Kill Your Marlings

A Murder at the End of the World is Hulu’s latest Brit Marling mini series that tells two murder mystery tales at once. In the recent past, midwestern teenager and self appointed Private Investigator Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) is on the case of a femicidal serial killer. In the present, Darby confronts more murder, misogyny and mystery at a small secretive tech retreat in Iceland. As we follow her search for answers, we swim in a world of tech awash with moral ambiguity, secrets, lies, and so much murder.

In true Brit Marling form (hello OA fans!), our hero is a femme subversive whose complex identity is not wrapped around traditional notions of heroism. In contrast to the “strong female lead” archetype, Darby Hart is not simply a feminized version of traditional male power. She is a detective, hacker, junior coroner, and writer. She is emotionally unavailable “unhackable Darby”, obsessed with work. In the heartland timeline, Darby is focused on finding justice for missing and slain women. She tells us that of the 20,000 unidentified murder victims in the US, “The majority of the unnamed dead are women.”

Darby’s own mother is absent, though by choice, not missing. Darby’s hacker hero and cohost of the retreat, Lee (Brit Marling), was professionally and personally destroyed by an AI porn doxing campaign, and fled into obscurity. Darby tells an assault survivor and mother of two “When I was the same age as your girls, I believe that I really mattered. And then I grew up and realized that I really didn’t. I guess I just don’t want them to grow up feeling that way.” This hero’s journey has a dark feminist heart.

Darby’s relationship to the ubiquitous tech is fluidly symbiotic. We watch her home set up evolve from clamshell cell phone hacks, to multi screen participation in internet sleuthing forums, to eventually trusting and talking to “Ray”, the holographic AI assistant. Tech is Darby’s investigative assistant! Poirot’s Hastings, Sherlock’s Watson, Columbo’s trench coat, Jessica Fletcher’s typewriter. Tech is a tool for discovering clues, research, hacking, spying, and also death. Tech, like its human inventors, destroys and creates.

Darby’s detective skills go beyond the digital. She bravely investigates her co retreaters, copies maps onto her arms in marker, dusts for fingerprints with baby powder, follows a suspect on foot onto a dark snowy mountain and decodes his morse code signal to his co-conspirators. She has a knack for investigation, and as the bodies pile up, other people look to her for leadership rather than in ridicule. “I want to know what Darby thinks” a fellow guest chimes in. Darby digs for bodies, hacks security systems, deconstructs crime scenes with her power drill, connects the seemingly unconnected, and faces death time and again.

Murder at the End of the World offers a lot to viewers. Beautiful highway driving scenes, snowy scapes, a double serial killer plot, a nice twist on paternity reveal, and tech porn. But it’s not all just good wintry detective fun. It makes us wonder, what side is tech on? Is it up to us? Why do we consider others, often especially women, so disposable in the quest for wealth or gratification? What’s worth killing for in a society that poisons itself? Will we continue to murder ourselves until the end of the world? Hopefully we’ll all soon get a clue.