A Murder At The End Of The World Explained- All The Best Theories So Far

Brit Marling’s and Zal Batmanglij’s series all have the same feel. Everything looks crystal clear and steeped in sepia. The term melancholy contemplation comes to mind. The music, the lighting, the costumes, and the set pieces all look distinctive. It’s as if every moment of every shot is integral to the series and the end of the world itself. Their shows can best be described as so earnest it is painful. I confess to being a die-hard fan of The OA. I shed more than a few tears during both seasons. Like another sensitive sci-fi thinker Sense8, I wanted everything to be real. I didn’t just want to live in the Matrix. I wanted to be a part of it. A Murder At The End Of The World is the same intoxicating mix of earnest ridiculousness and heady interlocking mysteries.

Characters believe wholeheartedly in whatever direction their character is supposed to go. Bill and Darby get caught in the basement of Patricia Bell, the first victim of the Silver Doe case, and instead of trying to save their lives by lying or hiding, they start hurling the victims’ names at the shadowed killer. It’s ridiculous, and yet, it is right in this world where the stakes are so high. They wouldn’t do anything else because they couldn’t. It’s as if they are coded to be these archetypes.

They Unironically blast Gen X anthems. Technically, This Is The End was just before Gen X would have been blasting the stereos, and Annie Lennox’s No More I Love Yous was in Gen X’s mid-twenties, but they were both vibes all Gen Xers grooved to. Marling and Batmanglij famously use music brilliantly to capture a vibe. Their new series, A Murder At The End Of The World, exchanges Live’s Lightning Crashes for the supersonic sugar of Annie Lennox, but the vibe is the same. Like The OA, they also bombard us with clues, hints, symbols, and secrets hidden in plain sight. Here are the wildest theories and most important details from the first four episodes of A Murder At The End Of The World.

The beginning is the end of A Murder At The End Of The World

Infinity symbols are everywhere. From Bill’s ouroboros tattoo to the prominent number 8, there are signs that there is no beginning and no end, just constant. Bill tells her she left him long before she really did, which alludes to the idea that time is fluid and nonlinear. The duality of the beginning and the end is also paralleled when he tells Darby that she is too much and not enough at the same time, and she is really tough but incredibly fragile. Andy’s hotel is designed as a circle as well as the new structure the robots are building which looks suspiciously like the hotel. One of Bill’s tattoos is 55. The number 55 is a divine number, which means your angels are close to you.

We don’t know how Darby and Bill avoided getting shot and got out of the basement with no stairs, so she may still be in the basement with Bill, and everything is a product of her coma. The end is the beginning because she can’t wake up. We don’t know whose blood Bill was washing off in the tub at the hotel, but there was a lot of it. Did both of them die, and this is the last electrical impulse in a dying mind?

Her brain might be trying to make connections between her fantasy and reality. Ray’s name and the bar, Zoomer’s birthday, the password into the surveillance system, and the only survivor of the Silver Does crime all have the same date: 4/14. That can’t be a coincidence. It’s plausible that Darby, Rohan, Bill, and Sian all know Morse Code, but this could be yet another clue that this story is Darby-driven.

Most curiously, Archemidies is mentioned, and the father of mathematics is famous for many things, including levers and irrigation techniques that are still used today. The thing most relevant to A Murder At The End Of The World, however, is his reported last words. he said, ” Do not disturb my circles. He was referring to the mathematical circles he had drawn, but this is intriguing, considering the presence of so many closed loops in the series.

Paternity, cloning, and AI

Lee and Andy’s child Zoomer is at the heart of one of the biggest questions in A Murder At The End Of The World. The adorable but precocious blond child could be many different things that are worth killing to protect. We know Bill learned something that shocked him on the first night of the retreat. It’s plausible he learned he was Zoomer’s biological father, and the broken teacups were the result of being told that news.

According to the flashback, Bill was told by a psychic that he would father one child with a woman with whom he slept only one time. Lee told Darby she and Bill had one disastrous interlude, which did not end on completion. Even if Bill was not a successful lover, he still could have gotten Lee pregnant, or she could have lied about the details to spare Darby and keep her secret.

