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Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ is the third Benoit Blanc mystery, with Daniel Craig returning as the Southern-accented detective and Josh O’Connor joining him as Father Jud Duplenticy, a young priest with the deepest personal stake in the case. The mystery unfolds in the fictional upstate New York town of Chimney Rock, where Monsignor Jefferson Wicks dies during a Good Friday service inside the troubled church Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude.
Netflix lists the film as a 2025, PG-13 mystery running 2 hours and 26 minutes. It opened in select theaters on November 26, 2025, before becoming available to stream on Netflix on December 12, 2025.
This guide covers the principal cast, their characters, the church’s power structure, and the relationships that drive the investigation. The final section contains major spoilers for the apparent resurrection, the true murder plot, Martha Delacroix’s role, and the ending.
Who are the two central characters?
Unlike a conventional police procedural, Wake Up Dead Man is built around both an outsider detective and a young insider whose faith, history, and relationships are inseparable from the crime. Benoit Blanc supplies the experience and deductive method; Father Jud supplies the emotional access to the church and its congregation.
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Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc
Daniel Craig returns as Benoit Blanc, the stylish detective who first appeared in Knives Out and later investigated the Greek-island case in Glass Onion. Blanc remains the recurring figure connecting the three films, but he is not necessarily the emotional center of every mystery.
In this story, Blanc is drawn to a small-town church after the apparently impossible death of Monsignor Wicks. The case moves him into unfamiliar territory: religious belief, moral certainty, buried institutional history, and the possibility of a crime that seems to violate ordinary explanations. His role is that of the experienced investigator testing a community’s stories against the evidence.
Josh O’Connor as Father Jud Duplenticy
Father Jud Duplenticy is a young priest, former boxer, and the film’s principal emotional entry point. He discovered Christianity after a tragedy in the ring and is described as good-hearted, funny, inexperienced, and sincerely committed to helping people.
Jud arrives at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude after Bishop Langstrom sends him there as a disciplinary assignment. The immediate reason is that Jud punched a deacon. Langstrom hopes Jud’s optimism can help a parish that has become bitter and divided, but the assignment places him directly inside a church dominated by Monsignor Wicks and its long, troubled history.
Jud’s connection to the parish makes the investigation personal in a way Blanc’s is not. He must work out what kind of priest he wants to be while confronting the difference between genuine faith and the fear-driven authority exercised by Wicks. His partnership with Blanc is therefore both investigative and spiritual: Blanc looks for the mechanism behind the impossible crime, while Jud has to decide what should survive once the truth is exposed.
The church power structure
Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude is not simply the setting for the murder. It is a tightly controlled institution with its own mythology, loyalties, resentments, and buried history. Several of the film’s most important suspects are connected to the church through authority, family, service, or belief.
Josh Brolin as Monsignor Jefferson Wicks
Monsignor Jefferson Wicks is the firebrand leader of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude. He rules through anger and fear, presenting the world in terms of “us versus them” and binding people to the parish through exclusionary certainty.
Wicks’s influence explains why his death has consequences beyond the identity of the killer. He has shaped the congregation, the church’s public image, and the behavior of the people around him. When he collapses and dies during the Good Friday service, the event appears to be an impossible crime inside a sacred space. His death also opens questions about what the parish has protected and what it has concealed.
Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix
Martha Delacroix is one of the church’s most devoted servants. Generations of priests have respected her, and her loyalty to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude is absolute.
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Martha functions as an institutional guardian: she knows the church’s traditions, protects its identity, and has a personal connection to the Wicks family. That makes her more than a background member of the congregation. Her understanding of the parish’s buried history becomes increasingly important as Blanc and Jud investigate.
Jeffrey Wright as Bishop Langstrom
Bishop Langstrom is the church authority who sends Jud to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude after Jud’s confrontation with the deacon. Langstrom sees the parish as soured and divided and hopes that Jud’s relative optimism can make a difference.
His role establishes the institutional chain above Wicks while also explaining why Jud, rather than a more experienced cleric, becomes part of the parish. Langstrom is not the local detective, but his decision places the film’s emotional protagonist at the center of the mystery.
Annie Hamilton as Grace Wicks
Grace Wicks is Monsignor Wicks’s mother. Her past is wrapped in the church’s mythology, and characters refer to her using several deliberately cruel labels, including “the Harlot Whore.” Those insults are not incidental: they show how the parish turns personal history into moral legend and how the Wicks family’s story has been used within the church.
Thomas Haden Church as Samson Holt
Samson Holt is the longtime groundskeeper of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude. He is closely associated with the church graveyard, fog, and the film’s gothic atmosphere.
