Those Who Want Me Dead Explained

The ending of Taylor Sheridan's Those Who Wish Me Dead begs the question of what the storey was about.

What is written on the piece of paper? Why do Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult so desperately want this Connor kid dead? The ending of Taylor Sheridan's Those Who Wish Me Dead is purposefully ambiguous about the nature of the killing. However, as a news crew approaches the young lad, played by Finn Little, it becomes clear that he is about to reveal a storey that many shadowy figures wanted to keep hidden.

So, what exactly is that storey, and why did so many people have to die in order to tell it? The exact details are unknown, but if we look at the overall structure of the film, we can get a pretty good idea of why everyone is dying.

It all goes back to the beginning of the film, when we see Gillen's Jack and Hoult's Patrick pose as local gas and fire authorities in Florida, befriending the wife of an off-screen district attorney—in he's the shower—and presumably killing both before planting the bomb. We are not shown that they physically murder the couple, but writer-director Sheridan heavily relies on inference throughout the film. For example, Jack and Patrick are debating whether the latter should go change his shirt because it has a drop of blood on it. This strongly implies that they killed everyone in the house prior to the explosion.

In the same vein, when Jack and Patrick first enter the DA's home, you can hear a baby crying off-screen, which means that when Patrick later tells Ethan (Jon Bernthal) that he won't kill him or his wife Allison (Medina Senghore) because she's pregnant, he's lying through his teeth. In fact, Jack chooses to go up against the shooter at the end over Angelina Jolie's Hannah because he's angry about getting the Two-Face treatment earlier in the film with the fire to the face, and he hopes Allison is holding the deer rifle in the woods.

Most of the characters in Those Who Wish Me Dead and what they're dying for are motivated by implication. When Connor's father, Owen (Jake Weber), learns on the morning news in Jacksonville, Florida that the DA he worked for died "in a gas leak," he immediately flees with his son, travelling further than the men who want him dead could have predicted. And with his confession to his son, he gives us just enough information to understand why he is so terrified.

“I'm a forensic accountant,” Owen explains to the youngster, “which means I look for things that don't add up.” And I discovered some. The man I worked for was killed today as a result of what I discovered. But I still know it, which means they'll come after me as well.” When his son suggests going to the police, Owen insists that the DA was not saved by police protection. “The case involves a large number of people, son, people who have a lot to lose. Governors and members of Congress. We can only put our trust in people we know.”

It's a wise decision, though trusting the family he knows is how Jack and Patrick find the father and son so quickly. Patrick coolly spies a family photo of the pair in Montana with Uncle Ethan and Aunt Allison after breaking into the accountant's home, revealing that they're going to Soda Butte Survival School in Montana. The assassins arrive by plane long before Owen drives to his demise on the Lewis and Clark Trail.

Despite this, we can deduce from what little Owen tells us that he is an accountant who specialises in tracing money laundering, embezzlement, fraud, and the type of racketeering where organised crime and politics collide. While we never learn which politicians are involved, it's a safe bet that many in the Florida area have their hands in a violent, possibly treasonous cookie jar. One is tempted to speculate that it could involve a former president with a Florida residence (remember, Those Who Wish Me Dead was originally scheduled to be released in 2020), but that could just be wishful thinking.

Tyler Perry, who has a tantalising cameo as “Arthur,” the laconic heavy who makes an unexpected appearance in Montana to put pressure on Jack and Patrick for failing to kill Connor in the car wreck, embodies the full weight of the menace. We don't know much about Arthur, but the way he says "we promise absolutes, and unlikely is not an absolute" suggests he's a top-tier crime boss.

However, the fact that he doesn't want to be seen on the same road as Jack and Owen's car—having Jack be dropped off in a parking lot and walking across an interstate for their roadside chat—suggests Arthur is someone more public than that. Perhaps he works in a political office or is a fixer for one. He provides a brutal form of clean-up and discretion to those in positions of power while wielding his own power over them. “I will make them have the stomach for it,” Arthur says of the prospect of murdering many more innocent people in this small Western town.

We also get a strong sense of why it would be so dangerous for people in power if even Connor with a blood-stained note can get in front of a media camera thanks to Perry's one scene. He's more than just a witness to his father's murder and a mouthpiece for what may be unsubstantiated claims from his deceased father at the time. Arthur explains what's in the note for us.

“[Owen] was resourceful enough to make it all the way here,” Arthur says, “so assume he was resourceful enough to have duplicates of everything we retrieved from the DA's office, and assume the duplicates are in that boy's possession.” Assume the worst-case scenario, disaster, and act accordingly.”

While we know the boy is only carrying a note, it is possible that the note contains the location of the duplicates as well as the names of powerful politicians who are involved. After all, it would take a very big name, perhaps at the highest level, to frighten Jolie's Hannah. After glancing at the paper, she went from trying to persuade the child to spend the night in her watchtower to declaring, "We're leaving right now." Owen appears to have discovered the smoking gun, which is now firing directly at him and his family.

So young Owen going on television and sharing his truth with the world will almost certainly have far-reaching consequences, creating a situation that, in Arthur's words, is "untenable" for those who want the kid dead.

With that said, the truth is that we never need to know all of the details. With that first gas leak explosion in a wealthy suburban neighbourhood, the point is made quickly and clearly: this is highly explosive information. And, in fact, it is a MacGuffin that draws us into the film's conventional thrills of Jolie versus Hoult in a burning forest with an axe between them.

Alfred Hitchcock coined the term "MacGuffin" to describe the object or plot device that heightens the suspense and intrigue of a thriller. He also famously shrugged off the MacGuffin as meaningless.

“The best MacGuffin is the one that you have no idea what it was 30 minutes after the movie is over,” TCM host and novelist Eddie Muller once told us. “That, to me, is the essence of the MacGuffin. It's as if you remember everything that happened in the storey but have no idea what they were after. 'Like, what was that?' 'I'm not sure!'"

So, while it's fun to speculate on how damning that piece of paper is, what you'll probably remember most about Those Who Wish Me Dead is Jolie's silhouette surrounded by flames, or the tension of Allison blowing more than smoke in the faces of a couple of hapless killers.