Wake Up Dead Man Has The Least Sympathetic Murder Victim Of The Knives Out Trilogy

Do not attend this service or go to confession if you haven't watched the entirety of "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery" — or, frankly, if you haven't seen any of the "Knives Out" movies. Massive spoilers for the entire franchise ahead!

In the first two "Knives Out" movies — the 2019 original and its 2022 sequel "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," both of which were written and directed by Rian Johnson and star Daniel Craig as the brilliant detective Benoit Blanc — the people who die don't totally deserve it, with one small exception. In that first movie, which ultimately kickstarted a franchise after its massive box office success, the murdered party is Christopher Plummer's mystery writer Harlan Thrombey, whose demise first seems like an accident until Blanc reveals that it was actually orchestrated by his scheming, greedy grandson Hugh "Ransom" Thrombey (Chris Evans). In the second one, there's an unexpected set of twins — Cassandra "Andi" Brand and Helen Brand, both played by Janelle Monáe. Even though Helen masquerades as Andi throughout most of the movie to trick Andi's former colleague who betrayed her, the über-wealthy Miles Bron (Ed Norton), we do learn that Miles killed Andi, and he also kills his longtime friend Duke Cody (Dave Bautista) early in the film's narrative to prevent Duke from spilling the beans about Andi's death. (Andi is innocent; Duke is a jerk, but he doesn't necessarily deserve to die.)

So what about "Wake Up Dead Man," the latest entry into the franchise from Johnson and Craig? This installment actually has the highest body count of the entire film series thus far, and the murdered character that kicks off the mystery — Monsignor Jefferson Wicks of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude — absolutely deserves his death. Why? He sucks.

From the very moment we meet Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, he's unlikable. After a younger and more idealistic reverend named Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor) is sent to serve under Wicks at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, the monsignor immediately asks Jud to take his confession and simply provides excruciating detail about all the ... "alone time" he's spent with himself recently. Later, it's revealed that this was just a cruel joke Jefferson played to make Jud uncomfortable ... because Jud snoops on Jefferson's medical records and learns the guy is impotent after surgery for prostate cancer.

Sure, this doesn't sound that bad, but I'm not done. Jefferson hates the memory of his late mother Grace (Annie Hamilton), referring to her as the "harlot wh**e" every chance he gets, and uses this hatred to not only fuel his life's work as the church's monsignor, but ensures that his super-loyal constituents are constantly filled with hatred too. (Jefferson purposefully keeps his "flock" small by saying awful things to target newcomers; we don't hear his sermons but see single mothers, same-sex couples, and people in masks meant to prevent COVID-19 flee his church en masse in a montage.) When it's revealed that Jefferson betrayed his vows even further by impregnating a woman and having an illegitimate son — burgeoning right-wing influencer Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack, who's part of the main ensemble) — he dismisses the woman as being a worthless nobody and is completely unrepentant about his actions. He's also violent and cruel to literally everybody, so when he's mysteriously "stabbed" in a closet next to his pulpit, we don't have much sympathy for him.

Jefferson's death is ultimately explained as part of a larger ruse that involves a jewel worth millions of dollars — his flask in that weird pulpit-adjacent closet was laced with paralytics by his right-hand woman Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), but he's then actually stabbed by local doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), even though the original stabbing was faked. (I know. It's a lot.) From there, the bodies really start to pile up. Martha, angry over the revelation that Jefferson secretly fathered Cy out of wedlock and aware that the Wicks family fortune is contained in a jewel swallowed by Jefferson's late grandfather Prentice (James Faulkner) who rests in the family tomb, comes up with a plan to have her partner and the church's groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church) pose as the dead Jefferson, hide in the tomb, steal the jewel, and emerge dramatically "as Jefferson" (to fake a miracle).

Unfortunately for Martha, Nat's greed gets in the way, and he ends up stabbing and killing Samson before stealing the jewel for himself. After he and Martha plot to dissolve Jefferson's body in a bathtub filled with acid, Nat tries to poison Martha with that same paralytic, but she figures it out and switches their coffee cups, killing him and posing his body with Jefferson's to make it look like they had a tussle in that aforementioned acid. Ultimately, Martha confesses everything to Jud and Blanc before dying herself; she took the paralytic, planning to die after admitting to her multitude of sins.

The mystery is solved, and three "bad" people (Martha, Jefferson, and Nat) are dead, with just Samson as the more "innocent" party.