Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij are no strangers to unravelling a mystery, particularly one that deals with different timelines, like their beloved Netflix sci-fi series The OA. Much like its predecessor, the pair's new show, A Murder at the End of the World, throws viewers right in at the deep end, introducing us to a young woman before flashbacks quickly begin piecing together her past – a past that might just be the key to figuring out what's going on in her present.
For this outing, Marling and Batmanglij indulged their curious minds by centering it on pink-haired true crime author and amateur detective Darby Hart (Emma Corrin), who gets invited to a wealthy AI programmer's Icelandic hideaway as part of a meticulously planned meeting-of-minds stay – soon finding herself trying to shed light on the mysterious death of a fellow guest. It's stylish, well-paced, and the perfect sum of its creators' unique blend of the emotional and cerebral. Like a warmer, less cynical The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, with hints of Nancy Drew...
While it'd be easy to assume A Murder at the End of the World would be some sort of Poirot-inspired or Knives Out-style affair, what with the characters' isolated setting and subsequently streamlined list of suspects, it's a very different kind of whodunnit, as Darby reflects on her own connection to the victim to uncover the truth, rather than pointing the finger. "I think part of our intent, when thinking about reinventing the genre a little, was thinking about how, if a young woman is the detective, maybe the journey isn't just about solving the case in the moment," Marling, who co-wrote the series, explains to 12DOVE. "But it's also about solving some things inside herself in order to become the kind of person who can solve the case at all."
As Marling points out, fictional female investigators in their 40s or 50s – think True Detective, Marcella or Mare of Easttown – aren't uncommon on TV these days, but they're often "authorized by their badge". Darby's drive, alternatively, comes from a more heartfelt place and the unwavering self-belief that she can get the job done.
"She's kind of a citizen detective, who's looking at the landscape around her and feeling that there are stories and cases and women who are falling through the cracks," Marling, who also stars in the crime thriller as doxxed hacker – and Darby's idol – Lee, adds. "[She feels] a duty to solve those cases and that felt very evocative for us.
"There's something very pure about her pursuit. It's almost an obsession, you know, and I think we can understand that, at least in the sense that we have an obsession about filmmaking and feel very compelled to tell stories," she continues. "Even if we had to find other jobs to pay the bills, we would probably still tell stories, because we can't help but be storytellers. I think Darby's the same way."
According to Batmanglij, who previously collaborated with Marling on titles such as The East and Sound of my Voice, the twosome came up with A Murder at the End of World's plot when, in 2019, they started looking into why whodunnits were so popular between World War I and World War 2. "Everyone was turning around, looking at each other, asking who'd done it – and we wanted to explore that," he recalls. "If the English manor house was the old seat of power 100 years ago, what's the new seat of power? What's the modern version?
"We came up with this idea of a far flung billionaire's retreat in this icy locale. Brit has Norwegian heritage; her grandmother is Norwegian and so we thought we'd go with some Nordic place," says Batmanglij. "As that idea starts percolating, you realize that that's also how Darby feels on the inside. Darby ends up in this wilderness or tundra, but that really reflects who she is as a person, so it became about revisiting the times when she was in another tundra, but one saturated with the sun. Something about that mixture of the icy tundra and the desert tundra blossomed for me and Brit into making this story."
When it's not focusing on Darby trying her best to work out what happened to the soirée's unfortunate attendee, A Murder at the End of the World flits back to almost a decade prior, when she struck up a slow-burn romance with mullet-sporting tech whizz Bill (Harris Dickinson). Over the course of the show, the pair travel around the US to track down an elusive serial killer, and find themselves in several sticky situations in the process. As Bill falls harder in love, his passion for seeking justice wanes, before his doubts over whether they can even make a difference causes him to pack it all in and become an artist; elsewhere, Darby's need to expose previously ignored violent crimes becomes overwhelming.