A second detail from the flashback hints that Zoomer and Bill share a genetic predilection to sneeze when introduced to bright light. Sun sneezing, the non-medical term for the symptom, affects most people at one time or another and isn’t necessarily a genetic marker. However, we are led to believe it is proof of their shared biology. Not every clue is proof, though. There are two additional possibilities, and both are wild. The first is that Bill and Andy are related. Andy is old enough to be Bill’s father if he had him when he was very young. This would mean Andy is Zoomer’s grandfather, not father, which would explain why Bill was a guest of Andy’s despite their differences. Control is an issue for Andy, and losing control of his offspring would undoubtedly qualify as an issue.

Another possibility is Zoomer is a clone of either Andy or Bill. It is hard to believe Andy wouldn’t use his own DNA when cloning someone, so we can assume either Lee did it without anyone knowing or Zoomer is Bill’s biological clone, and Andy and Bill are related. Maybe Zoomer was created to form a more perfect human who could survive the harsh conditions of the world’s end. Perhaps he was a last-ditch effort at immortality?

Zoomer could also be a robot or an AI. He acts strangely, knows his birth down to the minute, and recognizes Bill has a fast heart rate. These are odd parlor tricks but could also hint at his makeup. We know he also doesn’t sleep much, and Andy is weird about what he eats. He was scared to go into the bunker with everyone. Is this because the entire situation was frightening for the child or because he was raised there until recently and didn’t want to go back? I don’t think finding an entire lab underground would shock anyone.

Was everyone lured to Iceland to perform a Turing Test on little Zoomer? He could be a Ray 2.0 that looks, acts, and behaves like a human but is really a robot. Zoomer could have been sick and died, and his consciousness uploaded to the robot Zoomer at some point prior to the retreat, or there could never have been a living child, and he has never been anything but a robot. The sneezing was just something Lee coded into him to make him appear more human and as a nod to someone she cared for. If Lee wished her child was more like Bill instead of Andy, she could have coded that into his program along with many of Bill’s other talents and character traits.

Is everything in A Murder At The End Of The World a simulation, or did the apocalypse already happen?

Signposting is pretty heavy-handed in episode one. The Doors The End blares from Darby’s headphones as she walks into her book reading. Darby even tells the audience she is going to start from the end. Maybe Marling and Batmanglij were telling us everything we needed to know. Perhaps the end of the world has already happened, and this is a simulation that the people who attended the retreat were placed in either for preservation or to determine who was worthy of saving. If the worst had already happened, the people at the retreat could be the last conscious lives on Earth. It is also suspiciously on the nose that BIll’s psychic was named Fay Winter. Fay can also mean fake or faux, as in there is no Iceland, no end of the world, or real people.

A more plausible possibility is no one ever went anywhere, and they were all placed in a simulation before arriving in Iceland. They could easily have been drugged, gassed, or hypnotized while on the plane. It would explain why some people were allowed to travel to the site independently and others had to take the very restrictive and controlled flight. Darby didn’t look at the consent form she signed, nor did she question the swab. If the end of the world was near, she, along with all the other guests, may have been swabbed so all of them could be cloned, and the simulation is the first step in the process of uploading their consciousness into a clone or a robot.

Who is Ray?

Ray first presents as a blue fire icon who asks to be invited into Darby’s apartment. He is the AI assistant of Andy Ronson and Darby’s lifeline in the series’ first three episodes. He could be a fancy augmented reality virtual assistant or a first attempt at human replication. We know Andy is infatuated with the idea of AI’s mating, and Ray might be someone’s daddy. He could be the killer with access to everything he needs to kill everyone off one at a time.

Think of him as a more crafty Terminator who uses technology to do his dirty work. He could have used smaller robots created by Oliver to avoid the cameras and inject Bill with the fatal amount of morphine. Because he was in every system, everything else that had happened so far would have been easy. Is he an angry, advanced intelligence, or was he coded to do all these things? I’m more inclined to think if Ray is the killer, he is being used by Lee or Andy. We know he has trouble operating properly when music is played. Might this be something they can use in the future?

