A Murder at the End of the World made us privy to a sleuth named Darby Hart, who lived a secluded life and had a knack for solving murder cases. In the first episode, Darby is invited by a renowned personality to attend a conference in Iceland, but things don’t turn out as she would have expected them to. So, let’s find out what Darby noticed during the conference in Iceland and what happened to her at the end.
Spoiler Alert
What was Darby Hart’s book about?
Darby Hart came for the book reading, and seeing her overall demeanor, people started to leave, as they probably judged her even before they heard her speak. We agree that Darby didn’t fit the bill, and she didn’t look like a person who could have written something so intriguing. Silver Doe, Darby’s book, was an ode to all those Jane Does who had been killed and whose cases were never solved by the law enforcement authorities. Darby’s father was a county coroner, and since her childhood, she had spent a lot of time around dead bodies. She threw a striking fact at her audience, and she told them that there were around 40000 unidentified dead people in the United States of America alone, out of which half were accidental deaths and the other half were victims of unsolved murder cases.
Another astonishing aspect was that in the majority of unsolved murder cases, the victim was a female. Darby had come to know about this because she had hacked into a federal database that had the list of all those unidentified dead bodies. She met her partner in crime, a man named Bill, who shared the same enthusiasm as her for solving mysteries and finding the truth. Darby had met Bill on an online sleuthing forum, and soon, both of them figured out that the Jane Doe, who had been living in Darby’s neighborhood, was one of the many victims of the same killer. Darby and Bill investigated for a year, and they went after every lead that came their way. After a lot of hard work, they found an address, and they believed it to be the residence of the killer of multiple women. They both went to the killer’s house when he was not there, and they started digging in the basement. They found the skeletons of the victims, and just then, the killer walked in on them.
Darby stopped reading at that moment as she felt overwhelmed going back in time. The floor was opened for questioning, and a gentleman stood up in the crowd and asked Darby why she had dedicated her book to the famous hacker, Lee Anderson. Darby told everyone that she was a fan of Anderson and that she was the only female coder when she was growing up. Some people had published some private information about Anderson with a malicious intent to destroy her career, but later, she married the tech genius Andy Ronson, which Darby believed was a kind of revenge she took on the naysayers who didn’t believe in her abilities and were always trying to create obstacles in her way. A woman sitting in the audience asked Darby about Bill and why he was not at the reading, considering he was such an integral part of the story. In A Murder at the End of the World Episode 1, we came to know that Bill left Darby one fine morning, and he never returned after that. He left a cryptic message on the mirror, and Darby could never really understand why he made that decision to vanish all of a sudden. The reading was needed, and Darby headed to her home, where a surprise was waiting for her.
Why had Andy Ronson invited experts to Iceland?
When Darby reached her home, she got a message from the AI assistant of Andy Ronson, with a link attached to it. Darby had only heard about Andy Ronson up until then, and to believe that he had personally tried to contact her was not possible for her. She put the message online and asked the people if they thought that someone was playing a prank on her and if the link was some kind of virus. Just about an hour ago, she told the audience at the bookstore that she had dedicated her book to her hero, Lee Anderson, and now, out of nowhere, her husband, the IT mogul, was trying to get in touch with her. Darby opened the link, and the projection of the artificial intelligence came onto her mobile screen. The most fascinating thing about the AI was that if one saw it on their screen or through the AI-powered smart glasses, they saw the projection of a man sitting right in front of them. For a moment, Darby couldn’t understand what was happening and was ecstatic to know that Andy believed her to be worthy of being called to that conference.
Darby took the private plane, and she met a lot of well-known people she had heard of, read about, or looked up to at some point in her life. Everybody was a fan of each other, and there was a sense of mutual respect that could be felt on an airplane full of genius minds. Finally, the handpicked candidates reached Fljot Valley in Iceland, and they were welcomed by their host at the dinner that happened later that night. It was revealed in A Murder at the End of the World that a few of them were called by Andy, whereas the others were invited by Anderson. Andy welcomed everybody, but in the process, he threw a remark, which made us feel like he looked down upon the people who were called in by his wife, and, jokingly, he said out loud that he didn’t know why his wife had picked them and what purpose they could serve. Andy talked about how climate change was going to impact the future of the planet and how technology could play a crucial role in the scheme of things. He said that he believed in the abilities of all those present, and he looked forward to having meaningful conversations that could lay the blueprint for the plan that could save the planet.
What happened between Darby and Bill?
Darby almost choked on food when she saw Bill come and sit in front of her on the dining table out of nowhere. She hadn’t expected to meet him at the conference, and for a moment, she just couldn’t understand what was happening. Darby met Bill later and asked him why he had left her without saying anything. Bill told her that he had come for Lee, and it came as a surprise to Darby that the former knew her. Bill accepted that he loved Darby, and he felt that he was not worthy of her. He had a lot of inhibitions about himself, and he said that he was too scared at times to be with Darby as he felt that he wouldn’t be able to match her expectations.
At the end of A Murder at the End of the World Episode 1, Bill invited Darby to his room, though the latter was not sure if she should do that. Darby went to her, and she searched online to see if she could find anything about Lee Anderson and Bill, wondering if the latter had said that he had come for her. The pictures she found online made her feel that something was happening between those two. It felt like Bill had been secretly dating Lee, though Darby still had her doubts about it. She decided to go to Bill’s room, but when she reached outside his door, she heard muffled voices, which at first made her feel that he was sharing an intimate moment with someone. Darby was about to leave when she had an intuition of sorts and felt that Bill was in trouble. She quickly ran outside to look what was happening inside Bill’s room, and what Darby saw shocked her beyond any measure. Bill was soaked in blood, and he was on the floor of his room. He asked Darby to be there, as he probably knew that he would succumb to his injury. At the ending of the first episode, Bill took his last breaths, and Darby ran to call for help. In the subsequent episodes, we would get to know what exactly happened with Bill and if Andy or Lee had something to do with his death.
