Warning: Spoilers ahead for Murdaugh: Death in the Family
On June 7, 2021, Maggie Murdaugh and her son Paul were murdered by husband and father Alex Murdaugh at a dog kennel in South Carolina. That’s the inciting incident of Murdaugh: Death in the Family, a true-crime series inspired by real events that befell the Murdaugh family, starring Patricia Arquette, Johnny Berchtold, and Jason Clarke. The murders became well-publicized, attracting both a podcast series, the Murdaugh Murders Podcast, created by Mandy Matney (played by Brittany Snow in the series), as well as a two-season docuseries called Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.
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Murdaugh: Death in the Family, created by Michael D. Fuller and Erin Lee Carter, dramatizes the lives of the Murdaughs, a powerful and prominent family with law firms in South Carolina. It’s a thrilling show bursting with anger towards the systems in place to keep the powerful and wealthy intact. The key murder is hinted at early before unfolding in episode six, and for the last two episodes of the series, the show shifts focus from the Murdaugh family as a whole to Alex, and especially Buster (Will Harrison), the eldest Murdaugh son.
“Buster was a big question mark for folks in regards to what his experience was like,” says Carter. “This is all inspired by, versus based on. We tried to be really thoughtful about what it’s like for a young man to navigate the death of family members and be with his dad. We wanted to put people inside these perspectives they previously did not have access to.” Fuller adds, “Buster becomes the emotional audience surrogate after the murders, as he tries to grapple with and process what’s happened.”
The shift to Buster, a character who had considerably less screentime than his brother and parents until the final two episodes, makes sense given the show’s commitment to highlighting those who were victims of the Murdaugh family, including Maggie and Paul themselves.
“To understand and navigate an exposé about power and privilege, you have to look at the damage,” says Carter. “The people you really root for in this show are those who have been wronged. It was always a very natural thing to talk about the victims in this way. It also feels like that’s where the genre is going, focusing on the people who fought through and survived, or didn’t, and that’s super exciting.”
What happens to Alex Murdaugh?
The eighth and final episode of the series, “The Man in Glass,” written by Fuller and Gabrielle Costa, brings us the long-awaited fate of Alex Murdaugh (Clarke), on trial for the murder of his wife Maggie (Arquette) and his son Paul (Berchtold). “It certainly feels like in the wake of the murders of Maggie and Paul, there’s a disconnect with Alex in terms of his behaviour,” says Fuller. “In the wake of those murders, Alex becomes more unknowable.”
The finale begins with a major revelation: despite Alex’s insistence that he wasn’t at the kennel with Maggie and Paul the night of the murders, video evidence emerges that places him at the scene of the crime, approximately 10 minutes before they were killed. Though he’s not seen in the video, it’s abundantly clear that the voice heard in it belongs to Alex. The moment happens at the police station, where those closest to Alex—including Buster, Maggie’s sister, and Alex’s brother—sit around the table as the police prevent the damning evidence to them.
“That was drawn from research and true of the situation,” says Fuller. “The grand jury was going to indict Alex, and they brought everyone in before those charges were filed, and showed them why. It was truly the bombshell in this murder investigation, because that was the sort of indisputable video proof that he had been lying all along about having been at the kennel.” The shock and upset on Alex’s family’s faces is undeniable and overwhelming, as they realize that he’s been lying about a very important detail on the night of the murders, and one that implicates him in a major way. “It casts a very big shadow over everything that Alex says after that, and makes them question everything that came before it,” says Fuller.
Though Alex staunchly maintains his innocence throughout the trial, the evidence is clear. The jury finds him guilty, and Alex receives two life sentences, one for each murder. It’s the moment much of Murdaugh: Death in the Family has been building toward, and yet, when it finally happens, it’s strikingly subdued. There is no sweeping emotional score, or indeed any music at all. There are no gasps from those watching, no yelling or commotion. Just a man faced with a lifetime in prison.
“We talked a lot about the moment with our incredible director, Steven Piet, and when the verdict comes, it felt like a fait accompli. He wanted to argue for himself, and he just flamed out spectacularly,” says Fuller. “Just like the judge’s words, which we used verbatim from the real court transcript. We wanted to let the heaviness of the moment just be, because it’s dramatic and demoralizing and disheartening, and cathartic on a level, because there’s a measure of justice and something is restored there. But Buster is also having to now process all of this. That sort of reckoning in the moment felt like it just spoke for itself.”
Carter adds, “It ends with a whimper versus a bang; the continual deceit drags on your soul. He would never give anyone closure by saying he did it, which is disturbing. You don’t want to cover that up—you want it to be laid bare.”
After the trial, we’re shown the murder itself from Alex’s perspective—a moment first teased in the series’ very first scene, and again in more detail in episode six. We see the immense detail and preparation he took, from wearing protective clothing to ensure blood wouldn’t get on his clothes, to the startling lack of hesitation when it came to the act of murdering his wife and child.
“We had a lot of conversations on how to approach it,” Fuller says of the murder. “We wanted to lay it all out and see the calculations he’s doing, like the look between him and his son before he pulls the trigger the second time. It’s a moment that crystallizes everything we’ve wondered about him from the start. All those things culminate in this moment and the act he did. Hopefully, it then provides some clarity for the audience.”
Fuller adds, “This is who this person has had in them all along, and this is who they are now, and what they have to live with for the rest of their lives, regardless of what they admit to or not.”