Diksha Sundriyal
In the first episode of Netflix’s ‘Dead Boy Detectives,’ Charles Rowland and Edwin Payne are brought to America to solve the case of a missing girl. It doesn’t take them much to realize that this will be a tricky one because the one they are up against is a witch, and a clever and cruel one at that. They solve the young girl’s case and save her from being killed by the witch, but this only opens a pandora’s box, and things eventually come to a head in the final episode, where the witch exacts her revenge on them. But then, nothing happens as expected, and the final picture is left quite uncertain. SPOILERS AHEAD
Why did Esther the Witch Kill Young Girls?
To understand a villain and their motives, one must first understand who they are and what events led them to the point in the story where one wonders what turned the character into a villain. With Charles and Edwin in the clutches of the witch, Niko and Crystal realize that they must first know their enemy before making an attack on her. They don’t have a lot of options when it comes to finding out about Esther, but they know that only someone supernatural, someone who has seen the witch and her actions for a very long time, can truly give them the stock of what happened to her to turn her into a horrible person who feeds children to a giant snake. The only person they know who fulfills the criteria is Cat King.
By this point in the story, Niko and Crystal know that the Cat King will be motivated to help them because he has a thing for their friend, Edwin. It is this connection that they invoke, apart from the promise of exacting revenge on the witch and removing her from the picture entirely, which gets the Cat in the mood to fulfill their wish. He recounts the story of the young Esther and how she ended up being an evil witch.
It turns out that Esther came to America soon after its colonization had begun. She came there with her husband in the hopes of starting a new life and living happily ever after. However, her husband turned out to be a liar and cheated on her with another woman. A wronged Esther decided to make them pay for their betrayal, but she couldn’t do it with the usual means. So, she dug up her mother’s book of spells, which she had brought with her from home. She used it to kill both her husband and his mistress and completed her transformation as Esther the Witch. But not unexpectedly, she became a cause for concern for the village people who were scared of her. And they were right to be so.
It turns out that killing her husband and his other woman only increased Esther’s appetite to kill. As her powers grew, she got greedier and decided to aim for immortality. She knew that it was too big of an ask, and she needed to target her wishes towards someone powerful enough to grant that wish, and that turned out to be Lilith. The goddess bestowed immortality on Esther, but she tricked the witch. Eternal life didn’t come hand in hand with eternal youth, and Esther was left to be an old, withering woman, which was not what she wanted. So, to keep herself young, she had to come up with another plan. It seems she found a workaround by making another deal: this time, with her snake. As long as she fed it young girls, she would get to be young and beautiful, which is what she had wanted in the first place.
Esther the Witch Meets a Terrible Fate in Dead Boy Detectives
Killing a supernatural being is difficult as is, but killing an immortal being comes with its own set of challenges. Can they even be killed is the first question, and this is what Crystal thinks about the entire time she and Niko try to come up with a plan to save their friends. Not that she was tired of killing young girls, but Esther wanted to keep her eternal youth and not have to waste too much time worrying about it. She wanted all of it all at once, and that’s where Edwin came in, with Charles being used as leverage.
Crystal and Niko arrive on the scene ready to do whatever it takes to save the boys, but it soon becomes clear that they are fighting a losing battle. Their enemy is too strong to beat, and the only way they can get rid of Esther is to call in someone even more powerful than her. This is where the knowledge about her story comes in handy. Crystal knows she is not powerful enough to kill Esther, but the goddess who granted her immortality is. If Lilith can give her immortal life, she can also take it away, and it is with this thought that Crystal invokes her.
On entering Esther’s mind, Crystal finds Lilith in the ocean and calls out to her, telling her about Esther’s side deal with the snake through which she found a way to stay young. Crystal recalls the Cat King mentioning that Lilith was the goddess of scorned women. So, she beseeches the goddess to take some against Esther, who had wronged so many young girls just to keep her eternal youth. Wasn’t Lilith the goddess of all women? If she didn’t do it, then who would avenge the little girls Esther had killed?
It seemed like a long shot in the beginning, but Crystal’s plan works and Lilith shows up to teach a lesson to Esther. By this point, the girls had already taken away Esther’s eternal youth by killing her snake. But it wouldn’t matter until she was gone for good. In the end, Lilith arrives, and she drags Esther out of the house, taking her to the depths of the ocean where she lives. She may have granted a boon to Esther, but that didn’t exempt the latter from being punished for what she did to little girls. While we don’t get to see what happens to Esther, we know that it’s nothing good. If Lilith isn’t torturing Esther herself, she must have thrown the witch into the pits of Hell, where she would be tortured for the rest of eternity.
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