Spoiler Alert !!!Spoilers for Wake Up Dead Man!
Wake Up Dead Man is the standalone film to Glass Onion and the third installment in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out film series. The film brings back Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, but this time in an upstate New York rural parish, called Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, led by Josh Brolin’s Monsignor Jefferson Wicks.
When Wick mysteriously dies in the middle of service, his assistant pastor, Josh O’Connor’s Jud Duplenticy, is considered the prime suspect. The reason is their fight over Wicks’ preaching method, which Jud believes is too aggressive and drives away believing men and women from the church.
Wicks is found stabbed to death with a devil-head-shaped knife during a Good Friday service in a closet that appears impossible to access by anyone else. Alongside the mysterious death, Blanc later uncovers the existence of Eve’s Apple, a diamond that belonged to Wicks’ grandfather, Reverend Prentice Wicks.
By the end of Wake Up Dead Man, three characters are dead, and the diamond’s whereabouts are revealed through a series of surprising confessions and moral reckonings. And at the center of it all is the church helper, Glen Close’s Martha.
How Does Martha Orchestrate Wicks’ Murder?
The mastermind behind Wake Up Dead Man is Martha Delacroix, Perentice’s student and the Monsignor’s longtime assistant. While at first the suspicion falls on other characters, including Father Jud, who heard Wicks fall and was near him moments before the body was discovered, the truth is far more calculated and premeditated.
Martha was the only one who knew what Eve’s Apple was and where it was hidden. So when Wicks was planning to have it for himself, she had him killed. At the end of the film, just before Benoit Blanc is about to reveal the killer’s identity, he has an epiphany and stops. After everyone leaves, Martha returns to the church, where Blanc, Jud, and the Sheriff are still there. There, she confesses her sins to Jud.
First, she made friends with the depressed and lonely doctor whose wife had run away, Jeremy Renner’s Dr. Nat Sharp. Later, she slipped a tranquilizer (pentobarbital) into Wicks’s hip flask, something he routinely drank during services. This knocks him unconscious at a crucial moment.
In charge of dressing the priest, she attached the devil’s head that Jud had earlier stolen from the pub to his shawl. It contained blood, so once Wicks fell over, Nat used a remote device to release it. So when Jud went to check, he thought Wicks was already stabbed and dead. Nat, being a doctor, later went to examine him and stabbed him, taking away the other devil’s head attached to the shawl.
Josh O’Connor in the film | Credits: Netflix
At his funeral, they convinced Samson, the groundskeeper, to hide in the coffin and kept Wicks’ body hidden at Nat’s house. During the fake resurrection, Nat was dressed as Samson, and Samson, dressed as Wicks, came out of the tomb. However, their little plan did not work as Jud spotted them, which led to Samson’s death.
Apparently, Eve’s Apple was in Perentice’s tomb all the while, and Martha wanted Samson to get back that diamond while also staging a fake miracle resurrection.
But once Nat saw the diamond, he murdered Samson and framed Jud, who was there at the wrong place at the wrong time. Later on, while at his place, he planned to kill Martha, too. But Martha exchanged the poison-laced coffee that Nat had given her with his cup, and later drowned his body in a tub of acid and arranged Wicks’ body in a manner that appeared he had killed him.
But before she could be arrested at the end of Wake Up Dead Man, she had already taken the poison and collapsed there in Jud’s arms, with the diamond still in her hands.
Why Martha Killed Wicks and the Diamond’s Role Explained
Martha and Samson | Credits: Netflix
As is revealed at the start of Wake Up Dead Man, Perentice’s daughter and Wicks’ mother, Grace, was a lady who did not believe in the Church and was forced to remain there with the promise that she would get a large fortune after Perentice’s death.
But that never happened as Perentice swallowed the diamond, leaving Grace to ransack the place in search of it. In order to teach his daughter a lesson and in the hope she would return to the way of Christ, Perentice never planned to leave his daughter anything.
However, Martha, the church helper, knew the diamond’s hiding place and confessed to Wicks in an effort to confess her own sins. But Wicks, being the wicked and hypocritical man he was, planned to retrieve the diamond, along with his illegitimate son, Cy. Cy had convinced him to use the fortune to embark on a political campaign, but first, he had to let go of the small group of followers he had.
Glen Close in the film | Credits: Netflix
Martha, aware of what Wicks was planning to do, was scared of his ambition, not just to retrieve the diamond, but to leverage it for power, possibly disrupting the community and sensationalizing the parish. Thus, she planned to have him killed, believing that killing him would prevent exploitation of the diamond while protecting some ideal of the church’s future.
Part of her plan was also to stage Wicks’ resurrection in the tomb to inspire faith in the community. Samson would emerge from the crypt, and CCTV would show it, giving the illusion of a miracle, potentially reinvigorating the church’s followers. But after Nat kills Samson and steals the diamond, the plan collapses.
Ultimately, her plan was simple: to protect the secret of Eve’s Apple and prevent Wicks’ greedy plans.
Did Cy Find the Diamond at the end of Wake Up Dead Man?
Wicks with his son Cy | Cedits: Netflix
In Wake Up Dead Man, Cy Draven is Vera’s adoptive son, whom she was forced to raise upon the insistence of her father. She believed that Cy was her illegitimate brother, but the truth was more sinister. She later discovered that Cy was Wicks’ illegitimate son and planned to reveal it to the community to show his real face.
However, once Cy finds out about his real father, he plans to use him to realize his dreams of a successful political career. But that plan fails when Wicks never tells him about Perentice’s diamond and is killed by Martha. He continues to search for Eve’s Apple, but fails to find it.
But what happened to the diamond in Wake Up Dead Man?
At the end of the movie, after Martha’s confession and death, the diamond literally falls out of her hand. Recognizing its value and the chaos it caused, Jud hides it, and Benoit Blanc tacitly allows him to keep it hidden away rather than reveal it.
A year later, Jud is shown reopening the church, now named Our Lady of Perpetual Grace. The diamond is seen secretly embedded within a new wooden crucifix he himself had made. Instead of using the diamond for personal gain or handing it over to Cy (who believes he should inherit Wicks’ fortune), Jud keeps it hidden as a symbol of moving past greed and corruption.
Even when Cy threatens to sue Jud, Blanc, and the church for not returning the diamond, they all claim ignorance. Eventually, Wicks’ legacy is emptied of its corrupting force, and the community moves forward without Eve’s Apple dominating their lives.
What are your thoughts about the ending? Let us know in the comments below.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Mystery is now streaming on Netflix.
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