Photo: James Dittiger/Hulu
Well, at least now we know that the red herrings Death and Other Details throws our way aren’t going to be complete wastes. If they aren’t going to affect the plot in some way, they will at least have a real story to them. Sure, Rufus and Imogene have a murder to solve, but at the moment, the show seems to be moving at a leisurely pace toward answers. It’s clearly not afraid to take a detour. Depending on what you want out of your ensemble murder mystery show, this could be a good or bad thing — four episodes in, and we haven’t gotten a ton of clues about the mystery at hand, but we have gotten a lot of information about our cohort of possible suspects. I’m more of a let’s cut to the chase kind of girl — a real Hilde Eriksen, as it were — but I’m also more than happy to stare at gorgeous clothes for several weeks, so I’m rolling with this show’s chosen mode of operation, for now.
Surprise! Jules isn’t on the S. S. Varuna to do some light murdering — although it turns out he does have a long list of aliases and an even longer one of previous crimes committed. No, as he reveals to Imogene, he’s there to [checks notes] help a family of Ukrainian refugees get to freedom. See what I mean about the red herrings? We learn that six months ago, Jules (or whatever his real name is) staged a mugging to get into Sunil’s good graces and tricked him into believing it was his idea to hire Jules as Head of Security. He played him for a fool! Although, if that’s how you’re going to go about hiring your Head of Security for your multi-million dollar business, maybe you deserve to be played.
When Imogene learns the truth and realizes that the young daughter of the Ukrainian family, Eva, might have some intel on the night Danny was murdered thanks to her obvious proclivity for spending time in the vents of the ship, she strikes a deal with Jules: Let her and Rufus interrogate Eva and she will do everything she can to help this family get to safety. When Rufus arrives down below, he doesn’t come alone — Sunil and Teddy follow him, and they are not pleased to learn about the situation; if refugees are found on board, their business is, well, sunk. Furthermore, Sunil doesn’t seem too pleased to learn that Imogene is Jules’s alibi for the night of Danny’s murder. Sunil has it bad! Regardless, Imogene and Rufus finally get time to chat with Eva and she does have some information from the night in question for them. While in the vents, she heard a man scream and then silence. Could it have been Danny? After Rufus gives Imogene a very confusing lesson in asking a witness the right questions without leading them, Eva remembers another detail: The woman in the room was wearing black heels with gold spikes. The exact shoes that Teddy is currently wearing.
But this, of course, is once again not what we think. When Eva spotted Teddy’s shoes, Teddy wasn’t moments away from harpooning Danny; nope, Teddy was simply showing our creepy lawyer Llewellyn, who’s boss because [checks notes] Teddy is a dominatrix. I mean, sure? Why not, I guess. Lest you think this is yet another dead end, Imogene and Rufus really are becoming a crack team, and while chatting with Teddy, they make a few important connections. First, they correctly assume that Teddy keeps her side hustle to herself. No one, not even her sister Winnie, knows about it, which means that before when Teddy and Winnie were initially interrogated and named each other as their alibi, someone was lying. Since Teddy would never tell her sister the truth, Rufus and Imogene also correctly assume that Winnie asked her to lie for her. A lot of this deducing is based on a slight cheek twitch that Imogene spots while talking to Teddy, which is some really good detective work for someone who has only been on the job for three days.
Now that Winnie has moved up to the top spot in Rufus and Imogene’s suspect leaderboard, they lay a trap. They make a big deal about spreading the word that Teddy has been arrested for Danny’s murder. Winnie can’t stand to let her sister take the fall for her, so she turns herself in. She confesses to Danny’s murder. She gives a big speech about how rich people deserve to be punished and how they may own towers and ships, but “they will never own us.” Which, honestly, feels a little bigger than harpooning a guy because he yelled at you for spilling a drink on him. Anyway, Winnie is put in a cell, and aside from some paperwork Hilde has to fix up, the case is closed. Hmm, it turns out solving murders on boats is, like, insanely easy.
BUT IS IT A LITTLE TOO EASY?
Babes, you know it is. This is only episode four! Of ten! There is much more going on here than Winnie’s confession would have you believe.
Imogene makes good on her promise to Jules. Jules offers himself up as a distraction to keep Hilde and Interpol occupied while Imogene gets Eva and her parents off the boat and to the meeting point Jules had set up. Sunil, although still heated from learning the truth about Jules, begrudgingly agrees to help — is this because he is a good person or because he doesn’t want to get caught with refugees on his ship? I don’t know, maybe both? As Jules sends the two off, he tells Sunil that he sees the way Imogene looks at him and to not “fuck it up.” This is the fastest-moving love triangle in the history of love triangles. Everyone is so horny on this ship, and I don’t hate that. Anyway, Imogene and Sunil successfully get Eva and her parents off the Varuna, and we do, indeed, get a shot of Imogene taking in Sunil. A full-on makeout seems imminent.
Hilde arrests Jules and tosses him in another jail cell — thank goodness this cruise ship has so many jail cells, right? — and Rufus seems pretty pleased as he goes down below deck to make sure Imogene and co. are safely headed for land. But then Rufus hears some rustling. Lo and behold, who should pop out of the nearby cabinet but Leila. Leila! Remember, friends, the whole reason Imogene found that secret door to where Jules and the refugees were hiding was because she was tailing a suspicious-looking Leila. Leila knows a lot more than you’d expect for someone who has been written off as a paranoid freak and has been holed up in a cabinet for seemingly an entire day.
Earlier in the episode, Anna begins to suspect her wife might have something to do with the murder. We flashback to the night Danny was killed and watch as Anna informs Leila as to what’s going on — that Keith Trubitsky, the man across the hall was killed. Leila has an oddly stoic reaction. When Anna notes that she woke up in the middle of the night and Leila wasn’t there, Leila simply says she was on a walk and refuses to give more details, insulted that Anna might be insinuating something. But, after Leila’s conversation with Rufus, she doesn’t seem like a suspect at all. She seems like the one person who might have a clue as to what’s going on here.
When Rufus tells her that she’s safe because they caught the killer, oh boy, does Leila have some news for him. She correctly guesses that the person they caught was someone young and tech-savvy, someone with a motive that “doesn’t add up.” That’s because they didn’t catch the killer — they caught one of the real killer’s followers. Then she does two very important things: She refers to Danny by his real name, which none of the other passengers know, and she asks Rufus how much he knows about Viktor Sams. I’m no detective, but it seems like it might be a good time to finally get Leila’s side of the story.
• What is up with the Governor of Washington? Alexandra looks sicker and sicker by the hour, and after she confronts Katherine about suspecting Lawrence of setting her up for the murder for not helping him with a zoning issue, Alexandra gets a threatening email. It’s full of photos of her and Tripp’s cocaine-fueled trysts, and the email reads: “PUT YOUR STRINGS BACK ON OR WE RELEASE THESE.” This seems very bad all around.
• Surprising no one, while stuck together during the ship’s lockdown, Anna and Eleanor give in to the sexual tension that’s been bubbling since they boarded the Varuna and have sex. Okay, well, maybe it would surprise Leila if she were ever to find out.
• Should we be tracking how much Anna is popping pills?
• Please, please, please do not make Celia Chun the Big Bad. She is a star, an icon, my mentor even though I haven’t told her yet. There she is, casually sucking down caviar during lockdown, letting Father Toby know she is completely hip to his affair with Katherine and yes, is very much going to use that knowledge to blackmail him for information. She fears nothing! What a baller.