In the premiere episode of FX’s A Murder at the End of the World, we met Darby Hart and Bill Faradah, former lovers united by a shared interest in crime solving. Six years after they last saw one another, they were reunited at an exclusive Icelandic retreat organized by tech billionaire Andy Ronson and his famous hacker wife, Lee Andersen. And then Bill died. Episode 2 picks up right where things left off, and so too does this recap.
(Chris Saunders/FX)
“Chapter 2: The Silver Doe” – Written by Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij, Melanie Marnich and Rebecca Roanhorse
Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) rushes inside the resort looking for help. The person at the front desk doesn’t understand her, but lets her look at the computer, finding that Dr. Sian Cruise (Alice Braga) is in room 4 and asking him to get them into room 11. She rushes to Sian’s room to get her and they run to Bill’s room. While Sian tries to resuscitate him, Darby has a look around. There’s a black tube on the ground that looks like the case of an epipen. Bill’s jacket was also tossed haphazardly on the floor. And a copy of Darby’s book, “The Silver Doe,” is open face down with bloody fingerprints on the dust jacket. Sian tells Darby that Bill is gone as Andy Ronson (Clive Owen), his head of security Todd Andrews (Louis Cancelmi), and hotel manager Marius (Christopher Gurr) arrive. Sian speculates that Bill had a seizure, which caused him to hit his head and die, but Darby tells them that none of this feels right. Marius kicks Darby out of the room since she’s not Bill’s immediate family. As she is pushed into the hallway, she bumps into Tomas (Daniel Olson), who was delivering a full teapot and cups to a room. They fall off the trey and break, and Tomas apologizes. Darby asks if the tea was on its way to room 11, but Tomas is unable to share that information with her. Andy steps out to apologize to Darby. “We’re contacting the Icelandic authorities and the embassy in Reykjavík,” he assures her. Todd is assigned to take Darby to her room, which his wife Eva (Britian Seibert) tasked with taking care of Darby.
(FX)
Darby has a flashback to one of the first times she was told she doesn’t belong at a crime scene. Her father (Neal Huff) is a coroner, and we see young Darby (Anastasia Lee) accompany him to a crime scene. She’s asked to wait in the car, but she doesn’t listen, walking between cops in the marsh and crouching at the edge of a lake to examine the dead woman floating belly up. The cops wanted Darby to leave, but her dad gave her permission to stay and watch him work.
Eva takes Darby into her room and tries to comfort her. “We lose our legs in moments like this,” she calmly says, trying to help Darby into bed. She calls for Ray (Edoardo Ballerini) to give Darby access to contact her directly if she needs anything, and Eva produces two sleeping pills and a glass of water. “The best thing for you is to sleep.” Eva heads to the door. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” She leaves. Alone, Darby doesn’t know what to do with herself. She knocks books off the shelf and tears the sheets off the bed. After some hesitation, she decides to take the sleeping pills, laying in bed, watching the snow fall outside the window as she drifts off.
(Eric Liebowitz/FX)
Another flashback, this one to Darby’s teenage years. She accompanies her dad to a farm where a construction project unearthed skeletal remains. She puts on gloves and joins him to help. Once again, the police officers standing by criticize her for being there. As she helps brush dirt away from the bones, her dad theorizes that this was a young woman, possibly a teenager. Her skull shows signs of blunt force trauma. There’s nothing on the body to identify her, save for two elaborate silver earrings. “You don’t think it’s strange that these are the only thing with her body?”, she asks the cops. “Girls wear earrings,” one replies. When Darby gets to school, she pays close attention to the style of earrings the other girls wear. None of them are like the ones found on the body. After school, she goes to the morgue to help her dad. He tasks her with taking the girls’ remains to storage, including the earrings. As she puts the Jane Doe amongst boxes of others, Darby decides to pocket the earrings, unwilling to let this case go. At home, she takes pictures of them and tries a reverse image search, but no information comes up. Searching for Jane Doe jewelry cases, she finds a forum called “The Doe Files “ and a post about another woman’s body that was found with nothing but silver jewelry. The story was shared by a user named “KillBill.” She responds with a description of what was found in her town, along with a picture of the earrings. Moments later, she gets a DM fom “KillBill” and they start chatting. During the conversation, Darby tells him, “The dead talk to me.” She suddenly has an incoming video call from the other user. She nervously accepts. Darby gets her first glimpse of Bill Farrah (Harris Dickinson).
