The Story Recap

Listen, so this is that movie that ends people coming out and admi ng
they're 1% Cherokee. It's easily one of the most brutal retellings of a dark
part of history that's based on a book of the same name, focusing on The
Killers who were trying to wipe out the old Sage, who at one point were
the richest people on Earth. And while I think it's worth going out to the
theater to go see it, I'm going to be honest, it's 3 hours and a half, and
you're going to feel it if you're not in a recliner.
Well, well, well, what took you so long to get here?
So unless you're ge ng a cath with your large drink and popcorn, know
that it should be out on Apple TV soon. So whatever way you watch it, I
just think it's worth watching because it's easily one of the best of the year.
So with full spoilers, let me explain. I said, "Well, I think the audience is
ahead of us; they know it's not a who-done-it; it's who didn't do it."
So the movie centers around the Oage people, who were pre y much
pushed away from their own lands down to this corner in Oklahoma that
was meant to be all rocks in order to screw them over. But then they ended
up finding oil, making them super rich, meaning that all the people who
kicked them out before wanted it back. So eventually, there would be
blood.
"When this money started coming, we should have known it came with
something else."
The movie then follows this guy named Ernest who arrives in town to get a
job. But you no ce immediately how dumb he is. Like when he joins a fight
for no reason, even though he didn't plan on landing a punch. He's
returning from a war where they said he was too stupid to even be out on
the ba lefield. And I know that people like suave DiCaprio, and they love
when he's being very charming. But I just think he's great when he's
playing an idiot.
"Money flows freely here."
Now, I do love that money, sir. Like people will tell this man directly what
the plan is, and it takes him the whole movie's run me to figure out what's
going on. This man's given a book, but he can't read. The whole 3 hours,
he's moping around with this emoji-ass frown like he's impersona ng
young DiCaprio.
"Right, you keep your face like that; it's going to get stuck, son."
"I got a ques on. You like women?"
"That's my weakness."
The main reason he moves into town is because of how rich his uncle Hail
is. And this man has so much power that he makes his rela ves call him
King. Hail has appointed himself as the sheriff and even calls himself
Reverend without even being one. And everyone in town pre y much
looks up to him because they've known him since they were kids, and he's
given them so much. And that kind of makes him the sneakiest one out of
all of them because even when the murders start happening, he's the one
collec ng evidence and pu ng out the reward if anyone knows anything
about it.
"You must come to me."
Because Ernest has a hernia from the war, his uncle decides to put him up
as a cabbie so that he can pick up a certain woman. And that's where he
picks up Lily Gladstone's Molly, who gives him a crash course on their town.
"Why did you come here?"
"For my uncle, I work with him."
"Because he's an idiot."
He ends up becoming a robber as a side hustle who's always losing all of
his money and gambling, interes ngly enough, to a queen of diamonds. So
his uncle starts teaching him how to steal money the legal way. Throughout
the movie, he's always being called a snake or a coyote. So it's kind of crazy
to think that he went from being The Wolf of Wall Street to The Wolf of the
countryside, where he's killing off the flower moons, like the opening line
of the book says.
"So many hungry wolves."
A er being a dedicated Ly driver, she ends up vibing with him and even
buys him a hat as she lets him into her house like a vampire, where he
slowly starts to suck the life away from her. And it's insane to think that at
one point, you know, I'm sure that Lily was charmed by DiCaprio, and it
must have been really cool to have a kissing scene with him and a Titanic-
like car. And then it turns out this man looks like this.
"Like, talk about ac ng. Give this woman the gold."
"Now, coyote wants money. That money is real nice."
They eventually get married where he's looking like Redenbacher, and it
has not been this painful seeing a man love his wife since Chance dropped
the big day. Because this is where all the trouble begins.
"We mix these families together, and that estate money flows the right
direc on.

