We first meet ace hacker Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) at a literary event at a mom-and-pop book store. She’s there to promote her true-crime memoir The Silver Doe, which details how she and a fellow internet sleuth, Bill Farrah (Harris Dickinson), managed to bring a serial killer to justice. Walking timidly up to the stage, frightened eyes peering out from under an oversized hoody, Darby initially seems impossibly small. But she finds her feet as she begins to read aloud, and soon the whole room is captivated by her story.
Beginning with the portion of the book that Darby reads, A Murder at the End of the World gives us regular flashbacks to her journey with Bill as they bounce between crappy motels in dusty, middle-of-nowhere stretches of Iowa, scouring the web for clues, tracking down leads, and sharing cigarettes. Darby’s father is a coroner, and it was the sight of a morgue filled with Jane Does, women relegated to a nameless oblivion, that inspired her to become a detective.
Darby’s sleuthing skills eventually catch the eye of a reclusive tech billionaire, Andy Ronson (Clive Owen), and his ace hacker wife, Lee (Brit Marling), who invite Darby and Bill—along with six other individuals, among them notable intellectuals, activists, and artists—to join them at a secret retreat in the Arctic. When one of the guests is found dead on the very first night amid strange circumstances, it’s up to Darby to figure out what happened.
As a murder mystery, A Murder at the End of the World can feel a little by-the-numbers. Darby’s investigation has her slowly moving through the rest of the group, first suspecting one member before moving on to another. But while Corrin brings a mixture of softness and steeliness to Darby, few of the other characters are given an opportunity to establish themselves beyond mere avatars in what essentially boils down to a real-life game of Clue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf7fEXANx2c
A Murder at the End of the World, though, is less about whodunit than about the role that technology increasingly plays in our lives. From the home computers that self-taught hackers like Darby use to the futuristic A.I. tech that Andy has built into every inch of his compound, technology is a constant presence. In fact, the killer exploits people’s digital dependency, hacking into camera feeds, medical devices, and safety equipment—proving how vulnerable we can become when we outsource all of our most important operations to machines.
The series is darkly clever but never purely cynical. A Murder at the End of the World also emphasizes the ways in which Darby’s life has been enriched by modern tech, as she refers to her smartphone as “half my brain” and relies on internet searches and forums filled with like-minded sleuths for her investigations. And while we’re used to seeing social media take the blame for widening the fault lines in our fractured society, for Darby it’s a way of reaching out beyond the lonely, physical world of her hometown in search of a real human connection.
For all the cunning plot twists and story machinations—and it does ultimately conclude in a way that’s both clever and surprising—it’s the flashbacks to Darby and Bill’s earlier investigation where A Murder at the End of the World feels most alive. Visually, the series draws a strong distinction between the past and present, with the bright, open spaces of Darby and Bill’s Midwestern adventure contrasted with the aching cold and perpetual darkness of the Arctic.
This is more than just an efficient way to keep the two plot threads from tangling. When the series moves from the claustrophobic confines of Andy’s base to the sun-soaked spaces of Iowa, it’s like you can suddenly breathe again. As they slowly figure each other out over the course of their investigation, Darby and Bill’s dynamic has a similar warmth to it.
A Murder at the End of the World, then, isn’t really what it seems. It might be marketed as a murder mystery, but at its core is a dark romance between two lost children of the internet age who are trying to find meaning in a chaotic modern world.
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