Who killed Maja in A Remarkable Place to Die? Season 1 ended on her body — season 2 returns to it nearly two years later
In November 2024, the New Zealand murder show with the most honest title on television closed its first season by killing Maja Staunton — Anais Mallory's ex-best friend, current wife of Anais's ex-fiancé, played by Indiana Evans — and dropping her body in the middle of a festival like a party favor.
Then it made everyone sit with that for almost two years. Season 2 finally arrived on September 13, and the short, infuriating answer to the big question is: the show still hasn't said who did it. The longer answer is more fun.
The suspect board, as season 1 left it
The finale was generous with candidates and stingy with everything else:
- Luke Staunton, the husband. Freshly exposed as the money behind Queenstown's meth operation and arrested in the same finale — which is either an alibi or the world's most obvious motive, depending on when exactly Maja died and what she knew about his books.
- Harry Grayson, the extremely smooth businessman who spent the season courting Anais's mother Veronica, radiating "I have a second phone" energy, and then simply vanished by the end. A man does not evaporate for no reason.
- Whoever reached Alan Souter in prison. Anais's father's killer got murdered behind bars in that same finale, which means someone with reach was tidying loose ends — and Maja, married to the operation's banker, was a loose end with a pulse.
How does A Remarkable Place to Die end? The family case is closed in the finale's last ten minutes
What season 2 actually does
The premiere, "A Very Cold Case," makes the smart structural choice: Maja's murder becomes Anais's off-the-books obsession while the official caseload moves on — the episode's sanctioned mystery is a woman who vanished 15 years ago. The season has been expanded to six feature-length episodes, with Luke Arnold and JJ Fong joining and Rodger Corser and Antonia Prebble guesting, so there's real runway to let this thing rot properly before it resolves.
Evans has said that reading the first episode made her "immediately want to know what happened next" — her words about signing on, and, unintentionally, a perfect description of the audience for the last 22 months.
My money, for the record, is on the Harry-shaped hole in the finale. Characters who disappear the same night a body turns up are not, historically, innocent bystanders. But this show already burned book-smart viewers once by hiding a drug empire behind the prettiest scenery in the Southern Hemisphere, so I'm keeping my receipts loose. Five episodes to go. Somebody in Queenstown knows.
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