Sumith Prasad
The penultimate episode of FX on Hulu’s murder mystery series ‘A Murder at the End of the World’ ends with protagonist Darby Hart theorizing that Andy Ronson is most likely the killer with his wife Lee Andersen and guest Oliver. Darby learns about Andy’s abusive behavior towards Lee, who has been trying to escape from the tech mogul with her son Zoomer. After realizing that Bill Farrah is Zoomer’s father, Darby connects the dots and considers the possibility of Andy killing her friend and Rohan to stop them from rescuing Lee and her child from his custody. By the end of the seventh episode, Andy emerges as an outright antagonistic figure but can one trust his hacker wife completely? SPOILERS AHEAD.
Theory 1: Andy is the Killer
Among all the people currently living at Andy Ronson’s hotel for the retreat, he has the strongest motive to kill Bill and Rohan. Ever since Zoomer’s birth, Andy has taken care of the child with utmost dedication. Even though Bill is the boy’s biological father, the truth hasn’t stopped Andy from nurturing Zoomer as his own son. As a sterile billionaire, he wants an heir to his empire and he cannot insist on passing his fortunes to his biological offspring, which explains why he has been highly protective of Lee and Bill’s son. Naturally, Lee’s attempts to disappear from his life with Zoomer threaten Andy’s plans for the future.
Bill and Rohan, the first two victims of the killer, are integral parts of Lee’s plans to escape from Andy with Zoomer. The zodiac boat Darby and Sian discover away from the hotel is meant to carry the escapees away from Andy. As someone who has the technology to track every movement of every person around him at his disposal, Andy must have learned about Lee, Bill, and Rohan’s plans to separate Zoomer from him. To stop the trio from fulfilling their mission, he must have orchestrated the killings. If he is really the killer, by murdering the artist and the climatologist, Andy succeeds in turning Lee into a helpless mother who is forced to abandon her aspiration to be free.
When Darby initially investigates the murders, Andy provides his alibi to the amateur detective to vanish from her radar of suspicion. He further backs his statement by showing her a projection of him receiving care from the medical suit when Bill was killed. Andy doesn’t need to kill the artist himself if he wants the latter dead. He can rely on technology to commit the crime for him. As someone who has endless resources at his fingertips, he wouldn’t have to worry a lot about conceiving the machinery that can kill its targets and hide itself once the assignments are done.
If Andy kills Bill himself, he may have altered the projection that he shows to Darby. Furthermore, the tech mogul has the influence and authority to manipulate or convince any of the other guests or his employees to commit the murders for him. To not kill the trust and support of Andy, one of them may have killed Bill and Rohan, in addition to trying to murder Sian and Darby.
Theory 2: Andy is Not the Killer
If Andy is not the killer, the most possible choice is Lee. Killing Bill and Rohan can be a part of the hacker’s elaborate plan. She can be creating a distraction with the murders of her two allies to engage Andy and eventually destroy him. Bill and Rohan have an extensive history of taking anti-capitalist and anti-establishment stands. Their murders are guaranteed to negatively affect Andy, one of the most prominent figures who advocates and stands for everything the former duo is against. Lee can be trying to get Andy stuck in his pursuit to capture the killer.
Like Keyser Söze of ‘The Usual Suspects,’ Lee can be seen as an unreliable narrator. The antagonistic characteristics attached to Andy can be her creation to divert Darby’s attention from the real killer to the tech mogul. Lee must have been feeding Darby lies to exclude herself from the possible suspects. The details she conveys to the detective are filled with discrepancies. In the sixth episode, she details to Darby how Andy followed her to Canada after she escaped from him with Zoomer, only for him to show up at her friend’s house before her. The hacker adds that she doesn’t know how her husband did the same.
If Lee really has been trying to escape from Andy, she must have figured out how her husband tracked her earlier and sabotaged her plans to not let the same happen again. Lee, despite being one of the brilliant hackers of her generation, doesn’t get to the bottom of the same. That doesn’t make sense. Furthermore, Lee is intelligent enough to know that she cannot just disappear from Andy’s premises without him knowing about it. As someone who has known him for years, it is unlikely that she would underestimate him that easily. It is hard to digest that Lee has been really convinced that she can fulfill her escape plan with the help of Bill and Rohan, an artist and a climatologist who don’t have the resources and technological intelligence to fool Andy.
After Bill gets murdered, Lee goes to his room, searching through the former’s bags and clothes. She must have looked for something that would connect her to Bill’s murder. While dying, the artist makes several marks on one particular page in Darby’s novel, which includes the phrase “faulty programming,” which best describes a hacker like Lee. Although she doesn’t have a strong motive like Andy, it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have any. If Andy’s life and reputation get destroyed as a murderer, Lee has a lot to earn as the mother of the former’s sole heir.
Read More: A Murder at the End of the World: How Much of it is Real?