The Killing Scheme Explained

It'll come to us, so the evil plan at play is that Uncle Hail, like many people,
have been ge ng the se lers to marry into the Oage family so that they
can then kill them and have the rights to all their oil money. But while he
has his li le ring going on, there are also other people out there like Bill
who are doing the same thing. Bill's married to Molly's sister, Minnie, who
ends up ge ng really sick and eventually dying, meaning that Bill ends up
with all the head rights. And there's even a moment earlier when Hail had
a one-on-one with his wife and is even speaking in her language. It's a mix
between him pretending to care about her but really caring about her not
dying on his dime because he's losing a piece of the pie to Bill. And that's
sick. Even worse is that Bill immediately moves on to the next sister when
Minnie passes. Sicker, my wife, he likes her. Nice thing. So, how, as much as
you do? The next sister who's targeted is Anna, who carries a gun in her
purse, and that's why Hail keeps spreading this idea that that's what's
going to get her killed. But it's an interes ng performance because Anna
spends more me around town than all of the sisters, and she ends up
with a different accent than them because she's almost like imita ng a
classic Hollywood actress. And that's even included in her wardrobe
because they start seeing their tradi onal clothes as something that could
cause trouble, so she's traded hers in for a mink scarf. This blanket is a
target on our backs. On a rewatch, a crazy thing that I no ced was that on
the day of her sister Minnie's death, you can see Hail giving her a flask
while she's mourning, pre y much encouraging her to drink. I really
wanted the alcoholism to root from the pain of losing her sister, the fact
that her family meant everything to her and losing her best friend Minnie,
it devastated her. And so I asked Scorsese before we even started filming, I
want this alcoholism to come from the pain of losing Minnie. So, can we
have Hail hand her a flask at the funeral? And he loved the idea, and that
was the first scene that we shot on the day of her murder. We see a big
fight happen in Molly's house where clearly Anna wants Byron, Ernest's
brother, who's pre y much Hail's right-hand man. But unlike Ernest, Hail
could never get Byron to marry in. That man would rather date a servant
than be her man. So a er ge ng slapped by Anna in front of his parents,
Byron creepily says he's going to take her home to Ernest. And of course,
this dude just stares out into space. Byron also men ons the death of a
man named Charlie, who gets shot but isn't found to like way later. And in
researching him, it turns out that his wife was the one who put a hit on
him alongside the dude she was planning on marrying, and both got off
scot-free. Trying to get rid of me, aren't you, snake? Anna's eventually
found shot by the river where the doctors decided to do an all-out autopsy
right in front of everybody. And when you realize that the reason they're
doing that is because the doctors were on Hail's payroll and were cu ng
up her brain in order to find the bullet, you just get a knot in your stomach.
Plus, they even men oned that Anna was pregnant, and Hail's first thought
is to ask if they thought he was the baby daddy. Like, how much
bootlegging was this man doing? Their me is over at the funeral home.
Ernest argues with the director who's trying to overcharge him for what he
calls "Oage prices" because everyone in town hates that they're filthy rich
and don't have to work, which is why they're marrying and killing them so
they don't have to work. And even when they're planning the burial, one of
the funeral guys men ons how much money Anna le behind and pitches
using it for a town party. The nerve of these people. I ain't got no nerves,
none at all. That's when M hires a private inves gator, which was really
risky back then because a lot of them would like collect evidence and then
conceal it, or they would go solve the case and then head out and find that
guilty party. And if that guilty party can pay more money, they dip. In this
case, Hail gets the brothers to go whack him, but if you zoom in, you no ce
that it's actually Byron with the weapon. Because again, like the fight in the
beginning and in the army, Ernest is just a minion at this point. Bill also has
his own inves ga on going on for Anna because he knows that he's next
and he's trying to be the last one to the finish line. I didn't realize this
wasn't the movie con nues to show how bad Ernest is because if you listen
closely, he tells the funeral director to leave the jewelry on Anna's body.
