Wake Up Dead Man A Knives Out Mystery Ending Explained: Who is the Killer?

Netflix’s ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ brings back Daniel Craig as the detective Benoit Blanc, who finds another challenging murder case on his plate. This time, he heads towards rural New York, where a parish is thrown into chaos when its priest is killed under mysterious circumstances. Over the course of the movie, the stage is set with multiple suspects, all of whom have good reasons to kill the priest. But just when Blanc thinks he has gotten a handle on the situation, something so shocking and unexpected happens that it makes him reconsider the entire course of his investigation. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Wake Up Dead Man Plot Synopsis

Jud Duplenticy is a former boxer who turned to the priesthood after he killed a man in a match. When he punches another priest, who kinda deserved it, he is sent to assist Monsignor Wicks at the Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude. Jud is excited about this new job and looks forward to helping people and making a difference. But when he meets Wicks, he realises that the challenge is much bigger than expected. Wicks is not a welcoming person, and he is an even worse priest. He drives away new congregants and seems to have created a close circle of a few people who remain his ardent supporters.

There is Martha, the woman who basically runs the church, and Samson, the groundskeeper. There is Vera, the lawyer who handles the church’s account, and Cy, her adoptive son. Then there is the alcoholic doctor Nat, a former-bestseller-but-now-struggling author Lee, a disabled former concert cellist Vera, who is looking for a miracle. While Jud tries to form a rapport with them, Wicks’ hold on them prevents him from doing so. This leads to a confrontation between the two priests, which becomes a major point of suspicion when Wicks dies.

It happens after he gives his sermon and walks into a closet near the pulpit for rest. At the time, Jud is on the pulpit, and the core congregation is in the audience. Wicks walks into the closet alone, which is why it is shocking to find him stabbed to death. When the cops are unable to solve it, Benoit Blanc is brought in. At the time, Jud is the only suspect, but Blanc immediately clears him of suspicion, at least on a personal level. As they start to dig around, they discover that the murder has to do with Wicks’ family history, which involves his grandfather’s missing wealth.

Who is the Killer? Who Killed Monsignor Wicks?

The manner of Monsignor Wicks’ death makes it look like a perfect and impossible crime, but by the end, Benoit Blanc figures out what happened that day. It turns out that when the truth about Wicks being Cy’s father came to light, the priest decided to give up the church, but not before he burnt all his congregants. Because they had confessed to him over the years, he knew all of their sins, so he decided to expose them before he turned the lights off and locked the door. While the others were left confused by this sudden turn of events, Martha realised exactly what was happening. She had told Wicks about the jewel and she discovered that he had ordered a forklift to open Prentice’s grave, she realised that he was going to take that money and collaborate with Cy on whatever they were planning next. This is what Prentice had warned her about, and this is why she had kept the jewel’s location a secret all this time.

She had given her life to the church and had been dedicated to Wicks, regardless of his methods. So, now that his true nature was right in front of her eyes, she knew that he needed to be stopped. So, she formulated a plan, but she couldn’t execute it on her own. Being aware of the priest’s daily rituals, she knew he was a drunk and would often drink from a flask that hid in the storage closet near the pulpit. She decided to poison it, but for that she needed the poison, which is why she turned towards Dr. Nat. Because Wicks had already threatened to out him as an alcoholic and ruin his career, he didn’t need much incentive to help kill the man. So, he brought the pentobarbital, with which Martha spiked Wicks’ drink. They also knew that they needed to distract the cops from the poison and make it look more theatrical.

This is where the plan to use the devil’s head came into play. She already had one from when Jud had thrown it through the church window, which would turn the suspicion towards Jud. She slipped that head into Wicks’ robe, and the moment he fell, Nat activated it using a remote device, through which the fake blood was released. When Jud found Wicks in that position, Nat immediately told him not to touch the head. As he took a position near the body, Martha created a distraction by throwing a fit, which gave the doctor the time to slip the other devil’s head, attached to a knife, into Wicks’ body. This way, they set up a crime that looked impossible and was executed to perfection. However, greed intervened and disrupted everything once again.

Who Killed Samson and Nat?

Martha knew that as long as the jewel was still around, temptation would find its way into someone’s heart and lead them to do terrible things. The only way to stop that was to get the jewel and hide it somewhere else. However, she needed to be able to enter the sealed tomb, which would be closed with Wicks’ burial and could only be opened from the inside. So, she roped in Samson, who loved her dearly. On the day of the funeral, she and Nat hid Wicks’ body and made Samson lie in his coffin. As soon as the coast was clear, Samson would get a signal from Nat. He would get the jewel from Prentice’s rotten body, open the door from the inside, and walk out as if nothing had happened. However, the problem was that the door wouldn’t just fall back into place. It would fall and break, thereby opening the space for investigation. But Martha saw an opportunity in it. She knew that the motion sensor camera would be activated and would film whatever happened outside the tomb.

