Glass Onion Director Didn’t Want to Do Knives Out Sequel’s Biggest Twist

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery launched on Netflix over the weekend, treating audiences to an epic star-studded murder mystery. The film, which was directed and concieved by Rian Johnson, was chock full of surprising twists — and he apparently had some very strong thoughts about the biggest one. Spoilers for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery below! Only look if you want to know! Midway through the film, it is revealed that Cassandra Brand (Janelle Monae) is actually her identical twin, Helen Brand, who has infiltrated the exclusive party to investigate Cassandra’s suspicious suicide. In a recent interview with The Wrap, Johnson spoke about the “identical twin” twist, and how he initially was against it. 

“I mean, that’s a challenge,” Johnson explained. “I feel like the first question, OK, how do you pull this off? And I guess the primary thing was, it can’t just be seeing it from a different angle. It has to be enough of a basic perspective shift that there’s a new tension that’s introduced in the repeat of all the different scenes. This is what led to the idea of twins. By the process, I was dragged kicking and screaming to identical twins. I didn’t want to do it, it seemed like a horrible trope, and just, “Will the audience ever forgive me for this?” [laughs]. But I think we get away with it because it’s not like a reveal at the end of “Aha! It was a twin!” It’s a complication in the middle that leads to a deepening of the stakes and the story. So I think that’s why we get away with it.”

“So the big massive answer to your question is, introducing the emotional stakes of the entire movie at that midpoint,” Johnson continued. “Is introducing a character who you like, and who you suddenly have this emotional investment in casting your mind back to the first half where you’ve kind of perceived them as something else, knowing in the back of your head we’re leading up to that scene where she’s gonna get shot, and then throwing her into this back half, but through her eyes. That, I think, is what I put my cards down on. And in that way, the bigger risk actually becomes going that first half of the movie without it. It’s like if we played the first movie for half of it without introducing Marta. What was scarier to me is, is the audience gonna stick with this group of terrible people up to the point where we actually give you someone to care about when we introduce Helen? And then from that point on, it was kind of a trial and error calibration of how much do you repeat? How much will the audience stick with actually seeing stuff play out again? A lot of just pacing stuff, it’s just kind of the patient work that goes into any other movie, but the calculation is slightly different, because the fact that we’re going through the second time now also plays into the audience’s experience.”

What is Knives Out 2 about?

In Glass Onion, Tech billionaire Miles Bron invites his friends (and Detective Benoit Blanc) for a “murder mystery party” getaway on Glass Onion, his private Greek island. However, when someone turns up dead for real, Blanc must crack the case and discover who the killer is.

The film will also star Edward Norton as Miles Bron, Janelle Monáe as Cassandra “Andi” Brand, Kathryn Hahn as Claire Debella, Leslie Odom Jr. as Lionel Toussaint, Jessica Henwick as Peg, Madelyn Cline as Whiskey, Kate Hudson as Birdie Jay, Dave Bautista as Duke Cody, and Ethan Hawke in a currently-unknown role. Glass Onion is one of two sequels already greenlit by Netflix.

What did you think of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is now available to stream exclusively on Netflix.