Exploring the Knives Out Universe

Are they just entertaining murder mysteries or something more?

During the holiday season I watched Wake Up Dead Man and rewatched the previous Benoit Blanc mysteries: Knives Out and Glass Onion, which collectively give us the KOU (Knives Out Universe). The films operate as Agatha Christie style whodunits, but also engage in some deeper themes, and it is for this reason I wanted to write about them. Wake Up Dead Man addresses those themes in greater depth than the first two movies, while also illuminating the core values across the series.

If you are unfamiliar, the original Knives Out (lets call this I) was a classic country house murder mystery about an avaricious family fighting over the inheritance of a successful writer that one of them may have killed. Glass Onion (II) is centered around a Greek Island retreat hosted by a tech billionaire, one of whom is a murderer. In Wake Up Dead Man (III) a bombastic priest is killed in a church in rural New York.

*Many spoilers ahead.*

The movies are connected by the Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, although one other actor appears in all three movies. See if you can remember who; I will share at the end of the post. All three movies are written and directed by Rian Johnson.

So what are the components of the KOU?

A good-hearted naif is thrown into the wolves

In I, Marta is a home-help provider who inherits the estate of the wealthy patriarch she took care of, leading the family to threaten and cajole her into returning the fortune, while one of them tries to frame her for murder. In II, Helen Brand is an Alabama schoolteacher seeking to unmask which member of a jet-set group killed her sister, and in III, Fr. Jud is a good-hearted priest in a hostile parish that accuse him of murdering his senior colleague, Monsignor Wicks.

Benoit Blanc is as much a counselor to these babes-in-the-woods as he is a detective. He stops Marta from renouncing her inheritance. He drags Fr. Jud away before he can confess to a crime he has not committed. He coaches Helen to manage a den of vipers, knowing a killer will target her. In each case, the protagonists are driven by decency. They will sacrifice their freedom or their safety out of regard for others, or for some higher values. Marta calls an ambulance rather than let a woman who could incriminate her die; Fr. Jud gives precious time to counsel a woman whose mother is dying even as the noose is closing in on him; Helen is shot at as she seeks to find the truth.

The holders of unearned privilege are greedy for more

The decency of the protagonists exposes the worst qualities of the tight-knit groups — family, friends and a religious flock — they are embedded in.

All of the deadly sins are on display, but none more so than the combination of greed and envy that comes from unearned privilege, and the resulting sense of dependency and precarity. The villains are not just the killers, but the community they come from. The demand their rights, without doing much of anything to earn them. They shamelessly preach the virtues of self-made achievement or Christian beliefs, while ignoring those values in practice.

A family tells the word they are self-made, even as they are dependent on the generosity of a father about to disinherit them. The friends call themselves disruptors, but their achievement is built on a lie. In the third movie, Monsignor Wicks searches for the family fortune in an inherited parish. Even religious motivation is not exempt from shortcuts: Wicks’ closest followers seek to restore the fortunes of their failing church by faking a miracle rather than investing in basic Christian decency.

The theme of toxic co-dependence if a feature across the KOU. In I, the rich writer feels he has failed to allow his family to grow. One family member tells another “you’ve got your teeth bit into this family tit so hard.” In II, there are repeated references to the billionaire’s “golden titties” that everyone is trying to stay latched onto. In III, Wicks’ followers stick with him because he serves some unique need for them, reflecting a gaping hole within their psyche.

To function, the privileged exploit the help. This theme is most clear in I, where a home-help aide is the protagonist, and another domestic servant is murdered. In II, a personal assistant realizes she has anchored herself to a sinking star who is about to drag her future prospects with her. In the third installment, the groundskeeper, Samson, loses his life by placing his faith among a community that will kill him for worldly goods. For the powerful, the help may be necessary but they are not valued.

Social media forms worldviews and not for the better

In some respects the KOU is old-fashioned. They could be Agatha Christie novels: a murder in a country house, beautiful island, or gothic church, which an all-seeing detective must unravel. But unlike Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot reboot, the KOU is very much set in the modern world.

