Refrain from using first person pronouns, please. This is a Fridge page, not a forum.
Fridge Brilliance
The very opening of the movie gives a nice bit of Fridge Brilliance: in the puzzle box invitations, Miles invites the recipients (intended to be the other Disruptors) to his island because he wants them to "solve the mystery of (his) murder". While the common interpretation would be for them to solve a murder with him as the victim, an alternate interpretation of the phrase is that the invitation is referring not to a murder with Miles as the victim; but rather, one that is his handiwork, as the real murderer. And, ironically, it is the latter interpretation that comes true.
Miles Bron builds an ostentacious exterior to everything he does, but when scrutinised, his work - and the man himself - is hollow and disappointing. It just so happens his initials, "M.B." could also stand for the phrase "Mystery Box"...
Blanc plays Among Us in the opening scene, and the video game has several similarities to the subsequent plot:
Both the film and game have cozy mystery elements, such as wandering around an enclosed space, trying to interpret people's behavior, and a killer trying to cover their tracks as more bodies pile up.
Both works involve an impostor who can change their appearance to look like someone else.
Blanc (whose crew member is white-colored) is quickly outed as the impostor. Brand is introduced wearing white, with her ensemble being primarily white throughout the film.
Blanc is outed as the impostor because impostors don't have any specific tasks to do on the ship. Any decent impostor will pretend they do anyway to avoid suspicion, but Blanc gives himself away by just standing there and doing nothing. What ends up outing Miles as the murderer is Blanc's realization that Miles is an idiot who doesn't do any real work.
Angela claims she realized Blanc is the impostor because she saw him go somewhere suspicious. Duke realizes Miles murdered Andi because he saw him go to her house, and upon learning of her death put two and two together.
The movie ends with the various Disruptors in their color-coded costumes making "I saw ..." statements regarding their time at the Glass Onion, just as Among Us players do during an 'emergency meeting'.
While Miles's sleight of hand to slip Duke the pineapple juice is superficially impressive, it still only works when Miles shouts at Duke to keep watching Birdie's dance, showing Miles isn't as smooth as he pretends. It also doubles as a pun: he literally has to tell Duke to watch the Birdie.
Amongst his other accessories and decorations, Miles is clichéd enough to have a Newton's Cradle on his desk. This is a clever visual nod to his stranglehold over the Disruptors. When one part of the Newton's Cradle moves, it sets the others into motion, shoving them along.
Amongst art pieces and decorations is something called DeepLight 12 only much bigger. It is a variation of infinity mirror and infinity box. Miles probably liked the original (current price 8500$) and asked the creator to make a bigger and more expensive version for himself. But that is not the brilliance here. DeepLight and infinity mirrors/boxes work only in low light conditions and when they work they look like they are bigger (infinite) on the inside. So what we have here is a fragile glass sculpture that looks like it is bigger on the inside, bright and very impressive until you shine a bright light onto it and take a good look in those conditions. Like Miles himself.
The "no smoking" alarms located throughout the building aren't just for show. Cigarettes could potentially ignite a hydrogen leak, so the alarms were installed and made obnoxiously loud to eliminate the possibility.
The "No Smoking" alarm in the gardens is loud and extremely sensitive, but the gardens themselves don't provide any ashtrays to safely dispose of anything the alarm detects. Even down to the tiny details, Miles doesn't think beyond the immediate.
The diary is a bit too thin to have been able to realistically stop a bullet, but the glass Helen was shot through is obviously a high-strength variant, given it only cracks rather than breaking apart. This likely helped reduce the bullet's speed enough for the diary to stop it.
Duke styles himself as a macho badass, but is revealed to be a wimp who's pushed around by his mom. By extension, he carries a tricked-out gun that turns out to have so little power that it's easily stopped by a glass pane and a thin book.
Both of Duke's guns (Tokarev and spear fishing gun) are Chekhov's guns. They are introduced during the first third of the movie and fired by the end of the movie.
Duke gags the most on the COVID-19 mouth spray, further outing him as a wanna-be tough guy who isn't all that tough. This also foreshadows his death, which involves gagging.
On top of the many lamp shaded meanings outlined by Blanc throughout the movie, the Glass Onion is also a metaphor for the central plot/conflict in another way, as proven in the climax: much like a glass onion (and the other glass statues Miles uses to flaunt his wealth), Miles' career/legacy/plot shatters extremely easily once someone figures out how fragile it really is and promptly handles it with brute force.
Fake gems are also usually made of glass. Miles' character and ideas initially appear to be valuable, but are actually worthless.
Unlike something like an orange or lemon (where you remove the outer peel to get at the edible part) or something like a pear or peach (where after eating the edible part you find a hard stone in the center), peeling an onion will never reveal anything but more layers of onion. Similarly, if you peel back Miles's bluster and arrogance, all you find beneath it is more bluster and arrogance.
Of course Blanc was able to solve Miles Bron's game so quickly. As he himself states later on when dismissing Clue, actual mysteries are often very complicated and messy with multiple suspects (sometimes with obscure motives) who could've easily dunnit. Bron's game, meanwhile, was designed from the get go to have one suspect with a clear motive. Not only that, but it was penned by a bestselling author of mystery thrillers, meaning it probably had a lot of tropes for Blanc to spot and simply pull the thread.
Andi having her hair up in a towel seems meaningless at first, but it's actually concealing Helen's long, natural hair, a dead giveaway she isn't Andi.
Miles' company/brand is called Alpha because he's the leader of the pack that everyone obeys without question. In other words, the Alpha of the disruptors. However, the idea of wolf pack "alphas" is a dated scientific concept which doesn't reflect wolf hierarchies in the wilderness; similarly, Bron's leadership of the group was stolen from Andi and maintained through money and veiled threats, not any meaningful degree of personal charisma or authority. This talk of "alphas" also associates him with MRAs like Duke and the dubiously unscientific claims about biology or hierarchy the movement often espouses, showing that despite seeming to be a leftist on paper (as he bankrolls Claire's campaign, which with its focus on green energy and her fear of being associated with an MRA seems to be on the left) he's comparable to Duke in many ways, with both men hawking ideas about being revolutionary and powerful that end up being shams.