Samson’s practical, salt-of-the-earth identity contrasts with the more ideological and status-conscious people surrounding Wicks. As groundskeeper, he is also connected to the physical spaces where the church’s history is preserved: its land, its cemetery, and its dead.
The local investigators and professional outsiders
Blanc is not investigating a group of abstract suspects. Each member of the ensemble has a profession or public identity that conflicts with a private crisis. Their ambitions and disappointments give them possible motives while showing how Wicks’s influence extends beyond the pulpit.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallMila Kunis as Chief Geraldine Scott
Chief Geraldine Scott is the local police chief. She is competent, authoritative, sharp, and impatient with foolishness. After Wicks’s death, she recruits Blanc because the crime appears impossible and the local investigation cannot explain it through ordinary police work.
Geraldine provides the familiar friction between a local law-enforcement authority and an outsider detective. She knows the community and its people, while Blanc brings a different way of reading the evidence. Their relationship also keeps the story grounded: however strange the church’s legends become, the case still has to be investigated as a real crime.
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Jeremy Renner as Dr. Nat Sharp
Dr. Nat Sharp is a local physician whose personal life is collapsing after his wife leaves him. Netflix’s character description presents him as bitter and spiraling, making his private desperation as relevant to the mystery as his medical profession.
Nat represents a recurring feature of the ensemble: respectable public roles do not necessarily indicate emotional stability or good intentions. His knowledge, his access to people in the town, and his personal crisis all become significant as the investigation develops.
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsKerry Washington as Vera Draven
Vera Draven is an accomplished attorney who took over her late father’s small-town practice. The decision gave her a professional role in Chimney Rock, but it also meant that her own ambitions faded while she maintained a legacy that was not entirely hers.
Vera’s ties to the church and its power structure force her to reconsider the loyalties that have shaped her life. She is also the adoptive mother of Cy Draven, connecting the town’s legal establishment to its political and media ambitions.
Andrew Scott as Lee Ross
Lee Ross is a once-popular science-fiction author who has retreated to the small town and become increasingly angry online. The character’s former stature is compared with writers such as Isaac Asimov or George R.R. Martin, but Lee is now desperate to regain bestseller status.
Lee’s situation makes him both a failed public figure and a person looking for a new audience. His frustration with his diminished career places him among the people whose public words, private motives, and relationship with Wicks require close examination.
Cailee Spaeny as Simone Vivane
Simone Vivane was a world-class cellist until a nerve condition caused chronic pain that prevented her from playing. She relocates to Chimney Rock and becomes drawn to Wicks and the church because its faith appears to offer the strength and certainty she has lost.
Simone’s storyline tests what belief can and cannot provide. The church gives her a framework for dealing with pain, but her relationship with that belief changes as the truth about Wicks and the parish emerges.
Daryl McCormack as Cy Draven
Cy Draven is Vera’s adopted son and a politically ambitious online personality. Johnson describes him as a “hashtag statesman”: someone operating in the right-wing media sphere whose political career has stalled even though he lacks genuine ideological conviction.
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Cy sees Wicks and the church as a possible route back to influence. His connection to Vera links him to the town’s legal establishment, while his online persona connects the parish’s “us versus them” worldview to a broader political-media ecosystem.
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Bridget Everett as Louise
Louise works for a local construction company in Chimney Rock. She is identified as a townsperson rather than one of the church’s central power figures, but she is not irrelevant to the mystery. A phone call involving Louise carries emotional importance as the story unfolds.
How the characters are connected
| Relationship | What it means in the mystery |
|---|---|
| Benoit Blanc and Father Jud | Blanc is the experienced investigator; Jud is the young priest with the strongest personal, spiritual, and institutional stake in the case. |
| Jud and Bishop Langstrom | Langstrom sends Jud to the troubled parish after Jud punches a deacon, hoping Jud’s optimism can help repair the congregation. |
| Wicks and the congregation | Wicks controls the parish through fear, anger, and an exclusionary “us versus them” worldview. |
| Martha and the church | Martha is a fiercely loyal longtime servant and one of the people most invested in preserving the church’s identity. |
| Vera and Cy Draven | Vera is Cy’s adoptive mother; together they connect local law, ambition, politics, and the church’s influence. |
| Simone and Wicks’s church | Simone turns toward the congregation while dealing with chronic pain and the end of her cello career. |
| Geraldine and Blanc | Geraldine brings Blanc into a case that local police cannot explain, creating the film’s local-authority versus outsider-detective dynamic. |
What inspired the mystery?