Trumpist politics are ever-present, in the mouths of the characters as they deplore what has happened to America (I) or view MAGA as an opportunity (II and III). But perhaps the most contemporary aspect of the KOU is its relationship with social media. It is not just that social media exists in the background or as a plot device. It has corroded the motivations and actions of its characters, much like the presence of money.

The theme of social media as a source of profound damage becomes more prominent across the movies. In I, a preppy online Neo Nazi serves as a minor character. In II, when Dave Bautista’s character discovers the murderer, he does not expose them, but turns to blackmail to get a more favorable online platform for his streaming videos. Kate Hudson’s character has to be relieved from her phones by her personal assistant in order to avoid immolating whats left of her reputation with another ethnic slur.

In the most recent installment, a novelist who had better days bemoans he is stuck in “Substack hell” (shared here by the CEO of Substack).

But no-one is more consumed by social media and its potential than Cy, a right-wing influencer and aspiring politician. He records his every experience, including mass, in order to post online. He remains mystified as to how he is not resonating with people, given how invested he is into broad right wing tropes that drive engagement online.

Cy: I tried everything. Believe me, I hammered the race thing. I hammered the gender thing, the trans thing, the border thing, the homeless thing, the war thing, the election thing, the abortion thing, the climate thing. Thing about induction stoves, Israel, library books, vaccines, pronouns, AK47s, socialism, BLM, CRT, the CDC, DEI, 5G, everything. All of it I did. Nobody, just nothing. People are just numb these days. I don’t know why.

Jud: Maybe we need to get back to fundamentals, you know, basic building blocks on how to genuinely inspire people.

Fr. Jud’s emphasis on connecting with people also clashes with Monsignor Wicks vision of ministering his flock, which involves berating parishioners.

Jud: This is not the true church. You ask even the most hardcore of those in the pews, they’ll say, no, of course this is not what they believe. It’s Wicks being Wicks, pushing it too far. And what he’s pushing for every time is a walkout. Why does he do this? Because when that person walks out, everyone watches. And even if in the light of day it’s indefensible, deep down in the dark, it scratches an itch. And by staying put in that pew, a side is taken. Wicks’ side. Testing tolerances, tapping deep poisoned wells, hardening, binding with complicity.

What Fr. Jud is describing are basic social media tactics to draw attention, create division and gin up outrage. To create a spectacle that we know is wrong, and in normal circumstances, we are ashamed to watch, but which we gawp at on our screens. In the context of a church, these toxic actions have dwindled the congregation to only those who enjoy the hate. But when Cy, the online native, connects with Wicks, he explains how his anti-social behaviors are built for social media.

Cy: You’ve radicalized them. That is power. In a small town, there are only so many witches to burn and zealots to activate. Your flame lacks fuel. But on the Internet, wildfire. This money. Your cult of personality. Are you kidding me? Give me four years. You could be president. Together we can build a real empire.

Cy is unable to conceive of what it means to understand people, community, religion or politics except through an online perspective. In I, characters mouth the tropes learned from social media. In II, they saw it as a platform to exploit. But in III, some characters seem unable to conceive of life offline, of what it means to engage with people as people. The worst behaviors in real life become the basis for online success. They are fundamentally damaged, and look to spread that damage like a virus.

There is a critique of right-wing politics, but not of conservative values

Johnson’s movies satirize right-wing hypocrisies. For example, Don Johnson’s character in I unironically quotes the line from Hamilton “Immigrants — we get the job done” while also making Trumpist complaints about immigrants. In II, Dave Bautista’s character is trying to build his online manosphere audience by portraying himself as living a baller life, even as he posts from the basement of his mother’s house. In III, the Christian community commits to a Manichean us-vs-them narrative that shames and excludes all bar the inner circle.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss the KOU as hostile to conservative values. The protagonists reflect the values that conservatives claims: the diligent immigrant whose work ethic is widely admired, the Alabama school teacher disgusted by the corruption of the elite world she enters, the priest trying to find the virtues of Christianity. And in all cases their presence is a rebuke to the company they keep.

