‘In the Dark’ Season 1 Ended With a Killer Twist

The CW series In the Dark kicked off with a morbid mystery: Murphy (Perry Mattfeld), a blind 20-something woman, stumbles upon the body of Tyson (Thamela Mpumlwana), a teenaged boy who has been her friend ever since he saved her from a mugging years prior.

So, who killed Tyson on In the Dark? Season 1 spoilers ahead!

In that first episode, Murphy’s luck gets even worse: Tyson’s body disappears before the police reach the scene. So then it’s up to her to solve her pal’s murder….

As Season 1 progresses, Murphy finds an ally in Dean (Rich Sommer), a cop working Tyson’s case. Dean sympathizes with Murphy because his daughter, Chloe (Calle Walton) is blind, as well. Coincidentally or not, as Murphy and Dean get closer, she and love interest Max (Casey Deidrick) go their separate ways.

But at the end of that debut season, Murphy discovers it was Dean who killed Tyson: She recognizes the scent of Dean’s cigars as the same scent she detected on Tyson’s body. And through a series of flashbacks, we learn the backstory…

Turns out, crime boss Nia (Nicki Micheaux) had made Dean an offer he couldn’t refuse: She would pay for his daughter’s surgeries if he dropped the case he was building around Nia’s involvement in a liquor-store shooting.

Later, Tyson and his friend Wesley got brought in on a possession charge. Wesley is jailed, while Tyson is set free. Wesley, of course, doesn’t know that Dean is a dirty cop, so he assumes that Tyson snitched and was set free in exchange.

Worried that Wesley would kill him for snitching, Tyson meets with Dean and pleads for him to tell Wesley the truth. Dean says no, so Tyson threatens to blab. And that’s when Dean strangles Tyson. He puts Dean’s body in a sleeping bag and hides when Murphy approaches. Murphy finds Tyson’s lifeless body, and when no one answers her cries for help, she goes to find the police. Once she’s gone, Dean moves Tyson’s body. Only, Tyson isn’t dead. He wakes up and starts to yell, and Dean shoots him dead.

Initially, Murphy acts understanding, saying she knows Dean was only trying to care for Chloe. But we later learn that she recorded Dean’s confession, and she’s ready to expose him.

They get into an argument in Dean’s car—and then a physical altercation, which leads to a car crash. Murphy is injured, but not as badly as Dean. And she sits by his hospital bed as he lies unconscious, telling him that her recording saved to the cloud and that he’s “done.”

And instead of saying what she always planned on saying to Tyson’s killer, she instead tells Dean about Tyson and what a good person he was. “So you’re going to lie there and listen to every single thing I can remember about him, every single thing I couldn’t think about because I was so obsessed with finding you,” she adds.