Because eventually his henchman, Blackie, shows up as a gravedigger and
snatches it all. On top of that, he's so greedy that he sets up a side deal
with Blackie to steal his car so that he can claim the insurance on it. You
know, kind of learning from his uncle's ways. I just love Minnie. I love it as
much as I love my wife. But of course, Blackie gets caught and arrested
since Hail was looking to use Blackie for a hit job. He takes his nephew to
the super-secret room and spanks him so hard he breaks the paddle. But
they ended up revealing that Leo was padded. So, meth in my ass. Now,
this was an interes ng scene because one that Taylor Swi movie was
playing next door, and I kid you not, she was singing "Look What You Made
Me Do" as Hail was spanking Ernest. But it also is a scene where we
learned a lot about Hail and how he's a 32nd-degree Mason, which is why
he's in that Twin Peaks-like room. Because nobody has scarier secrets than
they do. But it explains a lot about why he's doing what he's doing,
because he's seeking out the highest rank of being a 33rd-degree Mason,
in where you have to be honored fully by your community. So this man
buying up dance studios and being in every picture with everything that
he's giving the town, it's not really because he cares. It's because he's one
degree away from what he really wants. And that's why even when he
meets up with his bootleg buddy, Grammar, that guy rubs his awards in his
face by saying, "Yeah, it's be er than gold. It's recogni on. Whose land is
this, M asks?" The next target Hail has his eyes on is Henry, who was
actually married to Molly before, but now that he's found out that his wife
is chea ng on him with the town budget, Henry's going through depression
and wants to take his own life. And the only reason Hail doesn't stop him is
because this man has a $25,000 insurance policy on Henry. And you see
him even signing it earlier a er a church scene. It's $25,000 laying there.
A er that, the mother passes with it being heavily implied that she was
ge ng poisoned. And that's something Hail seemed to have go en from
Ernest when he arrived at the beginning because Ernest men oned that
during the war he saw more people die from sickness than from bullets.
"My mother, Lizzy, she's not good, sh, she won't last."
It was also very poe c the way that they showed the AL as a warning of
death and having the ancestors be the ones who the mom walked away
with. And I just know that if an indigenous director would have done it,
sadly most people wouldn't have bought ckets.
A er gasligh ng Molly at dinner, she reveals that she's pregnant, and they
end up naming the child Anna, the same way that Anna was going to name
her's Minnie. But the news pisses off the uncle, who then baits Ernest by
telling him that Henry was Molly's ex, which he had no idea about, leading
Ernest to hire an assassin named John Ramsay who doesn't even want to
do it un l he learns it's an Indian, and then he thinks that's different. He
just forgets to set it up as a suicide.
"It's so simple. The front is the front, the back is the back."
He has to make it look like Hail tries to convince the deli guy who was
chea ng with Henry's wife to run away in order to make it look like he's
guilty. And that's when you really see what the movie does best, showing
you how the killers get away and set up people. And one of the things I
missed the first me around was that he always had an alibi whenever a
murder was going to happen. Like they take the me to show you how Hail
would go into town to take a picture or head out to Fort Worth where he
would also have witnesses and take a picture so it wouldn't come back to
him, all while this man was looking like the Hamburglar.
Ernest and Molly end up moving to the suburbs where the whole
community has put up lights in the front yards in order to keep the
murders away.
The Turning Point

Hamburglar Ernest and Molly end up moving to the suburbs where the
whole community has put up lights in the front yards in order to keep the
murders away. And in the book, this actually pisses off The Outsiders
because they saw it as them flexing their oil money with how much
electricity they were using.
That's when Ernest threatens Bill for bea ng him at his own game, and
that's what leads to them blowing up their house, killing Bill and Molly's
sister Rita. And what's crazy is that in the movie and in the book, they
men on how Molly and her kids were literally just over there before that
happened. When they come in, you get them. This also leads to Molly's cry
in the basement that is just gu ng and is one of the standout scenes of
the movie. And it's also when the movie's look changes since they've had
all the old-age shots shot on film, the se lers are meant to look like old
photographs, but a er this explosion, you can see the whole movie get
darker and desaturated.
Even though Molly starts ge ng sick because of her diabetes, she ends up
making the trek up to D.C. where they pay $20,000 to the government just
to listen to their story.
"Please send help. There's murder and Oage. The police do nothing."
This causes Hail to get even more worried, and since he has the doctors in
his pockets, he gets them to alter Molly's insulin shots by adding poison to
every injec on. But since Molly doesn't trust them, Ernest ends up being
the one doing it, making this rela onship sicker than Phantom Thread.
"I love this girl."
"Do you now?"
Hail knew that Ernest's so spot was Molly. So earlier when her sister
Minnie died, Hail really pushed that idea of Bill failing to take care of her
and not giving her the right medica ons, making Ernest feel like he needs
to do everything he can to not feel like Bill did.
"It shows itself to you that Bill Smith didn't take the proper care of Minnie
the way he could have, but have her say and die, take her head rights and
the land."