The tension between right-wing politics and conservative values is most on display in Wake Up Dead Man. The movie operates as a debate about the meaning and possibility of Christianity. More specifically, the movie can be seen as two sets of conversations, one between Fr Jud and Monsignor Wicks on the purpose of the church, and another between Fr. Jud and Blanc, an atheist, about the purpose of belief more broadly. When they first mean, Blanc admires the theater of the church, but little else:

I feel the grandeur, the…the mystery, the intended emotional effect. And it’s like someone has shone a story at me that I do not believe. It’s built upon the empty promise of a child’s fairy tale filled with malevolence and misogyny and homophobia and its justified untold acts of violence and cruelty while all the while, and still, hiding its own shameful acts.

Jud responds:

It’s storytelling. You’re right. I guess the question is do these stories convince us of a lie? Or do they resonate with something deep inside us that’s profoundly true? That we can’t express any other way…except storytelling

Writer and director Rian Johnson has talked about drawing from an evangelical childhood with this movie. Blanc offers the enlightenment values of rationality, plus an innate sense of fair play. Both he and Fr. Jud can see the corruption of the parish, the perversion of Christian values by Wicks. But Fr. Jud remains doggedly committed to the idea that religion can offer more: a grace and hope that cannot simply come only from basic human decency.

At a crucial moment Jud pauses his and Blanc’s pursuit of evidence to pray with a woman whose mother is dying. Afterwards he tells Blanc that he will no longer play his part in the mystery, saying his only purpose “is not to fight the wicked and bring them to justice, but to serve them and bring them to Christ.” Blance is ultimately passing through, on his way to the next case. Fr. Jud is committed to a deeper pastoral care.

The idea of grace is mentioned continuously throughout Wake Up Dead Man. One minor but crucial character is even named Grace. Blanc’s road to Damascus moment was to follow the model of Fr. Jud, allowing the murderer to confess rather than exposing them:

My revelation came from from Father Jud. His example to have grace. Grace for my enemy. Grace for the broken. Grace for those who deserve it the least. But who need it the most. For the guilty.

Grace means something more than normal decency, or even the golden rule. It implies knowing the world is corrupt, and that people will disappoint you, but serving them anyway.

Benoit Blanc dresses exquisitely

Back to more worldly matters: clothes. The KOU also exists for Daniel Craig to have fun with men’s fashion.

In the first movie, Blanc is presented as “A Gentleman Sleuth” with a southern accent that one character compares to Foghorn Leghorn. He dresses formally, in tweeds, and beautiful overcoats. The fake New Yorker profile of Blanc that characters refers to in Knives Out describe him as looking like a “rumpled, athletic classics professor” but he has some standout moments, such as braces and floral ties.

In the second movie, we learn that accent notwithstanding, he is a middle-aged gay man living in New York City. When he hits a Greek island, he dresses with flair, including a seersucker two-piece for the pool, and a tropical suit.

The costume designer, Jenny Eagan describes how Craig has played an active role in mapping out Blanc’s looks: “He came with a couple different images: the films of Jacques Tati and Hitchcock’s How to Catch a Thief.”

By the third movie, he looks like he has walked off a GQ fashion shoot. The stubble that suggested a rheumy-eyed dishevelment in Knives Out is now replaced with the designer version. Craig talked about “yearning to look like a 1970s Yves Saint Laurent model” while Eagan said: “He brought a bit of a heel, a bit of dandy. There’s this long, lean, chic feeling — but also a little bracelet.”

The fashion choices of the movies fit are part of a rich palette, containing visual gags that invite repeated viewing, such as a portrait whose visage changes as the plot does in I. My favorite is in Glass Onion, where Ed Norton wears Tom Cruise’s pick-up artist ensemble from Magnolia, a good indicator that his greatest skill is persuasion rather than creation.

So who, along with Daniel Craig, appears in all three Knives Out movies?

That would be Noah Segan, who appeared in Rian Johnson’s first movie Brick, and plays a different character in each movie, as a detective in I, a bartender in III, and, well, just some guy walking around in II. The other star of Brick, Joseph Gordon Levitt, also makes offscreen audio appearances in each movie.