The Grisly 'Detective Hole' Ending Explained

Jo Nesbø and his Harry Hole novels are a massive deal in Norway, which is probably why the Netflix series, Detective Hole — based on Nesbø’s The Devil’s Star — was able to attract the recognizable likes of Joel Kinnaman and Peter Stormare (in a glorified cameo) for an international production, along with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis to compose the score.

The series — adapted by Nesbø himself — is better than average crime fiction, though it falls well short of great. But it is gnarly: violent and grisly, the kind of show that makes you want to take a shower (although that might also be all the cigarettes Harry Hole smokes). The plotting and acting are stronger than the writing, and the series feels like a throwback to ’90s Fincher throughout. It’s not a fun series, but it is mostly entertaining, although it could have benefited from losing a couple of episodes along the way.

Tobias Santelmann (Kon-Tiki, Beforeigners) stars as Detective Harry Hole, whose partner Ellen (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) is brutally murdered in the opening episode by a dirty cop named Tom Waaler, played by Kinnaman. Harry falls headfirst back into the bottle, loses his girlfriend Rakel (Pia Tjelta) and her son Oleg, and nearly loses his job on the force because he can’t put the bottle down. But Harry — who strongly suspects Waaler killed his partner — is pulled back into service when a grisly serial killer surfaces, and Hole is the only detective with any experience in that arena.

So Harry conducts a parallel investigation: into the serial killer and the bodies he leaves behind — missing fingers, religious poses — while begrudgingly working alongside Waaler and keeping a very close eye on him. Each murder seems more grisly than the last, and they’re all connected by tiny pink diamonds left in the eyelids of each victim.

All the while, Harry is also trying to repair his relationship with Rakel and her son. And here’s where it gets complicated: Waaler isn’t the serial killer, but we learn along the way that he’s been orchestrating gang violence as a pretext for convincing the government to arm the police. Ah, how Norwegian. Waaler’s campaign of violence may actually be more grisly than the serial killer’s. At one point, for instance, he entices a male prostitute to stick his manhood through a hole in a bathroom stall, then slices it off with a machete before plunging it through the man’s head. If you’re not into extreme violence, stay well away from Detective Hole.

Here’s your spoiler for those who may have bailed due to Netflix bloat in the middle episodes or because the violence became too much: The serial killer does have a pattern — he cuts off a different finger from each victim, always kills on the fifth floor, and Harry eventually discovers a geographic pattern by overlaying a devil’s symbol over a map of the city.

Late in the series, a man named Martin Amanov (Simon J. Berger) emerges as the chief suspect — a playboy who deals in both weapons and pink diamonds, conveniently connecting him to both Waaler and the actual serial killer, who constructed his elaborate pattern specifically to frame Amanov. Waaler, who arrests Amanov, also wants him dead because Amanov can blow up his entire weapons operation. It falls to Harry Hole to save Amanov from Waaler and identify the real killer.

You know how they always say it’s the husband? Well, all the symbolism, the patterns, the missing fingers — it was cover for the husband of the first victim to get away with murdering his wife. Willy Barli (Frank Kjosås), a twisted theater director, killed her because she’d been cheating on him with Amanov. His plan: murder her and frame Amanov for it. And you won’t believe how he was caught. Barli claimed his wife had stuck her finger somewhere intimate the last time they had sex, but forensic analysis of the wife’s dismembered finger told a different story: whatever Barli had eaten twelve hours before the alleged encounter appeared in the fecal matter under her fingernails — which meant, timewise, he must have used her severed finger for that purpose hours after her death. Oh, and he’d hidden her body inside his own waterbed, which he’d filled with alcohol to preserve the corpse.

See what I mean about gnarly? After Harry implicated Barli, the man stripped naked and took a header off his own building, leaving quite the death scene behind.

Meanwhile, Waaler is so determined to stop Harry and Amanov from exposing him that he abducts Rakel’s son, Oleg. Worry not: Harry saves the day by using an elevator shaft as leverage to tear Waaler’s arm clean off, and Waaler bleeds out. Rakel, at this point, has decided to take Harry back — but he walks away for her sake and Oleg’s. Being close to him is a danger to their lives.

The series ends with the chief of police attempting to recruit Harry to root out corruption from within the force. It’s a trap, of course — the chief is actually the woman running the entire weapons operation. Twist!

And that’s Detective Hole. It’s a real Nordic noir — heavy emphasis on the noir.