While Marling fronted The OA, she knew she'd want to make her directorial debut with A Murder at the End of the World, which meant finding someone else to take on the demanding role of Darby (Marling helmed episodes 1, 5 and 6, while Batmanglij oversaw the rest). "Our worlds tend to be so big and ambitious and achieving them on, you know, television timetables or budgets is really challenging," she says. "It winds up being impossible to be in every scene and also be directing at the level we kind of set for ourselves, so I was like, 'Okay, I'm gonna take a step back from playing the lead so I can create the time and space to direct in the way that I want to do it'." Cue Emma Corrin...
After seeing their "extraordinary" work as Princess Diana on Netflix period drama The Crown, Marling and Batmanglij reached out to the 27-year-old actor – and were amazed by their "chameleon-like ability" to shift into someone else. "They were a godsend, truly, and it's so hard to be a lead of a series because it's such an intense amount of work, but it's really hard to be a lead of the series that's in every frame of it," says Marling. "Emma is very present and believes, so we the audience get to believe with them. A lot of the time, Darby is on her own, so Emma was acting in a space without anyone even there. They're unbelievable in those moments, when they don't have somebody to be opposite. They're very good at going internal, and it's one of the hardest things to do as an actor; acting with yourself.
"Their transformation into Diana was almost on a molecular level. They were not playing at being Diana, they became Diana for a period and that skill is really rare. It's not just about mimicking the voice or putting on the costume, it's about an internal transformation. Emma really became Darby for a period and we were shooting for so long. At the end, I think we saw Emma come back," she laughs. "It was really remarkable. I think they're an astonishing talent, I don't think anyone else could have played Darby and brought all that force."
Corrin and Dickinson weren't the only British actors Marling and Batmanglij involved in the project; Clive Owen brings party host, and Lee's domineering husband, Andy Ronson to life. Jermaine Fowler, Joan Chen, Raúl Esparza, Pegah Ferydoni, and Alice Braga also feature.
Aside from murder, the show unpacks themes including coercive control, substance abuse, environmentalism, and the ethics of artificial intelligence across its seven episodes, too, but for Marling, it's as much as an intimate tale of individuality and squandered romance than it is a broader comment on modern society. "I put a lot of myself in Darby, maybe more so than any other character we've worked on, and maybe I could only do that at this point in my life when I've been through enough therapy to see some things about myself more clearly," she admits. "I don't think when I was younger, I would have been capable of it.
"It was amazing to put those things on the page and then work at finding the moving images that could reveal them best," says Marling. "Images that could distil them with so much concentrated energy that no frame was wasted and every handoff between the past and the present felt intentional."
Batmanglij insists she needn't second guess herself: "Brit writes the most amazing pages and then to watch her scenes… There's a scene in Chapter 5 where Bill and Darby pull over on the side of the road and he's upset with her because she's always on her phone.
"I remember being blown away when I read those pages, but even more blown away when I saw the scene finished. I wasn't there for the shooting or the editing, and it was such a gift. Usually stuff on the page is magical because it can be the best of everything, then you have to deal with the limitations of shooting," he explains. "There was none of that loss with Brit's directing. Brit's episodes are just so much better than mine because her understanding of acting is so much better. It's like the ability to understand the process of acting is so crucial and I think that as more actors and writers become directors, we will see a level of performance and nuance and subtlety that we haven't seen in the past."
Given that they've been teaming up to weave stories since they were teenagers at Georgetown University, it's hardly a shock that Marling, now 41, is just as effusive about Batmanglij, 42, as he is about her. "It's one of the most amazing things about having a partnership over this many years, to still be surprised and moved by them as an artist. It just speaks to who Zal is as a person. We have a bit of a shared imagination at this point, in terms of the writing, but there's always things to be revealed that are even truer if the direction can take them there," she says of his work. If there's anything Marling and Batmanglij are going to do, it's dig deep.
A Murder at the End of the World episodes 1 and 2 are streaming now on Disney Plus in the UK, and FX on Hulu in the US. For more, check out our list of the most exciting new TV shows heading our way.
