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Jun 10, 2024

The Afterparty

Episode 9 of Afterparty’s season 2 is told in the form of a whodunnit from the 80s. Isabel will be revealing who the killer is according to her. And it is not Grace. Isabel narrates her life story at

Episode 9 of Afterparty’s season 2 is told in the form of a whodunnit from the 80s. Isabel will be revealing who the killer is according to her. And it is not Grace.

Isabel narrates her life story at a point after her husband, Alexander Minnows, has died. We learn that she went into depression. Her spiralling descent into madness saw no stop. Edgar and Hannah tried to help her, with the former bringing blue sleeping pills for her – the same ones we saw her flushing away. But nothing helped soothe her wounds. Isabel’s pride stopped her from seeking emotional support from her children. That’s probably the reason for her apparent coldness.

Her condition got worse as Isabel started hearing children’s music one night. She had a faux pas when Edgar first introduced Grace to her. Isabel ended up calling her Gail after Isabel incorrectly remembered Edgar telling her something the previous night.

“I couldn’t get over it…so, I decided to give in to it.” This is what Isabel says about her growing “insanity.” Her jumping up and down on the trampoline and ordering a sword and armour from the internet is evidence of her mental state.

Edgar saw her condition and suggested “conservatorship” for Isabel. But she wasn’t alright with it. So she decided to put up a ruse of sanity for Dr. Schulkind on the wedding weekend. When Travis mentioned the cryptocurrencies to her during rehearsal dinner, that is when Isabel thought there was a connection. She thought he wanted her money and that is why he wanted to “Send her away” into an asylum. But why would Edgar want Isabel’s money if he was himself a multi-millionaire?

Isabel’s narration continues as we see Seb running into her that night. It turns out that Isabel wanted to help Grace and asked her to sign the prenup so that she wouldn’t end up without anything after Edgar’s cryptocurrency scheme failed.

Quite shockingly, Isabel discovered the same blue pills on Grace’s dressing table on the wedding day. She revealed that they weren’t for sleeping; they were for keeping the person up all night – Adderall!

Edgar was purposely trying to sabotage her – or was this one of Isabel’s mysterious episodes? When she confronts Edgr with this, he tries to turn the tide on her. But Isabel is wiser to the situation and pretends to go along with his absurd explanation. To prove her thesis, Isabel marks her speech for the wedding with a star on top of the page. When the moment of truth arrives, Isabel is convinced Edgar is trying to gaslight her into thinking she is crazy. The star on top of the page is gone!

Meanwhile, Travis and Seb are separated from the crowd outside the house. Travis has another theory which he lays on to Seb. Edgar inflated the value of Bucephalus by investing his own assets through shell companies into the coin. And since his death, Seb has been scrambling to sell it all off because the word of his death would be getting out soon and the coin’s value would fall. Seb confirms his theory but seems unaffected by its accuracy.

He switched the speeches. But Isabel still went through with the changed speech as no one would believe her in that moment. This is what Isabel mentioned to Edgar in Feng’s narration when we saw the footage of them sitting together…while they were having cake at the reception! That is central to the mystery of his death, according to Isabel. She exchanged the plates that Edgar had brought to the table while he confronted Kyler (who had brought Feng’s Baobing). Edgar wanted to poison Isbael but he ate the vicious dish.

So, Isabel killed Edgar, but not intentionally and only because he was trying to kill her. Isabel wanted to put the blame on Grace for the time being because she wanted to make sure she was mentally sane. She found evidence of that in Edgar’s closet, where she found the boxes of napkins she had ordered with the correct name, “Edgar & Grace, “not “Edgar and Gail,” as Vivian showed her at the wedding. This confirmed in Isabel’s mind that Edgar was trying to purposely sabotage her.

“Wait a minute…” Aniq blurts to everyone’s disappointment. If Edgar had been poisoned at the reception, he would have experienced hallucinations within 15 minutes, which he didn’t. He only experienced them at the after-party, which took place around 9 minutes after the reception. Also, how did Roxanna die? She didn’t eat the cake! At that moment, Howie the Sheriff, whom Isabel called in the first episode after the body was discovered, storms in with his officers.

Seb reveals that he called them as his business of selling the assets now stands completed. Isabel greets him and once again points her finger at Grace, who is prompted to say in disbelief, “Oh, come on!”

Thankfully, this review comes at a time when Apple has revealed that there will be one more episode in this season! They have played a trick once again on us, just like they did last season. If this indeed would have been the ending, I would have been very much disappointed. But the episode still does not get too much better even with the knowledge that this isn’t the finale. The twist about Edgar’s dark side felt jarring rather than tantalizing.

None of the other accounts even hinted at this suggestion. And over the course of a single episode, the creatives decided to turn the plate upside down. This occurs to me as an ill-thought decision; one that further takes away the shine from this season. I have had mixed feelings since the beginning of this season and this pretty much confirms how I feel about it.

The presentation was once again top-notch, though. I might not agree with where the story is going but full marks to the production team for another cleverly set up episode.