And I know that this is probably the most ques oned part of the story, and
I've seen people really divided by it, and the book doesn't reveal whether
he knew or not, but it isn't un l Ernest starts downing uncle that he tries
half of that vial himself and ends up ge ng sicker than a dog, which, to
me, shows he didn't know. But yes, in the age of the internet, this man
should have burned in Hell.
On a rewatch, you realize how sick they really are, though because there's
an early scene where Hail jokes about killing the Indians in front of the
doctors when they're looking at Henry, and the doctor doesn't turn around
because he's offended. No, he turns around because he's shocked. He's
saying the plan out loud.
"Going to kill this Indian."
"How did you know?"
The movie also shows real footage from the Tulsa Massacre that they're
making a comparison to since that happened a few hours away from them,
since they're both in Oklahoma. So you do end up with whiplash when you
know casually the KKK is just marching in the town parade alongside the
Oage. But what's worse is no cing that Molly's Guardian, who controlled
her money, was also the guy leading the clan.
Even worse, this same dude is later on in the court.
"I'm the jury. They're very hungry for power. They ain't going to get it."
What's crazy is that Hail didn't even like the clan because they were too
conserva ve for him. Like he's pre y much the racist liberal. This man was
learning their language just to screw them over. He would boast about
bringing them into the 20th century like they owed him something, not
realizing that all the fancy medicines he was tou ng they were only needed
because they also brought in the diseases.
"They were sick people. They were kindly people. Big-hearted people. But
they're sickly."
A lot of the fraud they did was also not even illegal. Like it was part of the
law. This was a town of 5,000 people, yet they had 75 a orneys. You know
they would consider it federal land one day and Indian land the other day
whenever they needed it to be. And they really had these rich Oage people
calling themselves incompetent because they ended up running all the
banks for them. And all the Oage had to ask for their own money. Like, can
you imagine invi ng someone to your land, and they end up controlling all
of your essen als and then slowly kick you out? That's insane.
Back in the old days, they would miss the Indian point of view in a movie
by a mile. Right now, they're missing it by feet. Honestly, when you really
look at it, they weren't just looking to kill them but to completely end the
edi ons. So you know with all that Marvel talk, Scorsese was really coming
out with this movie, saying, "Wakon to.

The FBI and Most Important Scene

Forever, I was sent down from Washington, DC to inves gate these

murders. So, what about them? Who's doing it?" Jesse plans eventually
arrives as a Texas Ranger in the ninth inning, represen ng the FBI, which is
barely ge ng put together by J. Edgar Hoover, someone whom Leo played
in a movie before. In the original story, it focused more on this character
solving the case, playing it off like a detec ve thriller. They rewrote the
movie since they felt that twist was going to be too obvious, and people
found this version insensi ve. Imagine telling a story where it all leads up
to a Scooby-Doo villain reveal at the end. So when people say that they
wanted it to be more like the book, ask them if they read the book. Hell
even makes fun of how long it took them to get there since it wasn't all
about the Osage dying but Bill being detonated that got them there. "We
were si ng down, going through some of the court documents and the
tes monies, and people were talking about the house blowing up. In the
documents from this and the court transcripts, they only talked about Bill
Smith, the character played by Jason Isbell. There was no men on of Rita."
Hell starts to e up all the loose ends by pulling a Looper. He sets up
Blackie to get arrested again with a bank robbery, sets up AC, who they
hired to blow up the house, to rob a dance studio, and lets the owner of
the dance studio know, so he shoots him. Even his buddy Grammar gets
killed, but we just see him crash in a car a er someone was chasing him,
which is kind of my thing. If you're going to show all the violence on the
Osage mul ple mes, don't hold back on the violence for The Killers. We
have so many deaths we've lost count. A er several roadblocks, the FBI
starts piecing things together, with an undercover na ve providing some
insights. I see a whole movie of this, and another guy who was previously
an insurance agent undercover as an insurance agent, who realizes all the
fraud that Hell is pulling, since he's recently burned down his own farm. If
you pay close a en on, you can see that at the beginning of the movie,
this man has a whole bunch of ca le, but by the end, Hell only has a small
corral, which is why he's pulling insurance fire fraud. This agent is also
probably the reason why Hell had issues cashing in on that insurance for
Henry. "I'm going to tell you who did it. Plus, the only reason they got a
lead was because this old guy told the truth only because he was about to
die. You got to just tell me what you told them, all of it. What you tell? I
told them all of it, all of all of it." They end up arres ng Ernest and
interrogate him with Blackie as they keep him locked up for about two
months. Because of that, there's a scene where the uncle goes to visit
Molly, which he ques ons if it's real or not. I think he was there poisoning
her since you know Ernest has been gone. It isn't un l Hell gets arrested
that the authori es finally are able to take Molly to the hospital, and she
gets be er. "Are you a married man? Yes, sir. If your wife died, who would
get her money?" We then get a couple of late appearances from John
Lithgo as a prosecutor who came in like Caesar and Oppenheimer. Three
hours in, we then get the court scene where Ernest has to tes fy, and
Brendan Fraser comes in looking like a wrecking ball. I know people have
been making memes of him, which honestly are all hilarious. But calling
out his performance would also be calling out Marty's direc on and
cas ng, all right. You know it's clearly done on purpose. He's supposed to
be the big-town lawyer who's from out of state, meaning that he has this
goofy city boy way of speaking, just like Anna spoke differently than her
sisters. I think he's supposed to come off over the top because that's
exactly how all the people in the room see him. "These government men,
they're giving you the rope to hang yourself." A er holding Ernest for two
months to tes fy, Hell's Dream Team is able to stop him by stepping in on
his lawyer and having this man say, "On the advice of counsel, I respec ully
decline to answer that ques on on the grounds that it might tend to
incriminate me." "Now the wolf scene, in my opinion, is one of the most
important since Marty went on record saying that everyone was
implicated. Like there will be scary parts where they'll show scenes in the
movie that seem to not go anywhere, but it's because those were real
transcripts, real lines that people said who were never caught, including
Bill Hell's wife telling the doctor to get furniture out of the house. What's
that about, you know? And by the way, this is based on actual things they
were told to get good stuff out of the house. This scene shows how many
people were in on it, including the big oil CEOs who all look the other way
when Henry's ge ng set up. They show you oil workers who were staring
at him for days but also look the other way, and I think it shows the worst
part of how everyone was involved. They just stayed silent because the bad
guy isn't always going to be this mustache-twirling Disney villain. People
say, "Well, that type of person, that sort I guess what that means is that
they try to distance themselves from them. It's someone else, it's not me."
But in actuality, I feel it's not someone else, it's us, it's you and me, and
maybe if we had been born under different circumstances, maybe we
would have wound up doing exactly the same things. That's why the tle is
so important. We already know who did it. The movie's breaking down
how they did it and how people con nue to get away with stuff like this.
Several movies have covered this, but I think it's caused a lot of confusion
because a lot of people don't realize that being the main character doesn't
mean they're a good character too literal, too violent, too metaphorical,
too dark here we have the protagonist, but where's the antagonist? Huh?
Where's the drama? Studios are now pu ng out disclaimers or warnings at
the beginning of their movies because a lot of people seem to not get it.
Even recently, I've no ced people figuring out that a lot of Scorsese's
movies were actually calling out the bad guys. They just put you so into
their evil minds that people took it the wrong way. And I want you to
understand, we don't do anything illegal. And now they go his man doing
explainers in his interviews, as we know now tragically, it's the norm. Every
other person is like Travis Bickle now. The sad truth is that it usually ends
up being violence that gets people to tune in, not the posi ve stories. It's
like it's not an Oscar-worthy performance unless they're going through
agony. You know, it's crazy to see a lot of people who were complaining
about this movie not being able to name another indigenous movie that
came out this year. But if a movie has people complaining that the bad
guys are too bad or also the bad guys are too good, usually that means it
hits the market portraying the sad but raw truth, not something that leans
the way that'll make people more comfortable. Can you find the wolves in
this picture? Get it, the mo on.

The Ending Explained

picture, they end up tes fying in Anna's death, and it's just scary how chill
they are retelling it. They even show a flashback to how Molly Danier
tucked Byron in a er coming back home from killing her sister. And when
they show this Kelsey guy, I damn near vomited. This man looks like if
Walter Junior broke bad and was running an illegal whiskey opera on that
was poisoning people. He's a dude early on when Ernest meets Molly who
boasts about having a full-blooded wife like a creeper. He dances at their
wedding with his goofy line dancing when it should have been their
tradi onal music playing. And then, of course, he's the sicko who planned
to adopt two oage kids as long as he could then kill them and get their
head rights legally. It's real complicated; some mes you got to do one
thing even though you mean to do another thing. But I'm not in any kind of
trouble at all, none at all."
A er Ernest is forced to sign a paper so hail can get his rights and learning
that his uncle even had a hit out on him, it's the death of his baby that
makes him realize how his uncle has been using him. There's a quick edit
when he meets Molly where it cuts to the sister's photographs, and I took
that as him already kind of knowing who they were since the uncle must
have given him a photograph. Like even when the uncle realizes that they
finally met, he gives the brother a side-eye.
Hell even gives Ernest a book about wolves to incept in his mind that dog
mentality and the way he wants the order of things. Through one lens, you
see a very organic a rac on forming, and through another lens that Molly
is pre y unaware of, you see a calculated arrangement happening. When
Ernest is on the stand, he's asked if his uncle directed him into marrying his
wife, and Leo's face is crazy. It's as if he realized right then and there that
as much as he thought he loved her, in his vile disgus ng way, he was also
being duped. The whole me by his uncle, as the book states. And you
even see Molly's face, who ques ons him right a er about the shots, just
for him to deny it like a coward.
"Have you told all the truths?"
In the end, the movie tells you that Ernest and his brother did end up going
to jail but were eventually let out pre y early, living out the rest of their
days in a trailer park together. Hail ended up ge ng served with a life me
sentence but then also got out early, dying in a nursing home with many
oage even forgiving him because as hail put it, people forget. Yeah, they
don't care. I've heard there were some oage that were at his funeral. That's
right. Yeah, believed un l the day he died. And a er that, he was their
friend, that he wasn't guilty of what he was charged of.
As for Molly, they men oned that she remarried and had grandchildren,
eventually passing at age 51 where they buried her next to her sisters and
her daughter. And just one really striking detail I found in an archive about
Molly in 1934, just two years before she died of natural causes. Um, I found
a document saying where she had appealed her incompetency, and she
was deemed competent. She was finally granted the rights of a full-fledged
ci zen to have access to her money and her resources.
All of this is told a er a me jump where a radio show was retelling this
case. They've got Jack White up there as the host, and reading up on it, it
turns out that the FBI was the one funding these because they would use
the files that they had on all these crimes and inves ga ons and then sell
ckets for the show that would make the FBI look pre y good. Obviously, it
also sounds a lot like the True Crime craze and live podcasts that turn all
the glorious stories into entertainment. They even go at the awkward
sponsors by having it be promoted by Lucky Strike and adding a line in the
reading where Ernest asked for a Lucky Strike a er ge ng out for the
murders. Sound like shortly therea er, Gerald Bobkins swung mercilessly at
his wife's head with a golf club. She was never seen again.
This episode is sponsored by Sports Zone. Upgrade your game with top-of-
the-line golf. The last person to come out and read is Cores, who made a
ny cameo earlier when Molly goes to DC, and they take a picture. But
here it's fully breaking the fourth wall, as all the music and sound effects
stop, and it's clear that this is him being really meta on storytelling,
especially with him being an outsider and how he wants to use his reach to
get the story out there in order to get people talking. I think he got people
talking; if it didn't upset people, there's something wrong. Something
wrong with.
I think it's more than Marty being a martyr but saying that this isn't the
only one project that's going to be out there on the story. There will and
should be more. He's just speaking to his audience, hoping they listen. He's
exploi ng the story, and he's just another non-Osage who's reaping the
benefits of the story for his own purposes.
"How do you respond to that?"
Well, I hope not. Those comments that the Osage should have wri en this
book. You know, we had plenty of opportunity for someone to write that
book, but no one did. And so I can't imagine why they would say
something.
The movie then ends with a shot of the surviving Osage people chan ng in
the fields where the flowers used to be, making up the collar as they dance
around the drum set, fading to the credits, where the audience then sits in
the rain reminiscing, just like Molly said earlier in the moon storm. It's uh,
well, it's powerful, so we need to be quiet for a while. It's good for the
crops, that's for sure. Just be s ll.