Wake Up Dead Man draws on the traditions of impossible-crime fiction and clerical mysteries. Rian Johnson has cited John Dickson Carr, whose stories are known for elaborate locked-room and impossible-crime problems, as well as G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries and Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage.
That context is useful because this is not simply another police investigation with a church as its backdrop. The setting allows the film to ask how communities create saints, villains, and sacred explanations—and what happens when those explanations are tested by evidence.
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Where and when can you watch it?
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery opened in select theaters in the United States on November 26, 2025. It began streaming on Netflix on December 12, 2025. Netflix lists the film as PG-13 with a runtime of 2 hours and 26 minutes. Availability can vary by country and may change, so viewers should check the Netflix listing for their region.
Netflix’s official film information also supports downloading the movie for offline viewing through the service. This guide does not claim a DVD, Blu-ray, CD, or vinyl release; no such physical edition is established by the supplied research.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Spoilers: who killed whom, and what happens at the end?
Warning: the rest of this section reveals the film’s major twists and ending.
The apparent resurrection is staged
The apparent resurrection of Monsignor Wicks is a deception, not a supernatural event. Samson emerges from a coffin wearing clothing resembling Wicks’s vestments. The performance is designed to make it look as though Wicks has risen or ascended.
Martha arranged the deception. Her aim was to protect the church’s reputation and preserve the institution after Wicks’s death. The staged event turns the parish’s faith and mythology into tools of concealment, making the impossible crime appear to have a religious explanation.
Nat Sharp kills Samson
Nat Sharp was supposed to help conceal Wicks’s body and support the staged resurrection. Instead, greed changes his plan. Nat becomes fixated on the $80 million Eve’s Apple jewel, kills Samson with a scythe, and attempts to frame the unconscious Father Jud.
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The revelation turns Nat’s private desperation into the immediate violence of the climax. His professional respectability does not protect him from the same corruption that has infected the church’s power structure.
Martha is behind the wider deception
Martha is ultimately revealed as the architect of the broader deception surrounding Wicks’s death and the effort to preserve the church. Her loyalty is not passive devotion; she actively constructs a false story to keep the institution alive.
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Blanc rejects the corrupting jewel rather than accepting any association with it. Martha dies while still holding Eve’s Apple, leaving the object as a symbol of the greed and compromised loyalty that have shaped the mystery.
What happens to the church?
After the confession, Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude closes temporarily. Jud later reopens it under a new name: Our Lady of Perpetual Grace. The new sign declares, “All are welcome.”
The change is more than cosmetic. Jud’s version of the church rejects Wicks’s exclusionary authority and attempts to reunite the congregation around hope, truth, and honesty. The young priest who arrived as an inexperienced outsider becomes the person capable of giving the parish a different future.
Where the surviving characters end up
- Lee Ross publishes a new book titled Risen.
- Vera Draven leaves to pursue a path of her own.
- Simone Vivane resumes playing the cello despite her chronic pain.
- Cy Draven continues searching for the jewel.
- Father Jud hides Eve’s Apple inside the body of Christ on the new wooden cross he builds for the church.
That final image captures the film’s resolution: the dangerous object is not destroyed, but its meaning and location are transformed. Jud places it inside the symbol of the new church, burying the secret within an institution he hopes will be more honest and welcoming than the one Wicks controlled.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ the third Benoit Blanc movie?
Yes. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is the third Benoit Blanc mystery, following Knives Out and Glass Onion. Daniel Craig returns as Blanc.
Who plays Father Jud in ‘Wake Up Dead Man’?
Josh O’Connor plays Father Jud Duplenticy, a former boxer turned priest who is sent to the troubled parish after punching a deacon. He becomes Blanc’s emotional and investigative partner.
Who is the killer in ‘Wake Up Dead Man’?
Nat Sharp kills Samson Holt with a scythe after becoming consumed by greed for the $80 million Eve’s Apple jewel. Martha Delacroix is responsible for the broader deception surrounding Wicks’s death and the church’s attempted preservation.
Is Monsignor Wicks actually resurrected?
No. The apparent resurrection is staged. Samson emerges from a coffin in clothing resembling Wicks’s vestments to create the impression that Wicks has risen.
Where is ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ streaming?
The film began streaming on Netflix on December 12, 2025, following a select theatrical release on November 26, 2025. Regional availability may vary.
The Bottom Line
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery combines Daniel Craig’s returning Benoit Blanc with Josh O’Connor’s Father Jud, making the young priest as important to the film’s emotional resolution as Blanc is to its deduction. Around them, a divided church, a controlling monsignor, damaged professionals, and competing ambitions turn an apparently impossible death into a mystery about power, belief, and institutional survival.
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