Additionally, the idea of the "alpha" came from watching wolves form a hierarchy while trapped together in an enclosure, while groups of wolves in the wild exist as more of a family structure. The former... is more or less Miles' role during the movie and his relationship with the Disruptors, trapping them and keeping them subservient to him. Conversely, it's also what Helen does - show dominance and trap them into following her.
The logo of the Glass Onion is an O with an underline, recalling the room at the center of the island. It also resembles the Omega symbol — the opposite of Alpha, associated with endings, as it is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. The first time we see it, on the boat, is next to "Andi" — the person who brings Miles' empire to an end.
Duke does not seem to carry an EpiPen despite being deathly allergic to pineapple. A possible reason for this: he is an alt-right MRA, and thus admitting to an allergy would be a sign of weakness. Notice how he uses a euphemism for his allergy instead of saying it outright on the dock (he doesn't "dance with pineapple").
Pay attention to everyone's drink orders when Miles serves them:
Lionel drinks 16-year-old Scotch, neat, reflecting his precise nature as a scientist. He also appreciates the "peaty" flavor — reflecting that he is one of the most grounded people in the room.
Birdie's tropical concoction is both eye-catching and sweet, as she loves being at the center of attention. But also has a vodka base, a flavorless and generic spirit.
"Andi" is given a Scotch and soda, a drink that's sophisticated, and yet ordinary enough that it could be ordered at a dive bar like the original Glass Onion — reinforcing that she is trying to remind the group of their roots, which she never lost sight of.
Claire, specifically identified as a former suburban soccer mom, drinks room-temperature white wine, a cliché suburban mom drink.
Both Duke and Miles drink Old Fashioned; for the former, it's a traditional "manly" drink, and for the latter it's a classic cocktail seen as refined, which Miles wants to be seen as. Their shared order is also significant, as the drink contains whiskey and both men are in varying degrees of a relationship with Whiskey the character; and it allows Miles to slip Duke his glass laced with pineapple.
Whiskey herself doesn't drink whiskey, instead drinking tequila straight from the bottle. It shows she has Hidden Depths beyond just being Duke's eyecandy.
As for Peg, he just hands her a disposable plastic cup, showing that she was an afterthought whom Miles completely forgot about, fitting for an assistant who's only there because she works for Birdie. She is seen writing her name on the cup in sharpie, reflecting the fact that she is an aspirational social climber hoping to be as rich as the others some day, since almost everyone else's glass is personalized.
At the pool, Duke excitedly tells Miles to "booch me" and hand him one of the hard kombuchas. That's despite there being plenty of Corona beer, a more traditionally manly drink, around (Miles is even having one). Sure the hard kombucha is really strong at 9% alcohol, but it's not seen as a real drink by some of the others (Helen dismisses it as health food).
In his introductory scene, Duke is heard talking about the "breastification" of America, which from what's heard appears to be criticizing dependence and femininity in men — an idea which is ironically echoed in how Andi's statement that the Disruptors are latched on to Miles' "golden titties", and shows that they and Duke are dependent on others in the way Duke derides.
Bron says that Gillian Flynn wrote his mystery weekend. Flynn's Gone Girl has eerie similarities to the plot of Glass Onion. We learn that we've been drastically misled about the fate of a main character (Andi and Amy) through a flashback, and that flashback shows that these people have more agency in their fate than was previously revealed.
The Disruptors joining in Helen's smashing of Miles' glass sculptures, only to then pull back when she goes after the Mona Lisa, parallels his speech about disruption theory earlier: everyone celebrates when someone is brave enough to start breaking aspects of the status quo that are trivial or people wanted gone to begin with, until the disruptor goes too far and starts breaking things no wants to see changed.
The "Glass Onion" motif counterpoints the first movie's discussion of a "donut hole within a donut's hole". In the latter, Blanc identifies a crime hidden within a seemingly solved crime, whereas in the former he states that Miles' scheme, while seemingly complex, is exactly as crudely simple as it looks.
In a few of the rooms Helen and Benoit convene in, art pieces call back to the "donut" and the knife display in Knives Out — while also recalling the shape of a target, subconsciously reminding us that Helen is in danger.
Miles dresses as he wants to be perceived. In the flashback, his outfit and haircut are identical to Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia, a sexy life coach. Later, as a tech magnate, he's wearing the black turtleneck of Steve Jobs, positioning himself as a visionary. Of course, since he's an idiot, he doesn't realize what his references really expose about him. Like Mackey, he's hiding his true nature behind a flashy façade, and like Jobs, he's better at making ruthless business moves and marketing his company rather than actually designing new technology.
In addition, this tendency calls to mind Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, who did the very same thing by dressing like Steve Jobs.
It’s fitting (and doubly ironic) that Miles chose to play “Blackbird” as the guests arrived upon the dock.
It’s a set-up for the murder mystery he had planned — Birdie mentions it’s “her song.” It’s likely to be the first clue.
Blackbird’s guitar accompaniment is a reharmonized adaptation of Bach’s Bourrée, alluding to Bron’s tendency to take others’ ideas and appropriate them as his own. McCartney and John Lennon also attempted to learn the song as a “show-off” piece, reinforcing Miles’ desire to appear Wicked Cultured without putting in actual effort.
The subject of the song, according to Paul McCartney, was at least partially reflecting upon the Civil Rights unrest in 1968, which can also tie back to Bron (a white man) swindling Andi (a black woman) out of her own company.
Not to mention Birdie's frequent thoughtless racism - her claim of the song as "hers" mirrors her implied blackface.
Miles claims that the guitar belonged to McCartney himself, who according to a famous urban legend/conspiracy theory is already dead and has been replaced by a look-alike. Not only does this tie into the planned mystery theme of Miles' party (and of the movie itself), it also foreshadows that one of the invitees is dead and that there is an impostor attending in their stead.
Paul McCartney famously plays the guitar left-handed. The guitar Miles is playing is right-handed. Either he's lying to impress the others or he got suckered. Either way, it's an early clue that he's a poseur.
Regardless of Bron’s personal definition of Disruption Theory, Bron himself works well as an example of Disruption Theory in action — he accelerates his company’s innovation to decelerate his competition, which ultimately leads to his downfall.
