Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery Ending Explained

Put down your magnifying glass, old-timey pipe, and Sherlock Holmes-style hat if you haven't seen "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery." Full spoilers to follow; you've been warned!

Ever since the first "Knives Out" movie released in 2019 — which was, presumably, intended as a standalone project before it became a full-blown franchise — writer-director Rian Johnson and star Daniel Craig have been blowing audiences away with their murder mysteries. 2022 brought "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," which sees the return of Daniel Craig's Southern-fried (and brilliant) detective Benoit Blanc and assembled an all-star cast that includes Edward Norton, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monáe, and Kathryn Hahn, among others. Now, in 2025, we've got "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery," named for a U2 track (following "Glass Onion," obviously after the Beatles song, and the original title "Knives Out," which deploys a Radiohead track name).

So what happens in this murder mystery, and perhaps more importantly, how does it end? Well, for starters, Johnson brought together another murderer's row (pun very much intended) of performers for "Wake Up Dead Man" to star alongside Craig, including Josh O'Connor, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Cailee Spaeny, Mila Kunis, Andrew Scott, Thomas Haden Church, and Daryl McCormack. Set at a Catholic church that's in the thrall of its monsignor, Jefferson Wicks (Brolin), "Wake Up Dead Man" has just as many delightful twists and turns as its two predecessors ... so let's unpack the entire movie, what happens in it, and what the ending really means.

Probably the biggest "difference" between "Wake Up Dead Man" and its two predecessors is that Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc doesn't even make a full-fledged appearance until about an hour into the movie's runtime, letting Josh O'Connor's Reverend Jud Duplenticy take center stage as he explains all of the events that lead to the movie's first big death. After getting into a physical altercation at his original church, Jud is transferred to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude in the fictional New York town of Chimney Rock, which is run by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks with an apparently iron fist. After getting into the habit of confessing to Jud on a regular basis (almost exclusively about illicit self-pleasure), Jefferson ensures that Jud always knows his place, but the friction between the two men of faith hits a major low point after Jud tries to arrange a secret prayer circle with the church's constituents.

Let's talk about those constituents for a second, actually. In no particular order, you've got the church's lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), her ward of sorts and aspiring right-wing politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), washed-up sci-fi writer Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), former star cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), the small town's recently divorced dentist Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), Jefferson's devout right-hand woman Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), and her partner and the church's groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church). (We also learn that Jefferson routinely drives away newcomers to the church by personally attacking their lifestyles during his speeches, from same-gender couples to single mothers.) During a service — and after the two publicly fight — Jud briefly takes over for Jefferson as the monsignor steps into a small closet off the pulpit and then falls, dead of an apparent stab wound. Thing is, there was nobody in there with him.

As Benoit Blanc observes when he finally arrives, this is an "impossible" crime, largely because nobody was behind Jefferson Wicks in the small closet where he goes to take a swig out of a fortifying flask after passionate sermons (a fact that infuriates Jud, knowing that the monsignor is under the influence more or less all of the time). There's no shortage of suspects, especially because, thanks to Cy Draven's bizarre habit of recording literally everything for his YouTube page, Jud and Benoit find out that the congregation had a meeting with Jefferson the night before he died where he told them he was going to expose all of their secrets and leave the church.

Also, Jefferson's late grandfather Reverend Prentice Wicks (played in flashbacks by James Faulkner) claimed, to a young Martha and Jefferson, that he hid a vast fortune from everyone, especially his wayward daughter and Jefferson's late mother Grace (Annie Hamilton). The fortune, we eventually learn, is a massive single jewel, and Prentice swallowed it. To gain access to it, Jefferson plans to open the family tomb and pluck the jewel from Prentice's skeleton, but Martha figures this out. 

Here's how it goes from there. There's a paralytic in Jefferson' flask, but even with that, Nat Sharp, who enters the small room in his capacity as a doctor, removes a fake, staged knife and stabs Wicks for real, killing him. When Jefferson is "resurrected" and leaves the tomb in an explosion later in the film, it's Samson in disguise; a frightened Jud encounters him in the woods, but Nat kills Samson and plots to kill Martha, hoping to steal the jewel for himself. Martha, again, gets ahead of her opponent, switches their coffee cups so Nat poisons himself, and stages Nat and Jefferson's bodies to make it look like the latter drowned the former in a bathtub full of acid. After Martha confesses, it's revealed that she poisoned herself too, and she dies — after confessing everything to Jud (while Blanc listens). 

