow her. She does what he says as her dad looks over his shoulder.
On her bike, she follows his directions. She ends up on a train track. The phone goes out of range. A woman at the cafe or depot (can’t tell on my TV) beside the tracks is alarmed when the lights flicker. Then we notice it’s Morse Code. (Remember the lights before Darby found Bill’s body?!) it reads Happy Birthday, Darby. Woman says, “who the hell is Darby?” Darby says Bill is a genius. This is sweet.
Back at the hotel, Darby is wandering around and asks Ray about bulbs that are LED smart bulbs. He tells her the ones in the recessed fixtures on the ceiling are smart bulbs. But he can’t tell her if all the hotel smart devices are on the same network. Security reasons? Sometimes he reminds me of HAL in 2001, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Darby gets the bulb, takes it apart and this is where I get lost. Somehow, she uses it to break into security. She finds the SSID and as she’s looking for a password, she sees a string of numbers. Darby asks Ray: “Hey, Ray, do the numbers 04132017 have any significance for Andy Ronson?” He replies that it’s Zoomer’s birthdate. Bingo, as Darby would say.
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She gets in, searches cameras, doorbells cams, and then room 11. She sees Andy and a hotel maid with towels, David talking on a phone out in the hallway, Bill entering his room (having to find the ring he doesn’t wear and appears to only use to access his room), Ziba listening at the door then rushing off after she realizes the camera is recording her, the door opening and then shutting with seemingly no one entering or leaving or any shadows to give clues, then BOO a scary masked person with a black hood getting right up to the camera. Darby yelps. The face kind of blurs or pixelates and shifts to a shiny clear mask as the figure steps back.
Darby hears the beep beep of a vehicle backing up outside. She steps outside on the balcony. Bill’s body is being taken into what looks like an ambulance. There’s also a police car. Andy is walking up to the rear of the ambulance with someone. He shakes their hand (does he pass them something?) They leave.
We cut to Darby telling a driver to drop her off. He seems worried about leaving her in what looks like a dangerous part of town. She sees Ray’s Tavern, a Place for Everyone to her left and some guys drunkenly hanging out in a parking lot to her right.
She goes inside Ray’s (Can’t Be A Coincidence!) Darby makes her way to the back where she finally sees Bill. It’s a lovely moment. The way they look at each other here makes me think they must have been very much in love at one time. The song playing is Moon River.
End of Episode 2 of A Murder at the End of the World. Are you still a fan? Any theories? Let us know!