The invitation asks everyone to send their dietary restrictions. Not only does this imply that Bron doesn't bother to remember details about his so-called friends (especially since they met as drinking buddies), it explains how he knew about Duke's pineapple allergy. Since there's no staff, Bron would have had to cook all the meals, which means that he'd read their diet notes.
Because of the point above, even if the Disruptors didn't change to Helens side at the end Miles could still be charged with manslaughter by criminal neglect.
Bron is clearly freaking out when he sees Andi on the beach; on the first viewing, we can chalk it up to his surprise that she would come. On the second viewing, we know it's because he thinks he is seeing the woman he just tried to kill alive and well.
There’s also some darkly humorous context created when it’s revealed that Andi is actually Helen — Birdie, the Dumb Blonde of the group, is the only one who remembers that Andi had a twin sister, while even Duke was observant enough to realize that “Andi” was an impostor once he got a notification of the real one’s death. Miles really is an idiot among idiots, since he was both Andi’s business partner and her murderer … yet seemed to think she really was back and messing with him.
Bron's wish to be as famous and remembered as the Mona Lisa holds an extra layer of significance for viewers who know that the real reason the Mona Lisa is famous is due to the publicity it got when it was briefly stolen from the Louvre in the early 20th century (ironically, due to lax security and museum staff taking a few days to even notice it was missing due to it not being seen as an important piece at the time). Only following the media zeitgeist surrounding the theft did the public start retroactively assigning meaning to Mona Lisa's smile. It's rather fitting that Bron became famous by launching the media careers of several public figures (a Twitch streamer, a politician, an ex-model, etc.), and presents himself as a complex, mysterious genius, which is really just a PR image he cultivated around himself from media attention, much like the air of mystique around the Mona Lisa herself.
The lyrics of the song "Mona Lisa" by Nat King Cole that plays while Helen burns the painting likely reference this. The lyrics speculate about the complex mystery behind Mona Lisa's smile, but then pivot to wondering if she's "just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?", just as Miles (who cultivated an image around himself as a complex genius when he's just a rich idiot) helplessly watches the painting burn.
Why did Helen burn the Mona Lisa and feel confident that Bron would get in trouble and not her? As Miles Bron himself bragged, he rented the Mona Lisa from France under the express stipulation that he keep it heavily secured and behind glass at all times. But he intentionally created a security breach so he could open and expose it any time he wanted. Therefore, he's still liable.
Not only that, but even if he doesn't go into debt over and serve time for that, at the end of the movie he's still provably killed two people and attempted to kill a third within the span of three weeks. He used a birthday gift as an excuse to drive over and kill Cassandra, Duke's death could either come across as the victim of gross negligence in the Klear explosion or having been poisoned via allergic reaction based on coroner findings, and Helen visibly having a gunshot entry point in what remains of her clothes as well as the bullet in her notepad and the discharged gun left in pristine condition clear of the blast. All of it with the Disruptors having finally grown a spine to confirm these events as the truth rather than trying to cover it up.
When they first meet, Helen mentions that Blanc must be good at the game Clue, which she and her students enjoy. Blanc disagrees, stating that all that talking to people and "snooping through rooms looking for clues" isn't his forte. Helen turns out to be fantastic at this exact aspect of their joined investigation in figuring out who murdered Andi.
Blanc is bad at Clue because a very big part of his investigative style involves understanding people and their motives. Something not well represented in Clue, where you basically accuse the other players at random until you get the right combination of murderer, weapon, and location, and (in the original version of the game at least) motive is never mentioned. In the game, the investigator can be a murderer and not know it.
Also, as mentioned above, the movie ends with the color-coded suspects sitting around and accusing someone. Sounds like a game of Cluedo, doesn't it?
Miles is actually doubly screwing Birdie over when it comes to the sweatshop scandal. Birdie dismissively says there's nothing to worry about, because Miles has promised to pay her the value of her shares in Sweetiepants once she takes the fall. However, the value of shares isn't static — it goes up and down depending on various factors. Like, say, the PR crisis of a company using a notoriously exploitative overseas factory to manufacture their products. Sweetiepants shares are probably going to take a huge hit once the story breaks, so in addition to getting out of all responsibility, Miles won't even have to give her that much money. And Birdie taking this bait is itself Brilliance: she's too stupid to know otherwise.
Miles claims he had a grand speech followed by a sudden blackout as part of the murder mystery. Except that would be poor writing, since Miles would have been "killed" well before 10 PM ... because the blackout was actually a hasty addition based off Blanc's earlier comments.
When Benoit describes Andi's death, he mentions that you don't even have to see her die to know it works. If Miles didn't hang around to confirm that Andi died, he might have suspected that she survived and is looking for revenge.
Why did the film include the joke character of Derol if he turned out not to be important? Aside from a handy Red Herring, it fits with the film's Central Theme about the glass onion: the mind wants his presence to be part of a more complicated design, but he is as simple as he looks: a funny stoner character to provide some light comedy.
How Miles chose to kill Andi further highlights his recklessness and stupidity. He drugged her with sleeping pills and then placed her in her parked car in her garage with the engine running in order to frame her death as a suicide. Yet, her sister Helen was quickly informed from the local authorities (as Andi's next-of-kin) that she was full of sleeping pills, which they likely learned from a routine autopsy. On top of all the other ways Miles didn't consider how suspicious Andi's death would look, he likely didn't consider that a routine autopsy would expose the sleeping pills and thus raise some flags about her death.
It seems rather fitting that Miles's ultimate downfall is Helen burning something that has significant value to him right in front of him while he could do nothing about it. Just earlier, Miles himself just did the same thing to Helen by burning Andi's napkin. Laser-Guided Karma at work.
Andi puts the real napkin in a red envelope before sending the email to the Disruptors. In Chinese culture, gifts of money given at the New Year are sent in red envelopes, and represent luck, wealth and prosperity. Since whoever holds the envelope has the best claim to the company, this seems pretty apt.
Similarly, Miles' dining room is covered with expensive art with red motifs — the dining-table chandelier is a set of glass rectangles with red highlights, paintings on the wall feature numerous garish red elements, etc.
