SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for all nine episodes of “Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole,” now streaming on Netflix.
There may not be many sex scenes in “Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole” but the body count is high. From fire irons to swords, guns to clothes airers, Nesbø — who wrote the screenplay himself — finds a myriad ways to dispatch his unlucky victims, a significant number of whom also lose limbs before bleeding out.
Based on the best-selling author’s Norwegian novel series about an obsessive yet flawed detective, the show follows Harry Hole (pronounced “Hoo-ley,” and played by Tobias Santelmann) who is hunting a serial killer through Oslo while also dodging corrupt and dangerous colleague Tom Waaler (Joel Kinnaman). And from the very first episode, Nesbø shows he is not afraid to kill off major characters in the most gruesome ways.
Read on for a full run down of the 9 most shocking deaths in “Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole.”
The Sidekick (Episode 1)
Episode 1 sets the show up as a classic two-hander with police partners Hole and Ellen (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) clearly enjoying a long — and tender — professional relationship. So when Ellen pursues suspect Sverre Olsen (Arthur Hakalahti) alone into a forest, there’s every reason to think she’s going to make it out alive. But that’s before she runs into Waaler, who’s also after Olsen for entirely different reasons. After shooting Olsen in the stomach he drags Ellen into the cabin and swiftly takes a fire iron to her head — multiple times — before making a dying Olsen shoot her. Waaler then finishes Olsen off and calmly calls in the murder, claiming he found Ellen dead and shot Olsen in self-defense.
As producer Eric Fellner told Variety, “Ingrid is a big actress in Norway. It’s gonna blow people’s minds, because they’re settling in for her to be the third lead.”
Tobias Santelmann as Harry Hole and Ellen Helinder as Beate Lønn in “Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole”
Courtesy of Netflix
The Yoga Pose (Episode 4)
The first-person camerawork warns the audience that unsuspecting receptionist Barbara Svendson (Rebecca Stadsnes) is about to become another victim of the Bike Courier Killer, but her death — a swift shot to the head as she’s filling a cup of water in the women’s restroom — still comes as a shock. Even more so when we see, later in the episode, how her body has been arranged in a macabre yoga-style position known as “child’s pose.”
Worse is to come as Waaler insists on creepily fondling her cooling corpse — and makes Hole to do the same.
The Hospital Assassinations (Episode 5)
Gangbangers Odin (Peter Stormare) and Loke (Sondre Larsen) are playing a relaxing game of chess in hospital, where the latter is recuperating after being shot by the rival Korps gang. Suddenly Odin gets a call telling him Korps leader Attila (Eili Harboe) and her thugs are on their way to finish the job. After calling Hole for help, Odin immediately starts wheeling Loke’s gurney out of the room to the elevator where the duo run straight into a gaggle of Korps members carrying guns and bouquets. They shoot Odin in the chest and Loke in the head at point blank range before depositing the flowers on their lifeless bodies. Then they walk straight out of the hospital’s front entrance, past a lone, defenseless Hole, and drive off with the gangbangers’ blood still dripping from Attila’s face.
The Dismembered Member (Episode 6)
During Waaler’s increasingly regular secret meetings with Attila in a disused, rundown building, he exchanges numerous flirty glances with sex worker George (Aleksander Varadian). In Episode 6, George finally entices Waaler to “come out of the darkness and into the light here with me” — an appeal he will quickly live to regret. As the two exchange first a cigarette and then a kiss, George seals his fate when he foolishly reveals he recognizes Waaler from the news, since the detective has been publicly leading the investigation into the serial killer. Waaler lures George into the nearby toilet cubicles — equipped with a glory hole in the walls for the sex workers to service their clients — where the corrupt detective intimates he’s going to perform oral sex on George. Instead, he uses a sword to cut off the sex worker’s penis, then, as he sinks to the floor bleeding out, thrusts the weapon through the hole and into George’s neck.
Speaking to Variety before the show dropped, Fellner warned: “There’s a scene in Episode 6 that’s going to blow your mind.” He’s not wrong.
Joel Kinnaman as Tom Waaler in “Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole”
Courtesy of Netflix
The Vacuum Sealed Corpse (Episode 7)
Marius’ corpse is shown in flashes throughout the series, but we don’t realize it’s the unlucky student (played by Sjur Vatne Brean) until Episode 7. Arriving at a particular set of Oslo dorms in the belief the Bike Courier Killer is going to strike there for the fourth time, the police set about waiting for him — or her — to appear. It’s not until Hole spots a pentagram engraved above the doorframe of one of the rooms he realizes he’s at the scene of the first murder, not the fourth. In what we now know is a flashback, Marius was killed earlier in the summer after being made to write a letter to his family saying he was taking an unexpected trip to a remote location without a phone signal. Searching the room for clues, Hole spots a decaying hand arranged on the shelf with the thumb removed and the index finger pointing upwards — to the fifth floor. There he discovers Marius’ corpse vacuum sealed in plastic with a CD shoved into his mouth.
The Water Bed (Episode 8) and The Shower (Episode 9)
Actress Lisbeth Barli (Dagny Norvoll Sandvik) is – police believe – the second victim and the only one whose body hasn’t yet been discovered, although detectives are pretty sure she’s dead after receiving her dismembered finger in the mail. Forensics find feces under the fingernail, suggesting it had been used in anal play before it was mailed. As with Marius, we get glimpses of Lisbeth’s body floating in water throughout the series, suggesting she may have been dumped in a lake, river or even a swimming pool. It’s not until the penultimate episode, when Lisbeth’s equally unlucky sister Toya (also played by Norvoll Sandvik) peeks under the sheets of the waterbed she’s been having sex on, that she finds her sibling. Her grim discovery ensures Toya will meet the same fate, and in the last episode, as the murderer escapes through the window, Hole discovers the killer’s final victim in the bathroom, tied by her neck to the shower.
The Elevator (Episode 9)
Of all the gruesome deaths in the series, Waaler’s is the most prolonged — and possibly the most deserved. The corrupt detective is on the verge of being exposed by Hole and is prepared to kill not only his colleague but everyone who stands in his way, including young Oleg (Maxime Baune Bochud), whom he’s taken hostage. Hole, Oleg and Martin Aminov (Simon J Berger), a petty gun smuggler mistakenly accused of being the serial killer, wind up in a stationary elevator stuck between two floors with an armed Waaler reaching in to grab Oleg’s hair. Hole, who’s had a fear of elevators ever since he saw his sister get her hair caught in one as a child, freezes before realizing what he needs to do: hit the “up” button while grabbing on to Waaler’s arm — which is then slowly severed as the elevator grinds back into service. Bleeding heavily, Waaler stumbles into a corridor and slowly takes his last breath as Hole, who jumped out at the floor above and ran back downstairs, watches, gun in hand. Finally, Ellen is avenged.
The Clothes Airer (Episode 9)
But Tom Waaler’s is not the only shocking death in Episode 9, which also sees (final spoiler warning!) Willi Barli (Frank Kjosås) die by suicide after Hole realizes he is the Bike Courier Killer. After first threatening to kill Hole, Barli instead jumps out of his fifth-floor balcony window, where he is impaled on an outdoor rotary clothes airer stationed in the garden below. Toppled by the weight of Barli’s body, it looks like a blood-spattered pentagram from above in a shot perfectly captured by cinematographer Ronald Plante.
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