Even though Jud is framed as the possible murderer for most of "Wake Up Dead Man" — which is helped by the fact that the guy has some pretty obvious anger issues he sometimes expresses with violence — there's no question that the monstrous words and attitude of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks poisoned the minds of his constituents, making them all worse people fully capable of horrible things. They are all, also, grappling with inner demons; for example, Vera Draven is deeply resentful of Cy, whom she was initially told was her younger half-brother (damaging her late father's reputation) only to learn, within the narrative of "Wake Up Dead Man," that Cy is Jefferson's illegitimate son. (Similarly, Martha loses her faith in Jefferson when she learns about Cy's parentage.) Ultimately, every single regular constituent at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude has a legitimate reason to experience a crisis of faith, especially as they learn that the man in whom they put all of their trust is a corrupt, greedy, and downright evil guy who doesn't actually live by the word of God.

The greed for that jewel is, ultimately, what drives every character — even including Martha, sort of, who ends up arranging one death (Nat's) and causing others (Jefferson, Samson) — and Nat's desire to keep the jewel for himself is what makes him try to kill Martha. Martha, for her part, has been keeping the secret of the jewel's location for years and dies with the precious gem in her hand. To fully honor the Wicks family and keep the jewel away from any other money-hungry constituents, Jud, who changes the church's name to Our Lady of Perpetual Grace after Jefferson's late mother, hides the jewel inside of a wooden figure of Jesus Christ that hangs over the altar, hopefully reflecting a new path of peace and quiet for the church.

Beyond greed, there's something else that causes rampant rot within Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, and that's the de facto cult that Jefferson Wicks is running. As he completely controls his constituents and makes sure that no newcomers enter the church without getting so upset and hurt by his sermons that they leave immediately, Jefferson creates a flock to whom he teaches horrible lessons of hatred, prejudice, and intolerance. (Also, like I said, he's full of it; he's fathered at least one illegitimate child and insults Cy's unknown mother when he's called out on it, engages in enough "illicit" self-pleasure that he's constantly confessing it to Jud, and he's also just an overtly terrible guy in every sense.) 

Jefferson's cruelty infects every single member of his flock as they gleefully participate in his cult — and it's really important to note that Dr. Nat Sharp, whose wife leaves him before the story properly starts, is probably the biggest "victim" of this, even though Nat goes on to kill Samson and attempts to kill Martha. Nat grows angry and isolated after his divorce, and it's clear that he blames his ex-wife for anything that goes wrong in his life; Jefferson encourages this hatred, just as he does with other constituents like Lee (who has become a right-leaning conspiracy theorist) and Cy (who posts videos of Jefferson's sermons online using tactics clearly meant to address a right-wing audience of extremists, and Cy absolutely is or at least aspires to become an extremist himself). This sort of groupthink can be extremely dangerous, especially when it's used by men like Jefferson to vilify others, and I certainly think that's another big takeaway from Rian Johnson's script.

Look, I'll be honest here: if Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig want to make a million "Knives Out" movies until the day one or both of them shuffles off this mortal coil, I think that would be really great. Apparently, Johnson feels the same way. During the BFI London Film Festival, Johnson told Variety, "I don't feel burnt out doing these at all. If anything I feel energized after doing this one." He continued: 

"So as long as audiences want to keep seeing it, and Daniel and I are still having fun making them and still feel like we can come up with stuff that feels not just fresh, but a fresh challenge for us, I think that'll translate to a new experience for the audience. For now, I'd be thrilled to keep making these for the rest of my life."

After the first "Knives Out" movie became a surprise blockbuster in 2019, Netflix made a deal with Johnson for two sequels; both "Glass Onion" and "Wake Up Dead Man" were made with the streamer. While I think it would be horrible, foolish, and infuriating for Netflix to cut Johnson off after just two "Knives Out" sequels, I guess it's not impossible, but the movies consistently earn good reviews and make money during their frustratingly short, Netflix-mandated theatrical runs, so I do think that Johnson and Craig will probably get blank checks from someone, whether it's Netflix or not, to keep making "Knives Out" movies. The bottom line is that Benoit Blanc shows up in "Wake Up Dead Man," investigates a crime, and solves it ... and the formula is still as strong as ever.