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Netflix has embraced the chilling allure of Scandi noir with its latest series, Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole, which brings to life the fifth book in Jo Nesbø’s acclaimed Harry Hole series, The Devil’s Star. This gripping adaptation stars Tobias Santelmann as the troubled Detective Harry Hole, who finds himself ensnared in a web of corruption and murder. His nemesis, the crooked cop Tom Waaler, portrayed by Joel Kinnaman, tries to lure Harry to the dark side, all while a serial killer known as “The Bike Courier Killer” terrorizes Oslo. The killer leaves behind a chilling signature at each murder scene: a missing finger from the victim and a tiny red star.
**Spoilers for Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole, now available on Netflix**
True to the genre’s form, Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole delivers an unexpected twist in its climactic moments. Although initial evidence points to Prague-based criminal Aminov, played by Simon J. Berger, as the perpetrator, Harry Hole uncovers a more convoluted reality. Aminov is not the killer but rather a pawn in a larger scheme.
As Harry navigates the treacherous waters of his investigation, he begins to unravel Waaler’s sinister motives. The corrupt detective’s desire to eliminate Aminov is not about justice but rather self-preservation, as Aminov holds damning evidence of Waaler’s own illicit activities.
How does Harry Hole crack the case? Who truly is the Bike Courier Killer? And can Harry finally bring Waaler to justice for his myriad crimes? Dive into the thrilling conclusion of Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole on Netflix to uncover the answers.
Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole Ending Explained: Who is the Serial Bike Courier Killer?
As it turns out, Harry Hole wasn’t hunting a traditional serial killer at all! The killer was actually theater director Willy Barli (Frank Kjosås). The multiple murders were designed to throw cops off the trail of what Barli was actually trying to do, which is killing his wife Lisbeth (Dagny Norvoll Sandvik) and framing her lover, Aminov, for the crime. Barli knew that the husband of a dead woman is always the cops’ primary suspect, so he concocted a complex series of murders to throw them off the stench. (Speaking of stench, Harry realizes that Barli hid his wife’s finger up his own butt to throw police dogs off the literal scent! It was ultimately his stool under her nail that connected the dots.)
At the beginning of Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole Episode 9, Harry sneaks into Barli’s apartment and lays all the evidence out. Not to be undone, the killer explains how he discovered Lisbeth’s affair and plotted the whole thing. He defends himself and even reveals that he’s stowed his wife’s body in a waterbed full of alcohol to preserve her forever. It then seems that he is going to kill Harry, but he chooses a “happy ending” for himself, flinging himself from his balcony and impaling himself on the star-shaped laundry line below.
Solving this case also helps Harry figure out who the mysterious bank robber who shot the teller was five years earlier. It was her disgruntled husband, who staged the robbery as the cover for the murder.
Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole End Credits Scene Explained: What Was the Truth about Joel Kinnaman’s Waaler?
Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole makes no bones about the fact that villainous Detective Tom Waaler is a bad dude. Using the moniker, “The Prince,” he has been running a vast criminal underground conspiracy. He’s also a member of a shadowy cabal of powerful people committed to cleaning up society on their own terms. In the first episode of Detective Hole, Harry’s best friend Ellen Gjelten (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) discovers Tom’s criminal alter ego and is murdered for it.
After Harry frees Aminov, with the intention of clearing the man’s name in the serial killer case, Waaler becomes desperate to cover up his own tracks. He sneaks into Rakel’s (Pia Tjelta) during a storm and kidnaps her son Oleg (Maxime Baune Bochud) to bait Harry into giving Aminov up.
Harry tells Waaler to meet him and Aminov at a student dormitory. There, Harry handcuffs him and Aminov together. When Waaler arrives with Oleg, Harry swallows the key to both the room and the handcuffs to prevent Waaler from murdering both him and Aminov and staging it as a crime scene, as he did to Ellen back in Episode 1. Waaler then adds that his plan was to also kill Oleg and stage the crime scene to incriminate Hole.
Harry then points out that the CCTV cameras are still running in the dormitory so Waaler’s villainy has been caught on camera. Desperate, Waaler pushes Harry, Aminov, and Oleg into the elevator, where there are no cameras. Harry manages to kick Waaler out in a scuffle, but then Waaler breaks the elevator window to shoot at everyone. Harry — who actually did not swallow the handcuff key — then handcuffs himself to Waaler and sets the lift in motion. Waaler loses his arm and begins to bleed out massive amounts of blood.
“Thank you, Jo, for that. He gave us a couple of nuggets,” Joel Kinnaman joked with DECIDER. “You know, there were there were a couple of limbs that went missing over the course of the show.”
“It’s always a little taxing when you’re going to play that kind of pain and shock, but they did such a great job with the prosthetics, and I haven’t seen the finished version of it, so I’m looking forward to seeing that.”
Although he tries to chase Harry to the basement, Waaler eventually dies of his injuries. During his autopsy, the doctors are perplexed about a series of post-mortem stab wounds that we know came from Beate Lønn.
The last we hear about Tom Waaler comes from the show’s post-credits scene. Earlier in the season, Waaler had opened up to Harry about his childhood. Waaler explained that he had a loving and protective father whom he never saw during the day because he worked as a bricklayer. When Harry tracks down Waaler’s childhood friend “Solo,” it’s revealed that Waaler lied. His father was an unemployed bricklayer, home all day, and known to be abusive. Young Tom had no friends and, it seems, murdered his father and staged it as an accident.
“Tom goes into this long monologue where he’s telling the story of his childhood and then, you know, but what is actually true? Because he’s also lying and inventing his own backstory,” Kinnaman said. “So what is actually true? That’s a that’s a much bigger mystery.”
“It’s fascinating to play a character that is so sort of detached from like a place of clarity of knowing who he actually is, and is so much more driven just by desires and the inner brokenness that is guiding him.”
Will There Be a Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole Season 2? Is Chief Superintendent Agnes Sjølid the New Villain?
Jo Nesbø adds one final twist to the end of Detective Hole Season 1. It turns out the person in charge of the shadowy organization Waaler was so hyped to join is none other than Chief Superintendent Agnes Sjølid (Agnes Kittelsen). This reveal ironically comes after Sjølid asks Harry to rejoin the police force to hunt Waaler’s compatriots. In reality, she is playing Harry.
So does this mean Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole Season 2 is a go? Well, maybe…
“We worked so hard on on this first season and we’re so happy with it,” Jo Nesbø told DECIDER. “And right now I guess it’s like when you’ve when you given birth to a child, your first thought is not, ‘Let’s have another one.’”