Spoilers for the complete ending of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Dr. Nat Sharp physically kills Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, but Martha Delacroix designs the original scheme. Nat’s greed breaks their plan, and Benoit Blanc ultimately chooses not to turn Martha’s confession into a public victory.
Who killed Wicks in Wake Up Dead Man?
Nat is the person who delivers the fatal knife wound. Martha is also culpable: she helps arrange Wicks’s death and intends to use it as part of a staged resurrection that will restore the congregation’s faith. Nat’s later theft of the church’s hidden jewel, Eve’s Apple, turns that plan into a more complicated series of crimes. Netflix Tudum’s ending explainer and TIME’s account of the ending describe the twist as a clash between the two conspirators’ motives.
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How did Nat trick Jud?
The apparent locked-room killing depends on a sequence of misdirection, not a supernatural event. After Wicks’s Good Friday sermon, he retreats to a closet beside the pulpit and drinks from his flask. Martha has drugged it using Nat’s medical supplies, incapacitating Wicks.
Nat then triggers a blood squib hidden in a red wolf’s head attached to Wicks’s vestments. Jud sees the apparent blood and believes Wicks is already dead. In the confusion that follows, Nat switches the prop and stabs Wicks with a second wolf’s-head knife. The trick makes it appear that Wicks died during the narrow interval when Jud seemed to be the only person with access to him. TIME also recounts the blood-and-knife misdirection.
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Why did Martha and Nat target Wicks?
The church’s history revolves around Eve’s Apple, a jewel Prentice hid inside his own body. Martha kept its location secret for decades. When Jud encourages her to be honest, she reveals it to Wicks. He plans to retrieve the jewel and leave the church; his newly revealed son, Cy, wants to turn him into an internet preacher and influencer. Martha concludes that Wicks will exploit the jewel and abandon the congregation.
Martha’s plan is not merely to kill Wicks. She wants the congregation to believe he has become a saint through a staged resurrection, protecting the church’s legacy. Samson is supposed to emerge from the crypt dressed as Wicks. But Jud unexpectedly witnesses the scheme. Nat, driven by the jewel’s value, kills Samson, takes the jewel, leaves Jud unconscious, and frames him for Samson’s death.
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Does Wicks come back to life?
No. There is no real resurrection. The plan depends on Samson impersonating Wicks after the murder, but Nat’s decision to kill Samson and steal the jewel prevents the staged appearance from happening as intended.
How does the ending resolve Martha’s and Nat’s crimes?
Martha recognizes that Nat has betrayed their plan. When he tries to poison her, she switches their cups and kills him. Blanc works out Martha’s role, but does not make his usual public accusation. Instead, he gives her room to confess to Jud voluntarily. Jud receives her confession compassionately. Martha then takes the poison herself, and Jud’s care becomes an expression of the priestly work he had hoped to do.
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Why does Benoit Blanc let Martha confess?
Blanc’s choice puts empathy ahead of the satisfying public reveal that usually crowns a detective story. Rian Johnson has described Blanc as a non-believer, but frames this ending around the possibility that helping a guilty, vulnerable person face what she has done can matter more than displaying the solution. The result is not an exoneration: Martha confesses, and her actions have consequences. It is a different kind of ending, one that lets Jud’s response to her guilt carry as much weight as Blanc’s deduction.
What does the killer twist say about faith and the title?
The responsibility is layered: Nat is the physical murderer of Wicks, Martha helps architect the initial plot, and Nat betrays it out of avarice. That shifting responsibility makes the final question moral as well as procedural: after a crime is solved, is the most important thing the detective’s public triumph, or what the guilty person does with the truth?
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Johnson told TIME that his starting point was the question, “Can I make a fun Benoit Blanc murder mystery that examines the issue of faith in America right now?” In Netflix Tudum’s interview, The Lineup, he described the film as exploring faith and moving toward gothic horror while retaining humor. He has also said each Blanc film should be “a different story” and “a different experience.”
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What mystery novel inspired the locked-room puzzle?
Johnson cited John Dickson Carr’s 1935 locked-room novel The Hollow Man, published in the United States as The Three Coffins, as a companion to the film’s puzzle construction. Johnson said he “owe[s] quite a bit to [Carr] with this one,” as reported by TIME. The book is optional context, not a prerequisite for understanding the movie; the cited coverage does not establish which editions are currently available.
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