Blanc acts surprised that they're leaving the luggage by the dock for the staff to collect it, but he lives in a Park Avenue penthouse which is probably worth at least ten million, and he doesn't come across as an egregious tightwad, so he's probably been on a few fancy vacations in his time with at least that level of luxury. He was just laying on the folksy Southern shtick really thick to distract everyone at that moment.
It's not made entirely clear whether Blanc owns the penthouse or is merely living in it while his boyfriend picks up the bills, so it's always possible he really was speaking from the heart - after all, both this film and Knives Out strongly imply he is not comfortable among the wealthy.
Helen parts her hair on the opposite side, as Andi does in the flashback. Andi is her twin, so she's always seen her from a mirror image.
The Mona Lisa shown in the film is clearly painted on canvas; however, the real Mona Lisa is painted on poplar wood. Further confirming that Miles isn't very smart, the Louvre sent him a copy, not the real thing. Anyone familiar with the Mona Lisa (or able to do basic research) would be able to recognize that it's a fake immediately.
The explanation Miles gives for the Louvre being willing to loan him the painting (that they're running out of money because of the pandemic) sounds quite implausible, since the museum is owned by the very wealthy French government and such a scheme would be highly controversial. If the Mona Lisa in the movie is supposed to be the genuine article, this can be chalked up to plot convenience. If it's actually a fake in-universe, however, it might be because Miles never dealt with the actual Louvre administrators but with con artists who became aware of his interest in the painting (which seems like it would be public information). With the closure of the museum due to the pandemic providing cover for the scheme, they could have claimed they were representatives of the Louvre operating through unofficial channels because of the sensitivity of the matter, handed Miles a fake painting, and (unlike the actual management of the museum) vanished well before he figured out he had been duped.
When Blanc tells the Disruptors to actually remember how the fatal drink ended up in Duke's hand, he is actually pushing them (perhaps intentionally) to take the first step towards breaking free from Miles's influence by rejecting his lies.
The first shot we see of "Andi", a.k.a. Helen, is a sombre contrast to the other members of Miles' friend group — rather than solve the puzzle box, she attacks it with a hammer. This is a red herring, leading us to assume that it is Andi angrily refusing to play Miles' games anymore, but it actually turns out to be Helen venting her anger at the man who destroyed her sister. This also foreshadows Helen's ultimate role: the person who would rather destroy everything Miles has than become his plaything.
The group that comes to the island (minus Blanc and Helen) as a whole can be separated into two distinct categories: charismatic dumbasses (Duke, Birdie, and Miles himself), and their hyper-competent, much more intelligent enablers (Whiskey, Peg, Lionel, and Claire respectively). The moral of the movie could be summarized as the banality of evil: someone doesn't need to be actively malicious or a super-intelligent evil mastermind to do evil, they only need to be selfish and self-centered. Miles just wanted to change the world for the better with his fuel of the future. Birdie just wanted to make comfortable pants and make staying at home during the pandemic easier for everyone. Even Duke may have just wanted to send a message of empowerment to millions of young men (in his misguided, completely wrong and extremely misogynistic way. That message being "I started as a gamer in the basement, look at me now, hot girlfriend, huge muscles, enormous mansion. You can do it too!") while playing video games on Twitch. All three wanted to get rich and famous doing it. On the other hand, we have Lionel, who is just doing his job of making Miles' schemes a reality while at the same time also dreaming of changing the world for the better with science and technology. Claire wants to improve the life of others by entering the world of politics. Both are forced to compromise their ideals with Klear, but are still huge enablers for Miles. Whiskey and Peg help their boyfriend and boss function day to day and accomplish their goals while having their own dreams of greatness. Without their assistants, Duke and Birdie wouldn't be able to function at all in the real world and would have literally no power or wealth. Miles risks untold lives with his Klear (and their wellbeing with NFT) schemes. Birdie also endangers children by opening a literal sweatshop. Duke endangers his audience by selling them untested supplements that are at best placebos and at worst actively dangerous.
Cassandra, daughter of Priam, was gifted with prophecy but cursed to never be believed; she foresaw the overthrow of Troy at the hands of the Greeks if Paris stole away with Helen, but could not prevent it. Likewise, Andi foresaw the disastrous consequences of Klear, but was not supported by her friends, nor believed in her claims to own the company.
Even her nickname "Andi" is significant, since it's derived from Greek names like Andreas or Andrei, which mean "manlike" or "brave." Among the supposed"Disruptors", Andi was the only one brave and bold enough to stand up to Miles and tell the truth.
Helen, "the face that launched a thousand ships", ran away with Paris and abandoned her husband Menelaus, a course of action that precipitated the Trojan War and led to the sacking of Troy. Likewise, Helen in Glass Onion ultimately brings about the destruction of the island.
Helen and Blanc are also both a "Trojan Horse" — Miles let them into his sanctum, unaware that in the dead of night they would move to betray him. It's no coincidence that what brings everyone to the island is a wooden box filled with tantalising secrets.
The Mona Lisa — associated with both Andi and Helen — is also an analogy for Helen of Troy, in that Miles has 'borrowed' her just as Paris abducted Helen, and this misappropriation ultimately leads to his wealth being destroyed.
Underlined by the fact that the Mona Lisa is also strongly associated with Paris (the city).
Miles repeatedly makes reference to the Ionian Sea, while his island is actually in the Aegean. While Odysseus' home island, Ithaca, is situated on the Ionian Sea, the city of Troy is on the Turkish coast of the Aegean.
Blanc makes reference at one point to his "Achilles' heel", in mythology the weak spot which cost the hero Achilles his life at the hands of Paris. This also parallels with Duke's pineapple juice allergy, which Miles — the obvious analogue for Paris — takes advantage of.
The liberal usage of the letter Alpha (and more subtle use of the letter Omega), from the Greek alphabet.
After Blanc gives Helen the "liquid courage" that starts her rampage, she looks Miles in the eye and topples a glass sculpture of a fat horse (a subtle reference to the Trojan Horse) and then one of several pomegranates, another recurring motif in Greek mythology.