Sunlight pours into Darby’s room through the open windows, waking her up. As she heads to the dining room, she hears the other guests talking and laughing over breakfast. Lee Andersen (Brit Marling) rushes to Darby, giving her a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she says. Andy gets the group’s attention to share the sad news that Bill Farrah passed away last night. “It appears that he overdosed in his room sometime after midnight,” he shares, adding that police will be there tonight to investigate and that he’s already spoken with Bill’s mother. “I just urge all of you to say nothing to anybody until all of his family have been contacted.” Darby is surprised when another guest, Rohan (Javed Khan), bursts into tears at hearing the news of Bill’s passing. David (Raúl Esparza) pompously tells him to hold himself together. “I was with him when he died,” Darby announces, causing confusion on the faces of Andy and Lee. She describes seeing Bill fighting for his life through the window. Andy points out that moments of regret are common in suicides, adding that he’s an expert on addiction as the son of two biological parents who were addicts. “Bill got sober years ago,” Darby responds, to which Sian points out that Darby said she hadn’t talked to Bill for 6 years. Lu Mei (Joan Chen) tries to comfort Darby. Martin (Jermaine Fowler) wants to cancel the presentation he was to give that day. Ziba (Pegah Ferydoni) asks Andy if he’s planning to send them all home, to which he points out how long it took to plan this retreat and how difficult it would be to get this same group together again. He says it would make them quitters. “Bill wouldn’t want us to do that,” he finishes, before offering to make arrangements for anyone who insists on leaving. He turns to Lee for her support. “Community is the only thing we have in the face of loss,” she says. “I would like to stay.” Everyone agrees to stay.
(Chris Saunders/FX)
Darby goes to the restroom and intentionally clogs a toilet, causing water to spill onto the floor. She goes to the front desk to report a messy toilet to Marius, who rushes away to tend to it. He leaves the desk unattended, and she uses the computer to grant her ring key access to more areas of the resort, including room 11. She goes to Bill’s room and sees his body covered by a tarp. She peels it back to investigate, noticing that there is an injection mark on his right bicep. She calls to Ray, asking him to disable audio recording in that room, then asks for his help. “Do right-handed people usually inject themselves into their right arm?” Ray pulls data and confirms this is very rare. She asks for a list of other common injection sites for drug users, and as Ray lists them off, she checks those parts of Bill’s body. There’s no other evidence of Bill’s skin being punctured by needles. “Somone killed him,” she whispers out loud, on the verge of tears. She goes to the bathroom and puts on gloves, grabbing a jar of baby powder. She picks up the black case that looks like an epipen, dusting it with baby powder and looking for fingerprints. There aren’t any. Darby’s investigation is disturbed by the screen at the door coming to life, indicating that someone is outside. She rushes back to the bathroom to hide.
Lee Andersen enters Bill’s room. Darby watches her from the bathroom, repositioning herself to watch Lee’s reflection in a mirror on the wall. Lee goes to Bill’s body and starts to pull the tarp back, but she’s too repulsed by the sight of a dead body and covers him quickly. She goes to Bill’s backpack and starts to search for something. Then she goes to a desk, sifting through papers. She notices the time and grumbles about being late, leaving Bill’s room quickly. Darby follows her to the study where Martin is giving a presentation.
Martin reveals that his upcoming film was made in collaboration with Ray, which sparks a conversation from the group regarding whereer “Alternative Intelligence” can make art. Martin explains that it’s just another tool for an artist to use, and shows an example of how Ray’s knowledge of every film and every book can be put to use. He instructs Ray to write a new Harry Potter chapter in the style of Ernest Hemingway. Ray begins to deliver a result instantly. Martin asks Ray to “hit the lights” and Andy reminds him the be literal, saying “turn off the lights” to get the desired result. Darby takes a seat next to Lee as the screening starts.