A more interesting theory puts him firmly in the simulation and possible creation of Bill or Lee. The bar where Darby and Bill first meet is called Rays. Details like that matter in Batmanglij’s and Marling’s worlds. Maybe Ray’s name was coded to help Darby figure out she was in a simulation, or maybe it was used to subtly manipulate her into trusting him. There is so much we don’t know, like if Darby’s dad actually called and encouraged her to go to the retreat. This could have been a deep fake perpetrated by Ray to get her to go.

The color red

In The Sixth Sense, the color red alerts everyone to the presence of a ghost. Red doorknobs, clothing, tents, and balloons are all used strategically to signal what we should have all seen coming. Something similar seems to be happening in A Murder At The End Of The World. The doors at the retreat all go from blue to red when the door is opened, and the flashlight Rohan uses to signal with is a red signaling light. The laces of his boots are also red.

Additionally, the helmet that Darby initially wears and later nearly suffocates Sian has a red dot on it. Was Darby the intended victim all along, and Sian was an accidental victim? Darby is fond of red clothing, which she wears often. The carpet, walls, and lamps are all red at the hotel in Iceland. The stake with a rope that held Rohan’s Zodiac boat had a red piece of cloth tied to it. The artwork in the hotel is white canvas with the word red written. This has to be a clue that we should pay attention to the color red and when and where it appears.

Rohan, Darby, Bill, and Ray all have worn various shades of red. Zoomers play medical kit is red. Does red mean they aren’t real? Maybe red means they are real, and no one else is? Could red mean they are marked for death? Maybe this is St. Elsewhere, and Darby is in a coma. Everything we see played out is part of her subconscious mind trying to find a way out.

Mirrors, reflection, and perception

How we perceive ourselves and others is a common theme in A Murder At The End Of The World. Darby speaks for the dead, and they speak back to her. She doesn’t get inside the mind of the killer. She lives inside the minds of the victims. In many ways, that makes her a victim of their trauma, even as she desperately tries to get justice for them. She sees herself as a crusader. Andy sees himself as a hero. He is an egotist and thinks he has all the answers to save himself, if not the world. Andy, like most narcissists, is also paranoid and controlling. He doesn’t see himself this way.

Perhaps Lee does, though, which makes their relationship disturbing. She left the internet and went into hiding after being doxxed and having her life destroyed by incels. Is it possible she left one toxic community for another toxic relationship? Is it possible she has orchestrated everything to expose him? We know Andy doesn’t trust her entirely because she and Zoomer were left with the rest of the guests when Andy went to his “undisclosed location” for safety. Why wouldn’t he bring his wife and kid to the safest place? Does he know they can’t be hurt, IE, they are both robots or doesn’t he trust them?

A conversation between Darby and Rohan before his death shows that perception was crucial to Bill and Rohan. Rohan was an alcoholic who was slowly killing himself before Bill saved him. When asked how Bill did that, Rohan said he gave him something he needed to change. Bill saved Rohan by giving him a different perspective. “Death begets new life.” It is a quote from Charles Dickens’s A Tale Of Two Cities and means that the cycle of life and death is as important and beautiful as life itself. Curiously, it is yet another example of a continuous loop or infinity.

The only thing we know for sure is Bill and Rohan were killed—one by overdose and the other by pacemaker hack. We also know Sian almost died when the helmet she was wearing malfunctioned. It could have been damaged in the accident, or it could have been sabotaged. Someone or something is picking people off left and right.

One last nugget to chew on. Maybe Andy is the robot? He thinks emotions taste like metal, which is a weird thing to say. Lee looks almost nervous when he delivers his speech to the table. Lee is brilliant and retreated from the world. Did she create a male tech wizard as the masculine front for everything she has accomplished? Has her creation done what all toxic males do: take over? Lee tells Darby to investigate because a twenty-four-year-old girl threatens no one. Maybe Darby wasn’t the young woman she was referring to.