Lionel's lapel pin is a gold wishbone, reflecting that — like almost everyone else on the island — he is reliant on his relationship with Miles to keep going. But of course, there is a darker reflection of the themes of the movie: only one person who pulls the wishbone can receive the wish, and it has to break first. By never telling Miles "no", Lionel has never really risked anything in their relationship, and thus his gains are meaningless. This is especially reflected by the wishbone being made of metal and thus unbreakable.
When Lionel radios the coast, a Van Gogh painting is clearly visible, separated from its empty frame for show, foreshadowing the eventual reveal of the location of the envelope.
The original 'Glass Onion' was a song by John Lennon containing numerous cryptic lyrics that seem to point at some deep meaning ... however, it was all literally just John Lennon playing a joke on listeners (and especially those who overly analyze his lyrics) by stringing together random gibberish. The same way as the film seems to present a fiendishly complicated murder scheme ... which turns out to be just an impulsive, poorly-thought-out murder by an idiot.
The Lennon song is also peppered with references to prior surreal Beatles songs such as Strawberry Fields or I Am The Walrus, attempting to recontextualize them ("Here's another clue for you all/The Walrus was Paul") but ultimately underlining that they had no real meaning (perhaps a mocking reference to the "Paul Is Dead" conspiracy). Likewise, Glass Onion is a story full of misdirects and red herrings that do not point easily to the identity of the real murderer.
Blanc also points out the surprisingly obvious: an onion is many-layered and a glass can provide focus, but a glass onion cannot be 'peeled' (it is futile to try to uncover a deeper meaning), and if you try to look through it your vision will only blur.
Johnson has said that any similarity between Miles Bron and a certain real-life mogul with a tanking reputation is "a horrible, horrible accident". Similarly, he has claimed that the title was inspired purely by a need to have a song with the word "Glass" in it and a quick scroll through the music library on his iPhone. So one can read the meaning of certain lyrics in the context of the film as "horrible accidents" — such as "You know the place where nothing is real/Well here's another place you can go/Where everything flows", or "Looking through the bent back tulips/To see how the other half lives".
Helen is much smarter than the Disruptors by far, and while part of that is having been separated enough from Miles to not be suckered in by his charisma to realize he's just a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, she's also the perfect kind of person to deal with a bunch of overgrown children; a teacher. A lot of her seeming coldness as "Andi" is just her using the techniques she has in a classroom to deal with hyperactive and misbehaving students while she does her job.
Naturally, this includes her cajoling the Disruptors, who have become childish by association with Miles, by pushing them to raise their hands like children in a classroom.
When Andi comes up with the idea for Alpha, David Bowie's "Starman" plays as she shares the idea with Miles: "Let the children use it/Let the children boogie." It not only references Andi coming up with the mind-blowing idea of Alpha and letting Miles come along for the ride, but foreshadows Miles being a Manchild that Andi indulged by letting him use and benefit from her ideas, only for him to turn on her years later (like a spoiled brat) when she finally said "no" to him. Helen, by contrast, is a schoolteacher who's likely used to holding children to higher standards, seeing through and dealing with their tantrums.
The way Miles kills Andi leaves the possibility that she might survive; she might have conceivably woken up and even forgotten meeting with Miles beforehand. If he had stabbed her to death or shot her, her appearance on the island would be much more horrifying for him.
Benoit comments on how the alcohol seems to make Helen surprisingly good at investigating and uncovering clues. Alcohol is famous for lowering someone's inhibitions and restraints, which is shown happening to Helen, making her bolder and not afraid to speak her mind, and the movie is all about expecting things to be difficult or complex but finding out that the solution is actually very simple. Drinking makes Helen better because it makes her worry less about supposed complexity and go straight to the point.
Even if the Mona Lisa that Bron has is fake (as discussed in a previous point), he’s still done for, because his “fuel of the future” that he went all-in on developing just proved volatile enough that his extremely expensive private residence exploded. Even if he somehow manages to escape conviction for two murders, his company is done for. Not to mention, quite apart from the Mona Lisa, Miles' house is filled with other artwork from well-known artists (the Matisse in the bathroom, for instance). Their destruction by Klear would still be noteworthy, and while they might not have the same impact as the one-of-a-kind Mona Lisa, they are still valuable.
A minor one, but: most people, seeing Birdie's email approving the Bangladesh sweatshop, would think she's a monster until she explained. Peg — having known her for a decade — immediately figured out (despite her massive shock) that she thought a sweatshop was where they made sweatpants, specifically because Birdie makes "word mistakes" like not knowing "Jewy" is a slur despite having Jew in the name. Who knows how many "I thought it meant ..." disasters Peg has stopped before they started.
Helen's disdain for 'The Disruptors' and the influencer lifestyle in general may very well have helped her and Blanc solve the mystery and inflict maximum karma on Miles. Helen didn't issue an immediate statement upon learning that Andi was dead, which she likely would have done if she'd been more in tune with social media, and Blanc was able to suppress the news for another week, which allowed Helen to pretend to be Andi and their plan to go forward. By contrast, Duke's obsession with social media causes his murder, as he gets an automatic notification about Andi's death and tries to blackmail Miles about it.
Still in shock, Miles mockingly asks Helen, "You think you're an alligator?!" This is a quotation from David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream", both signifying that Miles is still only capable of stealing other people's ideas, and a callback to a Deleted Scene in which Andi and Miles duetted the song back in their days at the original "Glass Onion".
Miles describes the painting technique that da Vinci used to create the Mona Lisa, but doesn't mention the technique's name: sfumato. The roots of the name is the Italian word for "smoke," and it's sometimes used to mean "up in smoke," foreshadowing the Mona Lisa's fate.
Another Beatles connection: Miles' introduction to the group — and the way he irrevocably changes the group's dynamics to the extent that they "split up" — is not unlike accusations levelled against Yoko Ono for supposedly "breaking up" the band. While IRL the accusation is an unfounded rumor (in 2012 McCartney told David Frost: "[Yoko] certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up"), it's notable that Miles, by contrast, actively accelerated the Disruptors' hostility towards one another.
Miles is based off a number of tech billionaires, but most prominently Elon Musk. It just so happens that "Miles Bron" is an anagram for “Elon is Mr. B” and "I Elon, Mr. BS".
Johnson has said that any similarity between Miles Bron and a certain real-life mogul with a tanking reputation is "a horrible, horrible accident". Even so, the resemblance is striking.
Duke is partially based off Andrew Tate, an infamously virulent and toxic misogynist influencer who was arrested for human trafficking, exploiting women he seduced into creating porn videos that he then sold. Duke parallels Tate in that way by pressuring Whiskey into having sex with Miles.
When his friends turn on him, Miles call them "shitheads", like Helen had done just before. He's got such a bad case of Creative Sterility that even his insults are stolen from other people.
In his Disruptor monologue, one of Miles' malapropisms accidentally provides some insightful commentary on the group dynamic of the Disruptors. Miles refers to the "Infraction Point"; he likely meant to say inflection point, which is the point on a parabola/curve where the direction changes (for example, the top of a hill, where, if you keep walking, you stop going up the hill and start going down again). However, the term "infraction" usually refers to the breaking of a rule/agreement, and can be used pretty interchangeably with "faux pas" or "crime". The Disruptors all started off pretty independently successful in their careers (even if Miles helped them network a bit); however, most of them got involved with scandal which Miles had to bail them out of, thus making them entirely dependant on him. Therefore, if you look at the general "arc" of their lives, their "infractions" would pretty directly coincide with the "inflection points".
Blanc tells his Among Us gaming group that "I don't need puzzles or games, and the last thing I need is a vacation. I need danger, the hunt, a challenge. I need a great case." Yet all the puzzle boxes are promising is a trip to Miles' island and a murder mystery party — i.e., "puzzles and games" and "a vacation". The fact that Blanc goes along at all, much less is excited about it in the next scene, is the first clue that there's more to the plot than the audience is aware of.
Miles's stunned reaction when Blanc states how a Glass Onion symbolizes something that seems to have a lot of complex layers but the answer is just staring you at the face can be interpreted as him not having thought of that metaphor even though he's the one who commissioned the thing to be built. But it fits with Miles's character. Just like how he uses made-up words that sound like intelligent words and faxes weird invention pitches, he probably thought of the Glass Onion as something so odd, it had to have a higher meaning that would keep people guessing, only he didn't think of what that higher meaning would be himself, and was willing to steal any interpretation that made sense, just like how he stole Blanc's idea of a murder.
Another sign of Miles’s idiocy, and perhaps a hint at how he’s careening towards his destruction because of it? He’s getting fleeced by most of the celebrities and artists he’s constantly bragging about: Phillip Glass took his money for a second of sound, Gillian Flynn wrote a mystery for him that was so simple and obvious Blanc solved it before it could even begin, Serena Williams collects his cash as a trainer when he’s not actually training and using it as reading time, and Banksy’s dock is an ostentatious but useless piece of shit. And as noted above, the Mona Lisa appears to be a fake of some kind, possibly suggesting that either the Louvre or conmen scammed him of his money.
This also suggests the COVID treatment the guests got is also a scam. On first watch, it seems like Bronn is so powerful and genius he found some super-secret experimental cure, or it's a Plot Device so we could see the actors' faces without worrying about COVID transmission. On rewatch, you wonder how anyone could possibly develop and properly test an effective treatment in just a few months, and why they'd keep it to themselves.
Even better, Banksy's dock only works during low-tide, and as a result makes the island unsafe to approach... Which is exactly the point Banksy would joke about when some rich guy manages to contact him for a commissioned piece; Miles is a shallow asshole who endangers others for the sake of looking complex and deep.
Blanc tells Miles about the Glass Onion as a metaphor for how things seem complex but actually aren't. In the same conversation he also tells him he ruined his game on purpose and that someone is there to ruin him. It seems a cryptic warning, but he is just telling him about him and Helen.
The disruptors solve the puzzle boxes by working together, and immediately ask Miles if they can work together on the case, but he tells them only one can win. During the movie, the disruptors try to comfort and support each other, even working together through difficulties, while Miles has no issue throwing his friends under the bus for his own success, and in fact does it to every one of them. Keeping them from working together is also how he maintains power over them, and once they decide to act in unison he can't really do anything to stop them. Abusers love to make themselves the most important person in their victims' lives, and make the victims dependent on the abuser.
Also, Duke's mother is physically abusive, but she also actively disrupts his fun with his friends, and stops paying attention the second they're done. She was foreshadowing Miles. No wonder Duke was so happy to get out of the house.
Miles Bron communicating by fax plays with a legal restriction Rian Johnson mentioned encountering when directing the first movie: the fact that Apple doesn't allow villains in movies to be shown using iPhones, an issue which Bron not owning a phone at all circumvents handily.
It's also an early tell about his true nature: despite using it to build up an aura of mystery, using only fax machines creates the implication that he sees himself as an exceptional individual that must be accommodated by everyone else.
Birdie originally got cancelled for wearing a costume that was "a tribute to Beyoncé", which implied that she wore blackface. What Birdie does have in common with the singer is that they both started successful athleisure clothing lines that were produced in sweatshops.
The Glass Onion structure itself is a pretty darn visually literal way to honor the old bar itself, isn't it? But of course Miles' artistic tribute to the place would be the most surface-level derivation of the name possible!
Miles and originality: Just as he took inspiration from Blanc for Helen's attempted murder, he ripped off *himself* for Duke's murder. Both his and Andi's murders boil down to slipping something in their drink.
The song references previous Beatles song "The Fool On The Hill". This could also describe the statuette used by Miles as a fail-safe for his Mona Lisa guard - a jester standing atop a hill, with a little dog, ala 'The Fool' from the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Both the statuette and the Tarot card are depicted thoughtlessly stepping towards a dangerous fall.
It also correlates wuth Miles himself:
The Fool statuette is dressed in blue, like his "baby blue" car;
The statuette's face, seen in close-up, is frozen in the same shocked expression that Miles wears as the Mona Lisa burns;
The concept of "The Fool on the Hill" sums up Miles very neatly - an imbecile who sits above everyone else.
Another lyrics connection: "fixing a hole in the ocean" feels pretty close to both Banksy's "piece of shite" dock, and the Klear controversy - both in that Klear is seawater-derived and that the lyric is a play on fixing a hole in the ozone.
