I Can’t Stop Thinking About the Dystopian Hotel in “A Murder at the End of the World”

Earlier this month, the internet paused to gawk at Mark Zuckerburg’s newest creation—not updates to his legless virtual fantasy world, but instead, a more critical look into his $100 million residential ‘compound.’ In particular, Wired took a deep-dive into the project, and found the residence will include a 5,000-square foot underground lair equipped with "energy and food supplies," making us all suspect that Zuck is readying himself for the end of the world. Perhaps it’s the hubris of a man whose empire was built on energy-gobbling server farms, or that he spent nearly a decade buying up indigenous lands in a state still reeling from an environmental disaster—the abject horror of the whole endeavor gives me the shivers. But then there’s the part of me that wants to know what this place will look like; its floor plan, how it’ll be furnished, the tactics deployed that will make a subterranean living space seem inhabitable.

While this news broke, I was finishing up A Murder at the End of the World, a new Hulu series by creators Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. The 7-episode arc follows Darby Hartt (Emma Corrin), an amateur Gen Z murder sleuth and talented hacker who is invited to attend a mysterious summit held by billionaire Andy Ronson (played by Clive Owen, who brilliantly likens an Elon Musk). Andy brings her and eight other innovators in tech, science, and the arts to his private residence: a hotel, located in Iceland’s remote Fljot Valley. While the story contains plentiful murders and a classic ‘whodunit’ intrigue, the hotel itself resonates, not only as a plot-driving force but also as a perfect encapsulation of how real-world billionaires are meeting the uncertain future: with a hard-on for global collapse that manifests as residential design.

At face, the hotel—which, according to the Los Angeles Times, was imagined by Marling and Batmanglij, in collaboration with production designer Alex DiGerlando—is a simple, two-story structure unique in its circular, spaceship-like shape and abundant glazing. The two floors of residences are laid out across the above-ground circle, with only a handful of rooms on each floor. Each includes a sliding glass walkout into the frigid terrain, a place that Andy describes as "the last untouched piece of wilderness."

The rooms, like much of the hotel’s interior, feature dark wood, dim, ambient lighting, and unfussy furnishings. The sofa included in Darby’s room is reminiscent of one any college student might have; the few moments of luxury are apparent only when viewers get a glimpse of a Louise Bourgeois painting in the background, or in the hotel’s enviable indoor/outdoor heated swimming pool. Strikingly, for a space envisioned by a leader in tech, there are very few screens anywhere; much of the technology is concealed—like an automatic LIDAR scanner that monitors all visitors’ movements through the hotel—except for RAY, Andy’s artificial intelligence invention that is part-assistant, part-therapist, whose omnipresence can be helpful, but wanes between benign and malevolent.

Tucked into its snowy landscape, the hotel appears as if it landed there from outer space, and as we learn in Episode 2, that’s not far off: the building was likely designed by RAY’s AI programming and built by autonomous insect-like robots. Guests in the episode observe the bots in action as they tour Andy’s second hotel construction site; we see the robots go deep underground, hinting that the hotel in which they’re staying is like an iceberg with only its tip visible.

It’s not until a later episode that audiences discover that Andy, his wife Lee (played by Marling) and young son Zoomer (that’s really his name) are not guests in the hotel like the others; they are living 10 stories underground in a bunker built deep enough to withstand radiation. While the subterranean scenes only take place in their main living space, the gargantuan, cavern-like walls, lit by sconces as if their home was a 15th-century cathedral, hint at what the rest of the billionaire’s safe haven might be. It is sparse and cold, not unlike the landscape. Above the seating area is a long airshaft that suspends a Dark Crystal-esque chandelier. Andy tells the guests that the lighting scheme was designed by RAY to bring sunlight down to the depths.

While it all seems rather innocuous—the dark warmth of the hotel’s interiors juxtaposed with the bunker’s brash sterility, not unlike Kim Kardashian’s infamously sparse residence—none of these spaces read as comfort. Instead, they are eerily empty. As the story pushes forward, we quickly learn that the "summit" is no summit at all; it is merely an audition for a seat on a figurative lifeboat. Unseen on camera but likely hidden in that grand underground living room are other spaces for such special guests; the new hotel being constructed by the creepy robots is a second Ark. The hotel might sit in a remaining ‘untouched,’ gorgeous natural landscape, but it does little to protect that landscape from human impacts. And, fittingly, the interiors are not as comforting as a home, but as one artificial intelligence might imagine a home to be. There is, as one might say, "no there, there."

The hotel, as I also imagine the bunkers by Zuckerburg and his ilk to be, becomes the epitome of techno-pessimism turned on its head: Rather than seeing human suffering as a consequence of technological progress, suffering becomes integral to such advances. Rather than pouring his billions into saving humanity, to furthering the causes championed by his guests, Andy instead uses the possibility of our species’ demise as a means to build a space advanced enough to shelter these builders of the future. Like many of Marling’s storylines, which sometimes carry heavy-handed, urgent messages about personal and ecological loss, and how we might find redemption, the hotel itself is brilliantly designed to deliver a moral teaching. It’s not so much about greed or power—that would be too reductive for the complex global problems we’re facing—but about what makes something worth saving. Maybe hers is a lesson lost on tech billionaires and their lairs, who find the ultimate solutions 100 feet underground, but hopefully not for those seeking something real to preserve.

Top Photo Courtesy of FX Networks.

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