What happens at the end of the new Knives Out movie, Glass Onion? Warning spoilers for Knives Out 2 ahead! In 2019 director Rian Johnson took a break from making Star Wars movies and gave us the greatest fictional detective since Poirot, the one and only Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig).
In his first thriller movie, Benoit managed to solve the case of Harlan Thrombey’s murder and the issue of who’d inherit his estate without breaking a sweat. However, in the words of Laurie Strode, “evil never dies; it just changes shape,” and Benoit’s been called back into action for a new movie, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
This time Benoit has swapped the damp forests of Massachusetts for the searing heat of the Aegean Sea as he’s invited by tech billionaire Miles Bron to a private Greek Island to be part of a murder mystery party. Unfortuantely, violence and death follow Benoit like a tech bro follows Elon Musk, and it’s not long before someone dies for real. Can Benoit solve the case? Well, we recommend you go watch the detective movie to find out, but if you simply must know how Knives Out 2 ends, then read on.
Knives Out 2: Glass Onion ending explained
Before we get to the island, it’s imperative we introduce the players in this macabre tale. Miles has invited all of his friends to the island for this game, and Benoit gets to know them on the boat over to the island.
The guest list includes Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), a men’s rights activist and social media star; Whiskey (Madelyn Cline), Duke’s ambitious girlfriend; Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), the governor of Connecticut; Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr), Miles’s chief scientist; and Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) an arrogant fashion designer.
Finally, there’s Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe), Miles’s scorned ex-business partner. Upon the group’s arrival on the island, Miles seems thrilled to meet all his friends again, even Andi, but expresses confusion about why Benoit is there.
Taking the master detective to one side, he reveals that he didn’t send Benoit a puzzle box invitation, leading to the inevitable question, ‘who did?’. Concerned for Miles’s safety, Benoit offers to stay on the island and keep an eye on proceedings. While Miles is dismissive of the danger, he allows Benoit to stay and observe.
Throughout the day, Benoit keeps a cautious eye on all the guests learning what he can about them and making a note of their secrets and rivalries. Soon it’s time for dinner, though, where Miles reveals his next great invention, a form of hydrogen fuel that could revolutionise the energy world.
Lionel and Claire show some concern about this, believing the fuel may be unstable, but there’s no time for that now; the murder mystery has to begin. As the group sit around, they doubt Benoit’s skill as a detective and challenge him to solve Miles’s game as quickly as he can.
Benoit’s reluctant, but he demonstrates the power of his mind by solving the game in about two minutes, pissing off Miles. As the group retires to the living space, they decide they will go home early, but Miles pressures them to stay longer.
And then it happens as the group argue and drink; Duke starts to choke and collapses to the ground. Before anyone can do anything, he’s died, seemingly the victim of a deadly poison put in his glass. But Duke wasn’t drinking from his glass; he was drinking from Miles’s, and even worse, the gun he carried everywhere with him disappeared as well.
Believing Andi, who had the most to gain by killing Miles, is behind the murder, Benoit and Miles’s friends start hunting the grounds. Benoit’s the first to find her, but someone shoots and kills her before she can tell him what happened. As Benoit looks around for the unknown gunman, it seems all is lost.
But here’s where the twist begins. We cut to months earlier when Helen (Janelle Monáe), Andi’s Twin sister, first came to see Benoit. Helen wanted Benoit to investigate the death of her sister Andi, which had been ruled a suicide. That’s right from the moment he arrived on the island; Benoit was really investigating an utterly different murder.
Benoit invited himself to the island, playing on Miles’s general smug arrogance, to work out who killed Andi. So who’s the Andi on the island? None other than Helen, who’s pretending to be her sister, to freak out the murderer. You see, in the course of his original investigation, Blanc deduced that none of Andi’s friends had been told of her death yet and therefore, only her murderer would know she was supposed to be dead.
Helen also shared with Blanc that it was Andi who built the company Miles that made his fortune and that he forced her out of the company. At the same time, he convinced the rest of the group to side with him by offering to bank role their various projects and dreams. The only proof left that Andi created the company was a napkin from their favourite bar, “The Glass Onion”, where she scribbled down the original idea for the business.
Andi believed the napkin was lost but shortly before she died, she informed her friends she’d rediscovered it and was planning on bringing them all down. After Andi died, however, Helen couldn’t find the napkin, and she believed Miles or one of the group killed Andi to stop the secret from getting out.
As Benoit explains all this to the group, they look on baffled as the supposedly dead Helen walks in and reveals she didn’t die when shot, Benoit faked her death. Ultimately it’s revealed that it was Miles who killed Andi in an attempt to get his hands on the napkin.
He was also the one who poisoned Duke (and shot ‘Andi’), as Duke had got a breaking news alert telling him Andi was dead, and he was blackmailing Miles into putting him on TV. Unfortuantely while Miles isn’t as smart as he wants people to believe, he is rather cunning, and he burns the napkin that would vindicate Helen and Andi.
Benoi admits there’s nothing more he can do but urges Helen to keep fighting. Smashing up Miles’s multiple glass sculptures, the group slowly turns on the billionaire. It’s then revealed that this wasn’t just a temper tantrum. It’s all been a build-up to Helen throwing a lump on Miles’s hydrogen fuel that Benoit had surreptitiously slipped to her into a fire.
This detonates the fuel, but everyone survives, and while Miles chides Helen for her childishness, the group tell their former friend they’re going to testify against him and ruin him. As Mile’s fortune burns, Benoit watches on with a smile.
Glass Onion has been in cinemas for one week now. If you miss it, don’t worry. It’ll be available on the streaming service Netflix on December 23. While you wait for it to hit the platform, why not check out our list of the best Netflix movies? If you prefer long-form entertainment, we have a guide to the best Netflix series.