The ending of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery presents a surprising conclusion for the film’s most valuable object. The legendary Eve’s Apple jewel, a massive pink diamond, does not end up funding a lavish lifestyle for a corrupt politician or a tech billionaire. Instead, it finds a quiet, symbolic, and permanent home in the most sacred part of the church. After a deadly story driven by greed and temptation, the jewel’s final location carries deep meaning for the film’s themes of faith and redemption.
For audiences following detective Benoit Blanc’s latest investigation, the fate of this diamond is the last piece of the puzzle.
The Deadly Secret of the Wicks Family Fortune
To understand the ending, you must know the jewel’s dark history. The story of Eve’s Apple is not about creation, but about possession and denial.
The diamond was purchased by Reverend Prentice Wicks, the grandfather of the murder victim, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. Believing wealth was a corrupting force, Prentice spent his entire family fortune on the single jewel to keep it from his daughter, Grace. In a final, drastic act witnessed only by a young Martha Delacroix, Prentice swallowed the diamond before he died, taking the fortune literally to his grave.
Grace, promised an inheritance that never materialized, was driven to desperation. She destroyed the church’s crucifix searching for the jewel and later died, earning her the cruel nickname “the Harlot Whore” from Monsignor Wicks. Martha, now an elderly church administrator played by Glenn Close, carried the secret of the jewel’s location for over sixty years.
How Greed for the Jewel Led to Murder
The central murder plot of the film is directly triggered by the jewel. After a challenge from the new priest, Father Jud Duplenticy, Martha decides to confess her long-held secret to Monsignor Wicks. She tells him the truth about his grandfather and the location of Eve’s Apple.
Instead of offering forgiveness, Wicks sees an opportunity. He secretly orders equipment to open his family crypt and retrieve the diamond from his grandfather’s remains. He plans to sell it, retire in luxury, and leave his congregation behind.
“The whole thing is motivated by the jewel and who will end up with the jewel,” says actor Josh Brolin, who plays Monsignor Wicks. “The jewel ends up creating all the havoc that we all go through that results in somebody’s death”.
Horrified that the man she served is as corruptible as his grandfather feared, Martha hatches a plan. She recruits the church doctor, Dr. Nat Sharp, and the kind groundskeeper, Samson Holt, to help her. Their complex scheme involves murdering Wicks and then staging a fake “resurrection” where Samson, dressed as Wicks, would emerge from the tomb with the diamond, captured on camera to inspire the faithful.
The plan goes fatally wrong. After retrieving the jewel, Nat is overcome by greed. He kills Samson to keep the diamond for himself and frames the unconscious Father Jud for the crime. Martha then confronts Nat at his home. She outsmarts him by switching their poisoned teacups, leading to his death.
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The Final Confession and the Jewel’s New Purpose
With the truth closing in, a remorseful Martha confesses everything to Father Jud and Benoit Blanc. She reveals she has also taken poison. In her final moments, she seeks and receives forgiveness from Jud for all her sins. As she dies in his arms, the Eve’s Apple jewel falls from her hand.
The diamond is now in the possession of the only two people who know its full story: Jud and Blanc. Cy Draven, who has discovered he is Monsignor Wicks’s illegitimate son, believes the Wicks fortune is his rightful inheritance and aggressively pressures them for information.
The film jumps ahead one year. Jud has reopened the church under a new name: Our Lady of Perpetual Grace. He has personally built a new wooden crucifix to replace the one destroyed decades before. Cy continues to harass him, but Jud offers only a spiritual response.
“Your real inheritance is in Christ,” Jud tells Cy, a line that serves as a clue to the jewel’s true location.
The final shot of the movie solves the mystery. The camera zooms in on the new crucifix hanging in the church. Inside the chest of the carved Christ figure, hidden from view, rests the glittering pink diamond of Eve’s Apple. Father Jud has concealed the jewel at the heart of the cross, removing it from the world of human temptation and giving it a sacred purpose.
Actor Daryl McCormack, who plays Cy, shared his thoughts on the ending’s symbolism: “I thought the symbolism of this jewel being hidden in the heart of this crucifix was really amazing”.
The jewel that caused so much death and corruption has finally been redeemed. It is no longer a object of greed but a secret foundation for the church’s renewed mission of grace.
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