Bill's Murder Scene in 'Murder at the End of the World' Makes No Sense! [A Pedantic Post]

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 20, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 20, 2023 |

I’ve written a lot of pedantic posts in my life, and this may be the most pedantic, but I cannot help myself. I spent too much time trying to scratch an annoying itch in the back of my brain not to share the results.

Spoilers for all of ‘A Murder at the End of the World’

In the Murder at the End of the World, we find out that Bill dies from a drug overdose because Zoomer, his five-year-old biological son, injects him with morphine at the direction of Ray, the AI.

Before he dies, Bill leaves a clue behind for Darby to find in her book, The Silver Doe. Bill basically highlights the phrase “faulty programming” in the book, which leads Darby to conclude that Ray the AI is behind the murders.

My initial question was this: Bill was injected with a needle and overdosed on the drugs. Where did all the blood come from? Because needle injections do not leave behind a ton of blood? I rewatched the relevant portions and was reminded that Bill hit his head on the fireplace, which produced all the blood. OK, fine. But in rewatching, I couldn’t let go of the fact that the murder scene made no sense whatsoever. Here’s what the murder scene looks like (click to enlarge):

When you walk into the room, there’s a small hallway, then a bed on the left and a bookshelf on the right. Zoomer injected Bill with the needle while Bill was sitting on the bed. This means he stood up from the bed after the injection and, instead of leaving the room to ask for help, he walked toward the window. As Darby describes it, Bill begins to feel the effects of the drugs, falls down, hits his head on the fireplace, and drags the lamp down with him. Then he scooches toward the window when Darby comes around and places his bloody hand on it before dying.

Let’s just begin with the fact that the crime scene as we see it makes no sense. There’s a trickle of blood on the fireplace and a lot of blood on Bill’s hand, which is from the back of his head. If Bill hit the back of his head on the fireplace, he would’ve fallen down much closer to the fireplace. He couldn’t have moved toward the window without leaving a trail of blood on the carpet. As evident in the photo, there is no blood on the carpet between the fireplace and Bill’s head, although Bill was bleeding enough from the back of the head to produce enough blood to leave a trail. Here’s the scene once Bill has been removed. Notice the puddle of blood?

That puddle of blood doesn’t even line up with where Bill’s head is in the first photo, but whatever. Let’s leave that aside. My question is: Where was the book that Bill left his bloody handprints on? Here it is, on the bookshelf, directly across from the bed:

So, let’s piece this all together now. This is what the show wants us to believe: Zoomer injects Bill with a needle while Bill is sitting on the bed. Bill stands up, walks toward the window, and reaches for the fireplace to steady himself but falls and hits the back of his head on the fireplace. At this point, Bill must realize that he’s dying, so he stands up, walks back to the bookshelf across from the bed, finds the Silver Doe book, marks the appropriate passage with his bloody hand, then walks back toward the window and lies down on the floor.

How did he have the wherewithal to walk back to the bookshelf after smacking his head on the fireplace? If he had enough time to do that, why didn’t he have time to make a phone call to ask for help? Most importantly, how did he not leave a single drop of blood anywhere on the carpet except where his head finally landed, and how did the puddle of blood move a foot to the left between the second episode and the sixth episode?