Glass Onion / YMMV

Abandon Shipping: There's a subsect of the fandom that shipped Blanc with Marta from the first movie, but Blanc being revealed to be gay (and in a relationship) in this one will probably put an end to that.
Accidental Aesop: The backstory of the Disruptors (particularly Lionel and Claire), showing that they were all stuck in dead end jobs before Miles gave them the resources they needed to achieve their dreams, demonstrates that even if you have the raw talent to be successful in a field, you aren't likely to get very far without the right network and connections.
Anvilicious: The movie is hardly subtle in its criticism of tech billionaires, what with Miles being an abject moron and the murderer.
Award Snub: After how highly praised the film was for being as clever and subversive as the first one was—if not, more so, Rian Johnson's screenplay was once again the only aspect of the film to get nominated for an Academy Award. Other highly acclaimed aspects of the film, such as the production design, Jenny Eagan's costume design, Daniel Craig's universally loved performance and especially Janelle Monáe's particularly praised performance, were all completely shut out, and the film was not nominated for Best Picture. All unfortunate to say the least—especially with the first one also denied the honor.
Captain Obvious Reveal:
- Near the end of the movie, the fact that Miles is a complete idiot is treated as a plot twist that catches most of the characters by surprise, and even Benoit Blanc seems to have been in denial about it despite having seen the clues. However, it's really not hard to guess after a whole movie's worth of foreshadowing (particularly the prominent plot point that Andi wrote the original idea for Alpha, not Miles), and especially if one is aware of the criticisms that are often aimed at Techbros in general as being the least technically skilled people in their companies.
- Many viewers found the killer's identity fairly easy to work out by around the halfway point. To whit: Miles is a wealthy and eccentric billionaire who effectively lives in an island lair, a description that practically screams "supervillain"—and it's pretty clearly telegraphed early on that he has skeletons in his closet that he's desperate to keep under wraps. The only real piece of hard evidence that someone else might be the killer is that Duke seemingly dies due to poison intended for him, but that could just as easily be due to Miles poisoning his own glass and switching it with his. And as it turns out: that's exactly what happened.
- To be clear, both of the above are intended. This is the point of the titular Glass Onion metaphor. "Something that seems complex but whose core is in plain sight". The above two points are even lampshaded by Blanc as he kicks himself for taking so long to realize it.
Catharsis Factor: Seeing the Glass Onion blow up as a result of Klear and Miles forced to watch in horror as The Mona Lisa is incinerated with it — as well as everyone finally turning against him after they so shamefully supported him before — are definitely crowd-pleasing moments.
Crosses the Line Twice: Or even thrice. The revelation that Birdie approved her fashion range being produced by a notorious sweatshop? Shocking. The fact that she did so with a dabbing emoji? Hilarious. A horrified Peg realizing that the sign off happened because Birdie thought a sweatshop was where they make sweatpants? Priceless.
Designated Hero: Helen blows up the Glass Onion with a Klear crystal and a fire (with only Artistic License – Physics and Convection, Schmonvection stopping her from killing everyone inside), which Blanc approves of when he hands her the crystal in the first place, deliberately ensuring the Mona Lisa, an irreplaceable and incredibly valuable art piece, is destroyed along with it to destroy Miles' reputation, along with all the other works of art Miles currently has in the building. The audience is expected to cheer them on despite the extraordinary cultural vandalism and Helen endangering multiples lives. Granted, she also did so to save lives by guaranteeing no one will ever adopt a highly volatile fuel for use in homes.
Epileptic Trees:
- Noah Segan appearing as Derol — the hippie living off of Miles on the island—immediately lends itself to the theory that he's Trooper Wagner undercover either to investigate Miles himself or be ready to help Blanc if he's needed at any point.
- Thanks to Artistic License – Art (the Mona Lisa is shown to be painted on canvas when it burns, while the real one was painted on wood), a number of people have theorized that the Louvre didn't trust Miles with the original painting and thus loaned him a copy rather than the real deal; Miles being an idiot, it's certainly plausible that he'd be too dumb to know the difference. Or that Miles fell for the equivalent of a 419 Scam and was never dealing with the Louvre at all. Rian Johnson eventually confirmed that this was the initial intention, but they changed course after considering that it would affect the final message.
