A Murder at the End of the World – Chapter 7: Retreat

By: Gladys Luna

Darby (Emma Corrin), Lee (Brit Marling) and David (Raúl Esparza) are being taken to the underground suite by Andy (Clive Owen) and Todd (Louis Cancelmi) where the rest of the guests are already waiting for them. Exhausted from spending the days living in sheer terror and the anguish to know what is coming next, Andy decides to bring them all to his suite and hold them hostages until the killer confesses their crimes. The man explains that Ray (Edoardo Ballerini) has guided him along the whole process while building the hotel practically giving him credit for being the mastermind behind it – all in the name of him and his family safety. Once he is done with his speech, he makes some space for the others to talk and come clean. Lu Mei (Joan Chen) is the first one to talk saying that she has no intentions on hurting him since she understands what their conjoint power would mean to the world, so she is willing to collaborate with him as long as she lets her go back home. Andy is not exactly persuaded by her offer and instead he decides to continue guessing the reason why the others might want to ruin his reputation. Andy believes that David, having always been in his shadow, has every reason to hate him and the other man is quick to say that he does despise him but not for being better than him but because for being a jerk. Seeing that he won’t get another word from him, the billionaire decides to confess what he knows and accuses David of being the one who attacked Darby to prevent her from continue her investigation on the murders. David admits that all he wanted was to keep her away from Lee, which makes Andy add something about his wife’s true personality. He claims that eventhough the woman appears to be always composed and innocent, she was capable of kidnapping his son and taking him to Canada. Additionally, he reveals how before they got married she had a very long criminal record of cybercrimes that he had to clean up for her so she could start over. The woman has no other choice but to confess to those crimes that she committed just to help pay her parents debts and take his father out of jail. To this point Andy knows that Lee is capable to do anything for those she loves, even kidnapping their own son with the help of Bill (Harris Dickinson), Rohan (Javed Khan) and David. This was the plan Rohan wanted to tell to Darby before he died, something that – before Andy’s eyes –  is enough reason to want to destroy him and everything he has built. He believes that if she is not really interested in their relationship anymore, she could just file for divorce and have shared custody of their son. However, Ziba (Pegah Ferydoni) interrupts him saying that doing that to a man with his power won’t exactly turn the right way for her.

The tension in the room has grown bigger when all of a sudden Zoomer’s (Kellan Tetlow) toy ambulance makes an appearance followed by the kid and Eva (Britian Seibert). The little boy runs towards Lee to tell her that he has been eating pancakes that Eva cooked for him as well as playing a VR game. Lee carries him and excuses herself to go put him to bed, but Andy won’t allow her to do that – taking him away from her arms. He asks Eva to carry him back upstairs and get him to sleep, but Zoomer starts kicking and screaming that he wants to finish his game wanting to recover his VR helmet that is now lying on the floor. Darby sees it, takes it and wears it. She then sees how Ray is there calling for Zoomer to return and finish their game. That is when she understands it all. The young woman yells at them to stop and then removes the helmet and asks for the chance to talk to the kid. She questions him about that day they arrived and had their welcome dinner where he played doctor with Bill. She asks him if she saw him again after that night to what he confesses that he did since the guy wasn’t feeling well so he had to visit him and gave him a shot that he got from Eva’s office based on Ray’s orders. He also says that the AI knows every code and every single corner of the hotel,and had also asked him to help Rohan by activating the pacemaker monitoring system. Darby asks Ray to show her his kit and sees the morphine shots in it. The room is now in silence;.Lee takes the kid to his room while the others try to figure out what to do next. Andy is speechless and very much disturbed by his son’s confessions.

A few minutes have passed and Andy has finally decided to speak. He asks Ray explicitly if he had killed Bill, but he denies it. He wonders if Zoomer was the one who killed him and he answers that he doesn’t know. At last, he asks if he was the one to order the kid to give Bill Farrah a shot of morphine from his safe and Ray admits he did it. Darby believes there’s more to the story than they are overlooking and will get to the bottom of this. She deduces that Sian’s (Alice Braga) death was an accident provoked by a security shutdown started by Ray when he realized that Lu Mei had hacked the system firewall to contact her security team which caused Sian and Darby’s snow suits to be turned off (which was the reason why Andy and Eva had to perform a tracheotomy on Sian to keep her alive). Luckily for Darby, she was not wearing her helmet at that time. Having one death cleared, there is still the question about why Ray would want Bill or Rohan dead. Darby now knows that based on the medical exams the staff did to them before they entered the hotel. Ray must have found out that Bill was Zoomer’s biological father, but still that’s not enough to see him as a threat. Then, she remembers how Andy once confessed that he didn’t trust anyone and thinks that just is the way she did it back then when she felt all alone. She thinks the man must have used the AI as a therapist, so she confronts him about it and he admits he has done it. She asks him to order Ray to confess his reason to murder Bill, but Andy denies it and instead he orders Marius (Christopher Gurr) to go upstairs and check if the police have already arrived. Marius declines to do it as he wants to know what Ray has to say. Knowing that Ray would only answer to Andy’s voice, Darby uses a deepfake app to imitate Andy’s voice and requests Ray to play the man’s therapy sessions where he talked about Bill. What they hear is just how much he hates the guy and all the damage he would like to cause him. To make matters worse, he ends up confessing that if he dies that Bill would be a full threat to everything he has built so far. Andy says that despite everything he said he didn’t act on it, but the thing is that he did it somehow when he merged the security AI he built with his bot therapist and created a monster turning him on his son’s best friend and teacher. Therefore, now two innocent people have died just so he could preserve his empire. So, who’s to blame? At these accusations Andy cannot help it anymore and loses his temper attempting to choke Darby, but Lee punches him in the head leaving him unconscious.

With the help of the others, Andy is taken to another room to be treated by Eva while Darby, Lee and Zoomer go to the servers’ farm to destroy Ray. While they are on their way, Martin (Jermaine Fowler) meditates on the thought that at the end Ray is nothing but a reflection of  humanity except, he has no soul. Back to Darby and Lee, the two women attempt to open the door using different methods but they fail to it until the kid tells them that he has seen his father use Ray’s birthday to open it which he knows quite well. Once they’re inside they try to hack the system to bring it down, but then they think of a different solution which is to set a laptop battery on fire and throw it to the servers. While they do it Ray attempts to dissuade Zoomer to help him stop them, but Lee makes sure he does not listen to him. The three of them escape the room and hear the police coming so they hide in Bill’s room where Lee and Zoomer prepare to escape. Once they are ready, Lee and Darby say goodbye to each other and then mother and son leave for good. The police have made their entrance and one by one each guest is released. Darby narrates how there always will be many other Ray’s and many other Andy’s just under a different name.

Now, Darby is facing a different crowd. She is reading another extract of her new book in front of Martin, Lu Mei, Ziba, Oliver (Ryan J. Haddad) and David. She says that Andy has filed a demand against Lee and as soon as they find her she will be facing a trial for kidnapping. Rohan and Bill’s death are still under investigation and she believes it will take long until they have a resolution for it. Until this day the police don’t know who to blame for those murders. And as for Lee and Zoomer, she says she likes to imagine the kid is growing somewhere safe where he can be just a kid. Meanwhile, we see mother and son reaching the coast and finding the boat that Rohan had left for them to use. As for Bill, she is satisfied for having told his story, his ending. Now, she is sure that everyone will always remember his name… BILL FARRAH.