Since no one knew about Samson, they would see Wicks coming out, making it appear as though he had been resurrected. Because someone would need to witness it, Nat would be around, with his face hidden so that he would seem to be Samson on the video. With that, Samson would be out with the jewel, and none would be the wiser about their plan because they would be focused on the dead priest. What Martha didn’t stop to consider was how the jewel would corrupt the next person. When Nat saw it, he was gripped by the desire to keep it, but for that, he needed to kill Samson, so that’s what he did. Right before that, Jud showed up and was rendered unconscious by a punch from Samson. By the time the priest woke up, Mat had done his job and made it appear as though Jud had killed Samson. Meanwhile, Martha made a show outside the tomb, but when she heard about Samson’s death, she was devastated. However, she also realised exactly what had happened.

She knew that now she was the only person standing in Nat’s way, so she decided to kill him. When she went to his house, he took her to the basement where he’d been keeping Wicks’ body. He made her tea and poisoned it with pentobarbital, but she anticipated that. So, once again, she created a distraction by dropping the jewel on the ground. While Nat picked it up, she swapped their teas. While drinking the tea, Nat confessed everything to her, believing that she was about to die. But then, he started to feel the effects of the drug and realised what had happened. But it was too late to save himself, and he died. Martha took his body, threw it in the tub, made it look like Wicks had pushed him down in it, and then released the chemical that dissolved his body, leaving no way for anyone to figure out that he died by poisoning. To anyone who entered the room, it would look like Wicks’ resurrected corpse had killed the doctor.

Is Martha Dead?

Because Martha’s plan works rather well, Jud becomes the only person suspected of all the deaths. Even he himself believes that he killed Samson and tries to surrender, but Blanc stops him. By the time, he’d noticed the change in Martha’s expression when she heard about Samson’s death, and put a couple of pieces in place to realise that Nat had killed Wicks. This is why he took Jud to the doctor’s house, but by that time, he was dead. Eventually, when the cops come for the young priest, Blanc takes to the pulpit and reveals the truth about Wicks’ death. He mentions that Nat killed him, but before he can get to Martha, he notices the change in the color of her lips and realizes that she has poisoned herself.

So, he claims that he cannot solve the next part of the puzzle, allowing her to come out and confess, and that’s exactly what she does. She sits in confession with Jud attending and reveals everything to them. When Geraldine discovers that Martha has poisoned herself, she leaves to get an ambulance. In this time, Jud absolves Martha of all her sins, frees her of her guilt for Samson’s death, as well as of her unwarranted hatred for Grace. She accepts that she robbed Grace of a chance at a better life, calling her a “poor woman,” and then breathes her last. As she dies, the jewel falls out of her hand, right in front of Jud and Blanc.

What Happens to the Jewel?

The story takes a one-year leap, where Jud, Blanc, and Bishop Langstrom face Cy, who is convinced that Jud has the jewel. With his political career down the drain, Wicks’ charisma, popularity, and the jewel were his only chance at getting back into that world. But with Wicks dead, there was no sign of the jewel. Because he was the priest’s son, Cy believed that the jewel was his birthright. He was convinced that Jud had taken it for himself, especially after discovering that the church had undergone significant renovations and was about to reopen. He thought Jud was using the jewel’s money, but the young priest was above that temptation.

With everything that unfolded in front of him, he knew that Prentice was right in believing that the jewel was Eve’s Apple and would cause all sorts of trouble. It had led to a string of deaths, all caused by the lust and greed for the jewel and the wealth and power it brought. He would have liked to use that money to improve the church, but he knew that the moment he brought it out, things would go back to square one, as someone else would be tempted by it. So, he decided to keep it a secret, even from his boss. Only he and Blanc knew that he had the jewel, and fortunately, the detective shared the priest’s views about not letting the precious thing fall into the wrong hands. Jud also knew that he needed to find a safe space for the thing so that no one would accidentally stumble upon it.

He already knew that his office was prone to robbery, and Cy especially would find a way to rummage through the office, and the whole church, for that matter. It needed to be hidden somewhere where Jud could keep an eye on it while also not constantly worrying about someone finding it. The best place that came to his mind was the empty wall where a giant cross once hung. He’d tried to make another cross for it, but Wicks told him not to fill the empty place, as it was a reminder of Grace’s meltdown. With the new cross, Jud removed that tainted memory of Grace and hid the jewel in the heart of Jesus, thus entrusting it with the Lord rather than another human being.