After two incredibly long and drawn out seasons of investigations and conspiracies, The Killing finally revealed Rosie Larsen’s killer. Or rather, killers.
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The second-to-last episode revealed that Darren Richmond’s advisor Jamie Wright was the third person in the casino the night Rosie was killed, which led everyone to assume he did it. And in fact, within the first 15 minutes of the finale, he confesses to Darren and we see flashbacks of him fighting with her and tracking her down while running through the woods. Then he pulls a gun when the cops arrive and Holder kills him. So the case is done, Jamie’s the killer.
Except he isn’t. Perhaps the most annoying part of The Killing’s finale was that we all knew there was no way the show would reveal the killer’s identity at the end of the second-to-last episode, so Jamie was obviously a red herring.
Linden is still annoyed that Jamie never admitted to pushing the car into the river, and she’s annoyed by a phone call Jamie made to Michael Ames the night of the murder. By pure coincidence, Linden happens to find the missing piece of the puzzle, a broken tail light, at the Larsen house.
And that’s where we finish the story, learning that Rosie’s Aunt Terry is the real killer, though it was totally by accident, sort of.
You see, Jamie called Michael Ames to help him deal with the girl who overheard their conversation, and at the time Terry was driving her boyfriend Michael to the airport. So she came along and while Jamie and Michael fought about what to do, Terry decided to send the car with the girl in the trunk into the lake because it was the only way to ensure Michael would leave his wife for her.
The fact that the girl in the trunk was Terry’s niece was purely a coincidence. And that’s probably what annoys me most about this big reveal. It relies too heavily on a one in a million coincidence. Of all the girls in Seattle, Rosie just happened to be the one who was there.
I forgave The Killing for not revealing the killer at the end of season 1, but now I have to admit I was the one who was wrong. The show’s second season dragged on way too slowly and manufactured this whole conspiracy that became too convoluted.
The fact that the Jamie revealed occurred in the second-to-last episode was a mistake, as was the almost accidental way the case was solved. Terry was IDed as the killer not because of any brilliant bit of detective work, but because her car happened to be there when Linden and Holder went to tell the Larsens they caught the killer. As Holder’s wrap-up at the station said, it was all randomness. It was random that Terry killed her own niece and random that Linden caught her.
Add to this the fact that the Indian chief and Michael Ames not only got off scot-free, but they’re now working with Mayor Daren Richmond. I’ll assume that it’s another random event that a man accused of murder who confessed to attempting suicide could somehow win a mayoral election.
I tried my hardest o love and defend The Killing, but the show didn’t make it easy. I can only hope the final scene in which Linden symbolically steps out Holder’s car after being called to another crime scene (which I guess means she retired) is the end.
Now that the Rosie Larsen mystery is over, I hope all future murder mystery shows look at it as a lesson in what not to do.
(Image courtesy of AMC)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