  - It becomes even more plausible that it's a copy when you look at how the Mona Lisa is stored. Behind a glass plate that slides up and down, exposing it to the air. The real Mona Lisa is stored in a carefully climate-controlled case and monitored constantly. If it was the real Mona Lisa, it would have been hermetically sealed with an independent climate control system, there would not have been a sliding glass pane. Mile's house is on an island in the ocean, and salt air is extremely corrosive.
Fanon: Since the anti-COVID throat spray is super sketchy, and Miles is later revealed to be a moron, basically everyone agrees that the spray is at best useless and at worst actively harmful, and Blanc gets COVID as a result of his trip to Greece. (Many jokes about this also involve Marta, being a nurse, giving him hell for breaking quarantine and going unmasked in the first place.)
Fanfic Fuel: The introduction of Blanc's partner Phillip led to an explosion of fanfics and Fanon regarding how they could have met and their present dynamic.
Franchise Original Sin: The first movie had not-so-subtle political satire and jerkass characters but the satire didn't distract too much from the larger story — being a very small part of what was ultimately a murder mystery — and some of the jerk characters were jerkasses in a Love to Hate kind of way. Glass Onion's jerks have their awfulness much more exaggerated and in-your-face, while the satire is significantly more on the nose and takes a much bigger part in the plot, to the point that some feel both qualities detract from the film's quality.
Friendly Fandoms: Due to the three films' shared satire and critique of the elite and wealthy as well as all of them coming out in 2022, fans of Glass Onion, The Menu, and Triangle of Sadness get along very well. So much so that the three movies have been dubbed by some as "2022's Eat the Rich Trilogy".
Genius Bonus:
- The film is named after The Beatles' "Glass Onion". While it fits with the Musical Theme Naming of its predecessor, Knives Out (named after a Radiohead song), it gains greater significance if you know what the song is about. John Lennon wrote it to make fun of audiences who constantly combed through the band's lyrics looking for hidden meanings, even with stuff as deliberately nonsensical as "I Am the Walrus". Thus, the film's use of the song as its namesake hints at its driving theme of things that appear elaborately enigmatic but in actuality are incredibly simple once stripped of their flourish.
- May double as a Chekhov's Gun. At the beginning of the film when everyone receives the puzzle boxes, Duke's mother calls out "It's the Fibonacci sequence". The red envelope turns out to be hidden behind a wall decoration in Miles' glass onion — specifically, a Fibonacci spiral, a spiral drawn using the Fibonacci sequence for the arcs. In the puzzle box, it serves a purpose, since the sequence is a clue for the solution, but the painting in Miles' office not only clashes with the glass style of the rest of the décor, but has no real meaning, only being there to suggest some vaguely math-related aesthetic. Which is also another hint to the fact that Miles is an idiot just trying to pass himself off as more intelligent than he is with things he barely understands as props.
- In his letter to his friends, Miles uses the word "normalcy." It's a word that's entered common language, except it was first used by Warren G. Harding in the 1920s and was a malapropism of "normality." A made-up word. Harding himself was known for his linguistic errors and was often described as having only been elected because he "looked presidential." Miles' use of the term is an early hint that he's an idiot who wants to sound smart.
- Men's Rights Activist Duke watches Whiskey having sex with Miles, making him a literal cuckold. "Cuck" is a common insult in alt-right and MRA circles for weak or feminine men.
- Furthering the thread of Miles' shallow appreciation for culture, abstract art aficionados might recognize Mark Rothko's Number 207 hanging in Miles' living room... but upside down.
- Blanc is playing Among Us at the beginning of the movie. Helen goes to the island disguised as her twin sister, making her an impostor.
- The Matisse hanging in the bathroom is called Icarus. Seems very fitting, considering the reveal.