Take another look at the poster on the main page.
Blanc, centred, has his jacket over his shoulder - despite the casual setting he is the only one "at work".
Miles and Whiskey's body language mirrors one another, demonstrating their implicit connection.
Likewise, both Lionel and Claire are grasping their wrists, reflecting an unspoken tension and/or guilt.
Birdie is taking up as much space and attention as possible, forcing Peg into a tight hunch...
...while Peg has one foot in the pool, reflecting her desire to be included in the group.
Duke's stance reflects his hypermasculinity, but also his vulnerability - we can see his gun pointed at his crotch.
"Andi" is standing behind Miles, indicating that she is his guilty secret. Her pose is the same as the Mona Lisa - but another mirror image, a tell that she is in fact a double.
Blanc's restlessness at the beginning of the film seems to recall a similar unease in Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four. A similar connection could be drawn with Blanc's line, "this ridiculous game that started well before we set foot on this island" - recalling Holmes' catch-phrase "the game is afoot".
The inclusion of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an interesting Actor Allusion. In Airplane!, he played co-pilot Roger Murdock - only for an inquisitive child to insist he was Abdul-Jabbar, causing him to blow his cover in a moment of anger. This connects to the 'imposter' theme of Among Us and Glass Onion itself, as well as the detective genre (Abdul-Jabbar has penned a comic book starring Mycroft Holmes).
On a meta note, his inclusion might also be a nod to the Stunt Casting tradition within murder mysteries on screen, where the most significant characters are all well-known celebrities such as Ed Norton, Janelle Monae, Dave Bautista, etc.
Another early clue to Miles' general idiocy is the fact that while he boasts about how Gillian Flynn wrote his murder mystery weekend, he mispronounces her name (which is pronounced with a hard "g", while Miles pronounces it like "Jillian").
Andi's standoffish behaviour may be an attempt to avoid conversation with the other Disruptors in case they ask or talk to her about something she does not know and risk blowing her cover.
Fridge Horror
Miles' speech about his grasp of "disruption theory" takes on dark undertones when you realize that the very first thing he broke was the Disruptors themselves — removing their ability to function as independent individuals and further destroying their cohesiveness as a group.
It's treated as slightly worrying that Miles' minion refuses to answer any questions about his secret COVID-19 mouth spray or even explain what it does, and we later find out that our cast was justified in being worried. If Miles is as cavalier about the safety of his COVID-19 spray as he is about the explosive Klear, then the Disruptors might soon be discovering some dangerous side effects. Either that, or it didn't actually do anything, considering what a conman Miles is, putting everyone at risk of catching COVID-19.
Yo-Yo Ma randomly being at Birdie Jay's house party seems funny on the surface ... until you realize that he's amongst several people who are likely unvaccinated and unconcerned with catching COVID-19.
"Child = NFT" is an easily missable line, but it reveals multiple things about numerous characters. Foremost, Lionel and everyone working for Miles are able against all odds to make his hare-brained ideas a reality. Second, they are not able to discern what is a good idea and what is not. Selling NFTs and cryptocurrency to children is definitively not a good idea, for multiple reasons! Children are not liable for financial contracts, their parents are. If somebody can prove that it was a child that signed a contract without the parents' knowledge, that contract is null and void. NFT and crypto markets are notoriously volatile, with tens of thousands of dollars regularly disappearing in scams so endemic to the system that they've been nicknamed "rugpulls". Third and most important, the scene shows that Miles and the people around him are willing and able to endanger children for money and power by at least exposing them to those markets for complicated financial instruments that they have no way of understanding. Even selling pictures of children is both a moral and legal minefield. Fourth, the fact that endangering children is the first idea that comes to their minds when interpreting Miles' ideas foreshadows Klear.
There is also the possibility that Andi used it as an industry term; the word "child" can be used as a technical term - for instance, in computer science, "Parent" and "Child" are used in reference to hierarchical data. It may be Andi's intent was a shorthand indicating that the Alpha company would create a smaller "Child" company to sell NFTs, which while inadvisable is not quite as morally reprehensible as selling them to literal children.
Even if that is the case, while it makes Andi be more moral person it makes everyone else much worse and kind of proves the point. They see Child = NFTs and still immediately jump to the meaning of "Sell NFTs to children".
Andi never said Child = NFT; the napkin’s only mention of crypto is “Crypto Management” (admittedly still not great.) Child = NFT was one of Mile’s random nothingburgers that Lionel extrapolated into meaning something deeper than the surface level words. Just like the glass onion.
Helen tells Blanc that Andi wasn't afraid of Miles, which is why she not only sued him after he forced her out of the company, but also shared with the other Disruptors that she found the original napkin for the idea that founded the company and that she was going to take him down. Had Andi had some fear of Miles, she would have been more cautious of him when he arrived at her house and could have avoided her death as a result.
Given how culturally significant the Mona Lisa is, there's probably going to be an even bigger societal and political shitshow coming beyond a CEO's reputation going down the gutter where France is concerned. The scandal may very well bring down the French government that approved the loan. Of course, this is assuming that that was the actual Mona Lisa and there's Artistic License – Art in play, as opposed to this Mona Lisa being painted on canvas being a sign it's a copy.
It's going to do a number for the reputation of the French government either way. Yes, if the Mona Lisa is fake the original is safe, but it also mean that the French government run an extremely profitable scam around one of its most famous art pieces. Granted, it will probably wash over quickly, but it still damage their credibility.
No matter how morally justified she may have been, Helen still committed a laundry list of felonies by destroying Miles' house, which may include being charged with the attempted murder of all the guests as well as the intentional destruction of the Mona Lisa. She is definitively going to jail for a very long time.
Considering that the witnesses of her crimes include a man who's not only firmly on her side but indirectly encouraged her to undertake these actions, several people who have already demonstrated that they're willing to commit perjury to throw someone formerly beneficial to them (in this case, someone she explicitly targeted) under the bus, and a man whose testimony is less likely to be believed because of his own numerous crimes coming out, the chances of Helen getting charged with anything are probably lower than you'd think.
On top of it all, she still has a book with a bullet in it to pass most of her actions off as someone in a remote island being in mortal danger.
