Guessing 'Knives Out 2's Plot From The New Five-Second Clip

Netflix just released a promotional video highlighting the many exciting new movies they jacked up your monthly bill to pay for. Oddly, many of the stars of said movies actually interrupt their respective scenes in the trailer, breaking the fourth wall Ferris Bueller-style in order to offer up cinematic platitudes that wouldn’t seem out of place in an AMC commercial starring Nicole Kidman. 

One of the highlights of the spot was our first glimpse of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel. While the footage only lasts for five extremely fleeting seconds, perhaps we can still uncover some of its mysteries. Probably not, to be honest, but we’re still going to try. 

Even from just this short clip, it’s clear that the film owes a great debt to The Last of Sheila, the 1973 film written by Anthony Perkins and the recently-departed Stephen Sondheim, which Johnson has cited as one of his favorite whodunits. In the Knives Out 2 footage, we see a cast of characters boarding a sun-drenched luxury ship, along with famed detective Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig. Well, The Last of Sheila also takes place on a private Mediterranean boat tour populated by a fashionable assortment of Hollywood actors.

Without spoiling too much, the name of the ship is of key importance in The Last of Sheila – so it stands to reason that Knives Out 2 could be doing something similar. While it’s hard to tell exactly, it sure seems as though the boat is called “Aquarius.”

Does this hold some special meaning, or is the owner of the boat just a really big fan of that David Duchovny show? Some astrologers think that the “Age of Aquarius” is about to begin just next month, possibly bringing with it “revolutions in technology, industry and government.” Then again, others think it won’t come until the year 3573, because astrology isn’t an exact science, or really a science of any kind at all. Or maybe it’s another reference to The Last of Sheila – specifically a very obscure reference to the time co-star Raquel Welch performed the song “Aquarius” in front of an ancient pyramid as part of the world’s strangest television special.

Then again we could be thinking of this too literally; when the characters pause and turn towards the camera, they obstruct all but the letters A, A, R, I – which is an anagram of “ARIA.” Could an aria from an opera provide an important clue? That may sound dumb – very, very dumb, even – except for the fact that the original Knives Out did just that, using a piece of music from Verdi’s La traviata to underscore the potential dangers to our hero Marta. Or the whole thing is another elaborate reference to some old Choose Your Own Adventure book no one remembers. We’ll have to wait and see.

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Top Image: Lionsgate