- All of Blanc's Among Us co-players have connections to the murder mystery genre; Angela Lansbury played master sleuth Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote and Miss Marple in the 1980 adaptation of The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (as well as Salome Otterbourne in Death on the Nile (1978)^note, Stephen Sondheim co-wrote the mystery film The Last of Sheila^notea confirmed influence on the film and hosted murder mystery weekends like the one Bron attempts, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an avid Sherlockian, having co-written a series of Mycroft Holmes books as well as serving as a writer during the rebooted Veronica Mars series, and Natasha Lyonne is set to star in a mystery series called Poker Face — not coincidentally set to be Rian Johnson's first as a showrunner.
- The Disruptors are supposed to be highly intelligent movers and shakers. Pay attention when they're trying to solve the box: they get a lot of help from people who aren't disruptors. Without that help, they wouldn't have solved it. It's even funnier when Blanc says that the box was a bunch of "simple children's puzzles."
- When Miles greets everyone at the shore by playing the song "Blackbird", he says that the guitar he's using is the same guitar Paul McCartney used to compose the song. However, he's strumming with his right hand, whereas most Beatles fans will bring up that Paul used a left-handed guitar, serving as one of the earliest hints that Miles is an idiot and likely didn't know.
- Miles makes a big spiel about how the Mona Lisa is the greatest artwork in history and says it inspired him to become who he is. As any art historian knows, the Mona Lisa was a commission work that took years because da Vinci was a serial procrastinator. It was considered "good but not great" until it was stolen and the case became a medium circus, leading to the artwork becoming internationally famous and hailed as the greatest artwork in history once it was returned. Just like Miles, it's an unremarkable piece that became famous due to media attention.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Birdie, who is friends with Miles Bron, a clear Expy of Elon Musk, is mentioned to have had an incident where she tweeted a slur, an incident which is implied to have been handled/swept under the rug with Bron's help (on top of being barred from her phone by her assistant). Glass Onion had a limited release in theatres in November of 2022, the same month that Elon Musk purchased and took over Twitter, and in the process, changed the site's hate speech policy, which was followed by reports of spikes in slur usage and hate speech on the site.
- Bron's dining room has a mural of Kanye West painted on the wall. The film was released in November of 2022, after Kanye made news with a slew of anti-Semitic comments throughout October of the same year. Serendipitously for the film, Elon briefly allowed Kanye back on Twitter after this (until Kanye began tweeting Nazi imagery), thus making it apropos that Musk's stand-in would keep a mural of Kanye in his home.
- In the film, Helen uses a splash of Jeremy Renner's hot sauce as blood on her chest to fake being dead after having been shot. On New Year's Day 2023, Renner got into a serious snowplowing accident in which he suffered blunt chest trauma and musculoskeletal injuries.
He Really Can Act: Janelle Monáe is primarily known and praised for her work as a musician. This film, however, demonstrates that not only can she definitely act, but she's able to convincingly act as twin sisters that are vastly different from one another. Additionally, she portrays one sister pretending to be the other in-universe, which is a tricky double act to pull off, and she does so with flying colors, receiving well-earned critical acclaim. She also proves to have good comedy chops and chemistry with Daniel Craig after Helen's identity is revealed.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Related to Harsher in Hindsight above. Glass Onion's theatrical release coincided near-perfectly with Elon Musk's purchase and takeover of Twitter, a site whose stock tanked (for a variety of reasons, not all his fault but mostly so) immediately after his assumption of ownership. The extremely messy transfer of power/relaunch, Musk's public conduct during the affair, and increased awareness of Musk's shortcomings as a businessman as a result of increased discourse on the matter, all resulted in a significant shift in public opinion towards Musk, just in time for a scathing and almost prophetic critique of him in Miles Bron. Related to the above, many of the things Lionel mentions about Miles parallel a lot of the events at Twitter. For example, he complains about how Miles sends Lionel faxes in the middle of the night. Musk got great infamy for his habit of sending company-wide communications at 2 AM informing employees of sudden company policy changes taking place the same day (such as ending remote work). Similarly, Lionel mentions that Miles will send him vague ideas such as "Child = NFT" and "Uber for Biospheres", expecting Lionel to work those out without a single idea as to what will succeed or fail. Musk has also garnered infamy from his takeover of Twitter for taking suggestions from random users on Twitter and then sending those to be implemented haphazardly on short notice by Twitter's engineers, only for many such changes to be rolled back, sometimes within less than a day, when they cause obvious issues. For another parallel, shortly before the film's release on Netflix, Musk started to appear on Twitter spaces, with these appearances quickly becoming (in)famous for his inability to provide satisfying answers to journalists and users no longer being impressed by his tendency to throw around big words he doesn't understand, similarly to how Miles' mask of genius quickly falls apart once Blanc stops assuming he must be impressed by him.
  - It reached a point where Johnson had to put out statements indirectly clarifying Miles was meant as a parody of out-of-their-depth CEOs in general and not Musk specifically.
  - In an amazingly on-the-nose example of this, it came out in July of 2023 that Tesla was conducting an internal probe into whether or not Musk may have appropriated funds to secretly build himself an elaborate glass-walled mansion in Austin. Rian Johnson did not let it go unnoticed, simply tweeting out "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" in response.
- Alpha is shown to be involved with both cryptocurrency and NFTs, which were booming during the time of the movie (May 2020). Sam Bankman-Fried, head of the crypto firm FTX, had a similar glowing reputation in financial markets as a techbro CEO. Just weeks prior to the movie's release, FTX collapsed, and general opinion shifted to Bankman-Fried being a con artist.
- Helen destroys the Mona Lisa in a glorious blaze to both make an undeniable point about the dangers of Klear and stick it to rich asshole Miles Bron. During the months leading up to the movie's release, it became a common tactic to protest fossil fuels by vandalizing famous paintings (non-permanently; the Louvre, unlike Miles, is smart enough to keep a panel of glass over their paintings at all times); the Mona Lisa itself was the target of such a stunt earlier that year.
- Duke's character is clearly inspired by far-right online personalities of Alex Jones and Andrew Tate and is portrayed as a Paper Tiger at best. The movie came out between Jones losing a defamation and harassment lawsuit for a huge amount of money and Tate being arrested. Moreover, both of these happened due to mistakes so stupid - Jones' lawyer e-mailing all the contents of his phone to the opposing side and mindlessly allowing them to use it, and Tate uploading a video which shows a pizza box from a chain operating only in Romania, thus giving Romanian police proof he was in the country that they needed to get a warrant to raid his house - they wouldn't be out of place in a movie like this.
Ho Yay: Peg gives Andi (actually Helen, but still) some awestruck stares, looking if she has a crush on her. She also says that her therapist has referred to her relationship with Birdie as a toxic relationship, and Birdie can be seen stroking her hair. Obviously, this can all be interpreted in a platonic manner. Thanks to Peg's demeanor, appearance, and nickname, and her complete lack of interest in men in the film, though, a considerable number of fans choose to interpret her as queer. They ship her with Andi and/or Birdie, or even Whiskey despite Peg not really interacting much with Whiskey onscreen. Peg's actress Jessica Henwick has confirmed that the emotional intimacy between Peg and Birdie that seems to go beyond than just a boss and employee's relationship was a conscious acting choice:
Jessica Henwick (via Entertainment Weekly): I thought, 'Let's make this more than just an assistant and employee relationship. It's like a toxic love/hate dynamic between the two of them.' Peg despises working for Birdie, but Birdie can't live without her. And Peg knows that. And Peg loves her. We'll go from arguing in one scene, and then the next scene we're drunk and my head is in her lap.
Jerkass Woobie:
- While connected to the Disruptors and having her own ambition-fueled flaws, Whiskey is still the nicest of the lot, is treated horrendously by Duke, and is genuinely emotionally distraught at his death, even crying about how she's going to have to tell his mother. She also has the most sympathetic reason for being hesitant to defy Miles: Duke made her sleep with him to further his own business opportunities, and that could easily be used against her by Miles to destroy her life.
- Peg likewise refuses to defy Miles, but she has a miserable and thankless job in constantly enabling and trying to manage Birdie; it's a relationship that her therapist describes as 'toxic'. She's also been hit with the bombshell that Birdie signed off on a massive human rights violation by approving a notorious sweatshop for her clothing line, effectively destroying her reputation and dragging Peg down with her since her assistant role is practically the only thing on her resume, and Miles is their one lifeline.
LGBT Fanbase: The movie has this due to the revelation that Benoit Blanc has a male significant other, as well as the presence of queer icon Janelle Monáe.
Love to Hate: Miles Bron and the Disruptors are all terrible people, with warped moral compasses and outsized egos. But that, along with the fun their actors are clearly having, just makes them more entertaining to watch... and makes it that much more satisfying for Helen to literally blow Miles' vision of the future up in his face.
Memetic Mutation:
- "I just got cast in Knives Out 2!"^Explanation
- A popular game after the movie's release was to imagine Blanc commenting on various things in his distinctive Southern accent, such for Scooby-Doo, Ratatouille, and Kamen Rider.
- Throat Goat Benoit Blanc ^Explanation
- "It's so dumb, it's brilliant." "NO! It's just dumb!"^{Explanation spoilers}
- Muppets Knives Out^Explanation
Nightmare Fuel: Duke's death by anaphylaxis is horrifying, both for how sudden it is, and how realistic his gasping and abject terror is. Not to mention the idea that you could unthinkingly take a sip of a seemingly-innocent drink, only to suddenly drop dead because, unbeknownst to you, it contains something you're desperately allergic to, and not only is an EpiPen nowhere nearby, you're also hours away from any medical services. Even worse, the idea of this happening because someone deliberately contaminated your drink.
One-Scene Wonder:
- Duke's mother, played as delightfully no-nonsense by Jackie Hoffman, is only in his portions of the opening puzzle box scene, wherein she shows complete control in spite of his toxic MRA attitude, is demonstrably smarter than him, and refuses to suffer his toxic comments without an apology.
- Yo Yo Ma appears out of nowhere at Birdie's party to help solve one of the puzzles on Miles' box while explaining what a fugue is.
- Ethan Hawke has a memorable scene early on as an employee of Miles, administering some kind of overpowering throat spray on the Disruptors and Blanc as well as giving them their bracelets. Blanc is the only one utterly unfazed by this.
- Hugh Grant appears as Blanc's husband, Philip. It's only one scene, but impactful for more than one reason. One, it's Hugh Grant. Two, it casually reveals Blanc's sexuality.
- Angela Lansbury, Stephen Sondheim, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Natasha Lyonne all appear as themselves, doing a video call to help Benoit cope with the stress of lockdown. It's a sweet moment, especially as it was the last film appearances for both Lansbury and Sondheim.
Ships That Pass in the Night:
- Peg and Whiskey never interact, but still have a number of shippers.
- A lot of fans like to imagine that Blanc introduces Helen to Marta from the first movie, and the two become friends and later start dating, often with Blanc and Philip as a Beta Couple.
Spiritual Successor: While some fans of the first movie already called him this, Glass Onion cemented in a lot of viewers' minds that Benoit Blanc is a worthy successor to Detective Columbo and Hercule Poirot. Blanc, Columbo, and Poirot are all eccentric Great Detectives who often target rich and powerful murderers and who use their unusual ways of speaking and mannerisms to put their victims at ease with Obfuscating Stupidity. The fact that several plot points in Glass Onion parallel another Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None^spoilers, further heightens the Poirot comparisons (even if that one wasn't a Poirot book).
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Helen is shown to have a recording device that she, at one point, slips into Birdie's purse, recording an incriminating conversation between her and Peg about Birdie's dirty laundry that Helen and Blanc listen to later. The existence of the tape recorder potentially opened up an opportunity to have an Engineered Public Confession in the climax, where the murderer is Caught on Tape gloating about their crime. However, the recorder is never used again and plays no more role in the movie.
The Un Twist: Once Andi's death is established, the reveal that Miles murdered her despite it being a stupid thing to do is so painfully obvious in hindsight that it wraps around to being a genuine twist, as both Blanc and likely the audience were expecting something more complicated (this is also the source of Blanc's quirky food metaphor for the movie — a glass onion has many layers, but its centre is in plain sight).

YMMV / Glass Onion

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