(Chris Saunders/FX)
“Bill didn’t kill himself,” Darby whispers to Lee, quietly telling her that Bill was injected in his right arm, not his left. Lee asks how Darby knows this. “It’s my 57th crime scene,” she declares. Darby asks Lee what she was looking for in Bill’s room. “I think I needed to see him with my own eyes,” she lies. Andy overhears them talking and turns around, giving Lee a stern look to be quiet. After a moment’s pause, Darby continues probing Lee about what she was looking for. “The cameras here are wireless,” Lee tells Darby. “They’re on their own VLAN. Footage of every door’s camera is flying invisibly through the air.” Darby realizes she won’t be given the SSID if she asks for it. “You know my favorite part of your book?”, Lee asks. “When you use my old doorbell hack to get into the serial killer’s house. Just don’t get caught.” Darby returns to her room and pulls up the old hack on her laptop, staring at the video screen connecter to her door’s camera and thinking about how she could get the SSID network info.
In another flashback, we see how Darby and Bill’s relationship blossomed around their shared interest in finding the serial killer who leaves women’s bodies with nothing but silver jewlery. She clarifies what she meant when she said the dead speak to her, saying it’s like putting on a glove and being puppeteered to find information. For Bill, he loves solving puzzles. As they hack databases in other states, Darby finds a report from 2001 by a woman who avoided an abduction attempt from a man who was interested in her because of her silver earrings. Her name is Margaret Diaz, and Bill proposes a road trip to go talk to her. Darby is freaked out by the potential of meeting Bill face to face. But he softens her with a surprise one night. Bill give Darby coordinates to follow, which lead her to a railroad crossing. The lights begin to blink in morse code and Darby deciphers the message: Happy Birthday Darby.
Darby asks Ray if any of the lights in the resort are LED. He tells her that recessed lights in the library are. She also asks if all of the hotel’s smart devices are on the same network, a question Ray is unable to answer. Darby uses a ladder in the library to get to the top shelf, unscrewing an LED bulb from its socket. She takes it to her room and dismantels it, removes its chip, and connects it to her laptop. It gives her an SSID, and as she searches through the code, she sees a chain of numbers that looks like a date. She asks way if “04142017″ has any significance to Andy Ronson. Ray points out that Zoomer’s was born on April 14th, 2017. Darby tries this combination and is able to connect to the hotel’s SSID network, quickly hacking its security camera system. She pulls up the recordings from room 11. Before Bill entered his room for the last time, Ziba came by, looking at Bill’s door, but she went away without meeting him. After that, a mysterious segment of video shows light emerge from Bill’s door, but nobody can be seen on the camera. And lastly, a file that makes Darby jump out of her seat. It’s a person in a hoodie wearing a white mask that completely obstructs their face.
Darby’s search through security footage is interrupted by the sound of a truck outside. She steps onto her balcony to watch as Bill’s body is loaded into an ambulance. Andy Ronson pats one of the officers on the back as they take Bill away.
The episode ends with one last flashback. Darby has arrived at a place called Ray’s Tavern, walking past a group of drunk men outside. Inside, the bar is loud and buzzing with people. She looks uncomfortable there as she moves her way through, lookling for someone. And then she finds him. Bill Farrah can’t believe she’s there. He smiles so wide, his eyes welling with tears. Darby’s are too. It’s their first time meeting face to face.
(Chris Saunders/FX)
A Murder at the End of the World returns next Tuesday, November 21st, on Hulu. I leave you with the next episode’s description.
“Chapter 3: Survivors” – Written by Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij and Melanie Marnich
Darby plays the role of the perfect guest in order to covertly investigate the crime. She finds she may be getting closer to the truth when another life is taken.
Songs Featured in This Episode: