Most shocking deaths in Netflix series

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 irons to swords, guns to clothes airers, Nesbø – who wrote the screenplay himself – finds countless ways to dispatch his hapless victims, a significant number of whom also lose limbs before bleeding out.

Based on the bestselling author’s Norwegian novel series about an obsessive but flawed detective, the show follows Harry Hole (pronounced “Hoo-ley” and played by Tobias Santelmann) as he hunts a serial killer across Oslo while evading corrupt and dangerous colleague Tom Waaler (Joel Kinnaman). And from the very first episode, Nesbø shows that he is not afraid to kill important characters in the most gruesome ways.

Read on for a full look at the 9 most shocking deaths in ‘Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole’.

The Sidekick (Episode 1)

Episode 1 sets up the show 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 chases suspect Sverre Olsen (Arthur Hakalahti) into a forest alone, there’s every reason to think she’ll make it out alive. But that’s before she encounters Waaler, who is also after Olsen for very different reasons. After shooting Olsen in the stomach, he drags Ellen into the cabin and quickly takes a fire iron to her head – several times – before having a dying Olsen shoot her. Waaler then finishes Olsen off and calmly calls in the murder, claiming that he found Ellen dead and shot Olsen in self-defense.

As producer Eric Fellner said Variety“Ingrid is a big actress in Norway. It will surprise people because they will settle for her being the third lead.”

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 quick shot to the head as she fills a cup of water in the ladies’ room – still comes as a shock. Even more so when, later in the episode, we see her body arranged in a macabre yoga-like position known as “child’s pose.”

Even worse, when Waaler insists on creepily caressing her cooling corpse – and makes Hole do the same.

The Hospital Murders (Episode 5)

Gangbangers Odin (Peter Stormare) and Loke (Sondre Larsen) play a relaxing game of chess in the hospital, where the latter is recovering after being shot by the rival Korps gang. Suddenly, Odin receives a call that Corps Leader Attila (Eili Harboe) and her thugs are on their way to finish the job. After calling Hole for help, Odin immediately begins wheeling Loke’s stretcher out of the room and toward the elevator, where the duo runs straight into a group of Corps members carrying weapons and bouquets. They shoot Odin in the chest and Loke in the head at point-blank range before placing the flowers on their lifeless bodies. Then they walk straight out the main entrance of the hospital, past a lonely, defenseless hole, and drive away with the gangbangers’ blood still dripping from Attila’s face.

The Dismembered Member (Episode 6)

During Waaler’s increasingly secret meetings with Attila in an abandoned, dilapidated building, he exchanges countless flirtatious glances with sex worker George (Aleksander Varadian). In episode 6, George finally entices Waaler to “come out of the darkness into the light here with me” – a call he will soon regret. As the two exchange first a cigarette and then a kiss, George seals his fate when he foolishly reveals that he recognizes Waaler from the news, as the detective publicly leads the investigation into the serial killer. Waaler lures George to the nearby toilet stalls – equipped with a glory hole in the walls so the sex workers can service their clients – where the corrupt detective announces that he is going to perform oral sex on George. Instead, he uses a sword to cut off the sex worker’s penis, and as he sinks to the ground bleeding, he thrusts the weapon through the hole in George’s neck.

Speak with Variety Before the show ended, Fellner warned, “There’s a scene in Episode 6 that will blow your mind.” He’s not wrong.

The Vacuum Sealed Corpse (Episode 7)

Marius’ corpse is shown in flashes throughout the series, but we don’t realize it is the hapless student (played by Sjur Vatne Brean) until episode 7. Arriving at a certain set of dormitories in Oslo believing that the Bike Courier Killer will strike there for the fourth time, the police began waiting for him (or she) to appear. It is only when Hole sees a pentagram engraved above the doorframe of one of the rooms that he realizes he is at the scene of the first murder, and not the fourth. In what we now know is a flashback: Marius was murdered earlier in the summer after having to write a letter to his family saying he took an unexpected trip to a remote location with no phone signal. Hole searches the room for clues and sees a rotting hand lying on the shelf with the thumb removed and the index finger pointing upwards – to the fifth floor. There he discovers Marius’ corpse, vacuum-packed in plastic with a CD in his mouth.

The waterbed (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 has not yet been discovered, although detectives are fairly certain she is dead after receiving her dismembered finger in the mail. Forensic examination finds feces under the fingernail, indicating it was used in anal play before it was sent in the mail. As with Marius, we see glimpses of Lisbeth’s body floating in the water throughout the series, suggesting that she may have been dumped in a lake, river, or even a swimming pool. Only in the penultimate episode, when Lisbeth’s equally unhappy sister Toya (also played by Norvoll Sandvik) peeks under the sheets of the waterbed on which she has sex, does she find her brother or sister. Her grim discovery ensures that Toya will suffer the same fate, and in the series finale, as the killer escapes through the window, Hole discovers the killer’s final victim in the bathroom, with her neck tied to the shower.

The Elevator (Episode 9)

Of all the gruesome deaths in the series, Waaler’s is the longest – and possibly the most deserved. About to be exposed by Hole, the corrupt detective is prepared to kill not only his colleague, but anyone who gets in his way, including the young Oleg (Maxime Baune Bochud), whom he has taken hostage. Hole, Oleg and Martin Aminov (Simon J Berger), a small-time gun runner wrongly accused of being the serial killer, find themselves in a stationary elevator stuck between two floors with an armed Waaler reaching in to grab Oleg’s hair. Hole, who has been afraid of elevators since he saw his sister get her hair caught in them as a child, freezes before realizing what he has to do: press the ‘up’ button while grabbing Waaler’s arm – which is then slowly severed as the elevator returns to service. Bleeding profusely, Waaler stumbles into a hallway and slowly takes his last breaths while Hole, who jumped out on the floor above and ran back down, watches with a gun in his hand. Finally Ellen is avenged.

The Clothes Airer (episode 9)

But Tom Waaler’s isn’t the only shocking death in episode 9, which also (final spoiler warning!) Willi Barli (Frank Kjosås) commits suicide after Hole realizes he’s the Bike Courier Killer. After first threatening to kill Hole, Barli instead jumps from his fifth-floor balcony window, where he is impaled on a clothes drying rack in the garden below. Toppled by the weight of Barli’s body, it resembles a blood-splattered pentagram from above in a shot perfectly captured by cinematographer Ronald Plante.