A Murder at the End of the World episode 6 recap: the villain is revealed

A Murder at the End of the World episode 6
(Image credit: FX Networks)

We've reached the penultimate installment of A Murder at the End of the World, with episode 6 preparing us for the confrontation that's sure to come in the seventh and final episode.

This episode, which debuted on Tuesday, December 12, is more subdued than many of the other episodes, but it resolves a cliffhanger that was originally set up right at the beginning of the show.

Murder follows the attendees of a conference for influential tech and creative figures in a remote Icelandic hotel, though it's starting to sound like most of the people there weren't asked along for their futuristic ideas!

So, let's jump into this A Murder at the End of the World episode 6 recap, and it's going to contain spoilers for the episode and some previous ones. You've been warned!

A villain, but is he a murderer?

A Murder at the End of the World episode 6

(Image credit: FX Networks)

Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) is still drowning in the pool, where she ended the previous episode. That is, until someone breaks the cover and rescues her. Then she's carried to somewhere safe by Lee Anderson (Brit Marling) and David (Raúl Esparza). He tells her that he's going to intercept Andy after his treatment.

When Darby is back on her feet, Lee admits to her that she's the one who sent the Morse code sequence to get Darby to the pool, but she wasn't the one who tried to kill her. Darby thinks the pool cover was hacked, though she still can't quite trust Lee, as she explicitly tells the woman.

Lee tells Darby about her marriage to Andy (Clive Owen). It started fine, but the man became more and more controlling of their child Zoomer: he tracked his REM cycles, measured his food to the gram, micromanaged every part of the kids' life. At one time, Zoomer simply fell off his bike, and Andy was so annoyed that he hit Lee.

Lee is worried that, once Andy finishes creating his bunker, she and Zoomer will be trapped in it forever. She tells the story of a time she tried to escape from Andy with Zoomer, using all her hacking skills to get away and run away to Canada, but he still managed to find her. In this flashback, Andy tells Lee that she's allowed to run away, but Zoomer has to stay.

Darby decides that she was invited to the conference as bait so that Bill would attend, and that he was killed due to siring Zoomer while Rohan was murdered as Lee was planning to escape with him on his boat. However Lee's not convinced, as he thinks Andy's too smart for that. Darby ponders that maybe he also needs help solving the case. While he's a villain, maybe he's not also a murderer.

Clearing up cliffhangers

A Murder at the End of the World episode 6

(Image credit: FX Networks)

Darby decides that they need to return to Bill's room, but as they're leaving someone shows up. It's Oliver (Ryan J. Haddad), who tells them that David asked him to bring the two of them to his room. The women are suspicious, but they decide to go to Bill's room instead. Oliver accompanies them.

After sniffing some of Bill's clothes, Darby starts to look through the smart doorbell footage. There's a part where Bill opens the door and closes it again, shortly before his death, and Darby figures that there was someone outside, but they must be adept in computer wizardry to edit themselves out.

Next, Darby finds Bill's copy of her book, which is covered in blood, and she realizes that he marked a clue for her. The blood points to the final chapter of the book, which is the one Darby read at the reading in the first episode.

At Lee and Oliver's behest, she reads it again, and we return to the same flashback that we saw during the reading in episode 1. The murder points out his gun and Bill and Darby, but then shoots himself instead. The blood splatters over Bill who's clearly traumatized, while Darby goes to a neighbor's house to call the police.

Later that day, Bill is still affected by the events. Darby says that she thinks the murderer, Frank Bell, was following their investigation online, but Bill is sick of Darby trying to add meaning to these murders. He's annoyed that she never speaks about how she feels, and is too dead-set on her quest.

Bill then runs away from Darby, as we saw him do in a previous episode, except when we saw it first we didn't know why. In the modern day, while reading this, Darby realizes that on their whole voyage, she didn't really care about his feelings, and she should have been there for him.

Oliver looks at the book and sees that a line about programming was underlined in blood, to tell Darby that the murderer is a hacker. This will only be news to you if this is your first episode of A Murder at the End of the World.

Oliver speculates that it's Lu Mei, because of her work in smart cities, and Darby ponders whether it's Eva since she had access to morphine and possibly loves Andy, but then they all go back to thinking that Andy is the murderer. 

But enough speculation, they decide on action; Darby decides that they need to get Lee and Zoomer out of the hotel straight away, to get them away from Andy.

However a screaming comes from outside the room, and the smart doorbell turns on to reveal a beaten-up David. Andy and his security guard have beaten up the man to find out the location of Andy and Darby, and now he's here for them.

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Tom Bedford
Streaming and Ecommerce Writer

Tom is the streaming and ecommerce writer at What to Watch, covering streaming services in the US and UK. His goal is to help you navigate the busy and confusing online video market, to help you find the TV, movies and sports that you're looking for without having to spend too much money.