Helen didn't particularly endear herself to any of the Disruptors with the whole arson thing, and she entered the island itself under false pretences. But even if she is charged, she would probably think it was Worth It if Miles goes down for Andi's murder.
She also has a good case against both accusations. While she did pretend to be her sister to get on the island, she didn't forge any legal documents to do so, and most of the deception was her simply not correcting the assumptions of the other Disruptors. As for blowing up the house, she did start a fire and throw the Klear in it, but that could be considered an act of defiance, considering that the Klear was the reason for her sister's murder. To show it was intentional, Miles would have to basically admit that it was easy to understand that a substance which he'd pushed as the miraculous future fuel was actually extremely dangerous and volatile, which would be suicidal PR and destroy both his credibility and any faith in his intelligence for the future.
And while it is true that they wanted to initially stop her, some (or all) might feel relieved that she did free them from Miles’ toxic influence, enough so they direct most of the fault towards Miles than Helen in their statements.
Though, as stated in the Brilliance folder above, Miles himself violated the terms of his (very short and tenuous) loan of the Mona Lisa by intentionally creating an easy-to-access security breach that he hid from "the insurance guys" and bragged about to a room full of house guests who, in Blanc's words, "have every reason in the world to wish you harm." (And, at the end of the film, make it clear they're determined to see him go down, as they're willing to claim things like, "I saw him take Duke's gun," even if they never saw it per se.) Even if Helen got onto his island under false pretenses and started the fire, Miles himself is still legally liable for the painting, since it was his name on the loan and he violated the security protocols that would have protected it from Helen's wrath.
It doesn't actually matter if it's legally his fault, he was the one entrusted with it, and Miles' power comes entirely from reputation. Even if Helen is found guilty and blamed for it, a teacher was able to waltz onto his property and destroy an extremely famous painting out of a whim. Would you trust the guy with anything valuable? At this point it doesn't even really matter if it's the real painting or not.
Additionally, in a pinch Blanc can easily absorb the blame, since it was his idea to have Helen pose as her sister — and likely guarantee immunity, as they were both investigating a murder. Miles earlier said that it would be his word against Helen's — the word of a man who illegally held the Mona Lisa on his private island and let it be destroyed by untested super-fuel is not going to hold against that of the sister of a person he murdered, who was there to investigate said murder.
Blanc is a private investigator, not any sort of government agent or representative, as he clearly explains. Even if he wasn’t in a foreign country, he has no ability to grant anyone immunity from prosecution.
The story parallels with both Murder On The Orient Express and And Then There Were None — both stories in which the true culprit is never brought to justice, the former because the murder victim was a monster who is deemed to have deserved it and the latter because the murderer ended up killing himself as part of his intricate plan. Glass Onion will possibly follow a similar trajectory. Miles still has enough capital and connections to fight off a jail sentence, but none of the other Disruptors will help him now they've seen his true colors, and Blanc will only recount the facts as he witnessed them — including that he did not personally witness the destruction of the Mona Lisa!
Even if the Disruptors all testify that he burnt the Mona Lisa, Miles himself will talk as well and he and his lawyers will scream Helen Brand's name from the rooftops. Though the double murder won't do much for his credibility.
Even if Duke had had an EpiPen on him, it probably wouldn't have saved him. Contrary to how they're sometimes portrayed in fiction, EpiPens don't automatically save a person who has an allergic reaction — they buy them some time, so they can get proper medical assistance. It's always advised to call an ambulance or head to the hospital as soon as the person has been stabbed with the Epi, so by the time the shot wears off they're being tended to and can be properly helped. If that hasn't happened by the time the shot wears off (which, in some cases, could be in less than an hour), the allergic reaction may come back. Given just how bad Duke's pineapple allergy is, and the fact that the island is two hours away from the mainland, and the fact that the dock is unusable during high tide, and the host is actively trying to murder him, he was probably screwed either way.
The high-tech security system designed for the Mona Lisa is also run on Klear. Even without Helen punching the override, it's likely that the fire would have damaged the system and destroyed it either way.
Miles schedules the Disruptors’ meetup only about a week or less after he murders Andi, and explicitly centers it on a theme of mystery murder. In other words, he wanted to brag covertly to his friends that he murdered Andi in cold blood without explicitly unveiling the truth. That paired with how he didn’t think to burn the napkin all seem to paint Miles as much more sadistic and creepy than he initially seems (perhaps alluding to the fact that psychopaths can succeed in business environments, due to lacking empathy but also being capable of manipulative and superficially charming behaviour).
Realistically, the explosion that blew up the Glass Onion could have killed someone. It's a terrifying thought that Helen could have killed someone or all of them. She might have even confessed her own crime out of guilt (especially if the victim was Peg or Whiskey). If this happened, she would go down in history as the murderer and criminal who destroyed the Mona Lisa.
The lives and reputations of the Disruptors were pretty much doomed the moment Miles murdered Andi so that he could get the go ahead to promote Klear. If everything had gone according to what Miles wanted, Alpha's reputation and net worth would have tanked when Klear's unstable and highly-flammable nature inevitably caused someone's house or vehicle to explode horribly. Every Disruptor would have had their names irreparably marred by their association with him, especially Lionel and Claire. That is to say nothing of the many innocent people who would likely die due to Miles' stupidity. The out that Helen provided at the end was probably the best deal the Disruptors could have gotten, though sadly also unrealistic.
Miles could have burned or destroyed the red envelope well before someone gave him the idea. There was at least a day's time between his murder of Andi and him being found out. Did he keep the envelope because he was stupid, or did he want a Creepy Souvenir?
is due to the publicity it got when it was briefly stolen from the Louvre in the early 20th century (ironically, due to lax security and museum staff taking a few days to even notice it was missing due to it not being seen as an important piece at the time). Only following the media zeitgeist surrounding the theft did the public start retroactively assigning meaning to Mona Lisa's smile. It's rather fitting that Bron became famous by launching the media careers of several public figures (a Twitch streamer, a politician, an ex-model, etc.), and presents himself as a complex, mysterious genius, which is really just a PR image he cultivated around himself from media attention, much like the air of mystique around the Mona Lisa herself.