Who killed Marcus in Mistletoe Murders? The poison in that flask was poured for someone else

Mistletoe Murders is Hallmark's holiday whodunit, created by Ken Cuperus from his own Audible original. Sarah Drew plays Emily Lane, a woman with a carefully blank past who runs a year-round Christmas shop in a small Upstate New York town, and Peter Mooney plays Sam Wilner, the detective who keeps asking her to stay out of his cases. The show premiered on Hallmark+ on October 31, 2024, landed on Netflix in the US on November 1, 2026, and returns for season 3 on Hallmark on November 5. Every case runs two episodes, and Marcus is the victim of the first one, "Poison in a Pear Tree."

Who Marcus was

Marcus works at the local bank and is engaged to June Hubble (Lara Amersey), the town vet and Emily's closest friend. He's found dead on Gordon's Christmas tree farm after an evening of wagon rides. He had just agreed to a down payment on the farm, which was June's dream.

June spent part of that day on the farm herself, looking in on a sick horse named Shadow.

Why June gets arrested

The poison is pentobarbital, the drug vets use to put animals to sleep. June is a vet, she was on the farm, and she was with Gordon before he collapsed too. Sam arrests her.

Emily, who has spent the episode pretending she's just a shopkeeper, starts working the case to get her friend out.

The secrets on the farm

Marcus turns out to be tangled up in almost everyone's business:

• Lizzy is pregnant, and the baby is Marcus's. Her boyfriend, Trent, thinks it's his.
• Trent is a senior manager at Marcus's bank. He came to the wagon ride under a fake name, Joey Vaughn, to catch Lizzy with Marcus.
• Anna, Gordon's daughter, overheard Marcus and Lizzy talking about the baby and started blackmailing Lizzy for $40,000. Marcus withdrew exactly $40,000 shortly before he died, to help her pay.

The blackmail money had a destination. Gordon owed $30,000 in gambling debts, and Anna wanted them gone. She confesses to the blackmail when Emily confronts her. She doesn't confess to murder, because she didn't commit one.

Who killed Marcus

Rowan, the farmhand.

Rowan had lost his home and was sleeping in the barn loft. He'd made a deal with Gordon, Gordon backed out, and the farm was being sold. Rowan stole pentobarbital from June's bag and poured it into the flask Gordon liked to drink from after the wagon rides, a habit he picked up after his wife died.

Marcus drank from it first.

The man buying the farm drank the poison meant for the man selling it.

Gordon gets his dose too. Anna says whatever was in his flask gave him a heart attack. He ends up in the hospital and recovers.

Don't miss: Netflix's new action movie Collision Course is already being called the next Money Heist

How Emily catches him

The case cracks on a phone. The blackmail texts couldn't have come from Gordon, because Gordon doesn't own a cell phone. That points to Anna for the blackmail, but not for the murder. Emily heads up to the loft and finds the pentobarbital in Rowan's backpack.

Rowan finds her there with a pitchfork. He ties her up next to Anna and plans to stage it as a murder-suicide, with Anna as the killer. Emily bluffs that she's been recording the whole conversation, and while Rowan hunts for her phone, she signals Anna to make noise and spook the horse.

The horse knocks Rowan out cold. Emily and Anna free themselves and call the police, and Sam arrives to find the case solved without him. Gordon pulls through, and Lizzy tells Trent the truth about the baby. He forgives her.

For the record: the horse that takes down the killer is Shadow, the same sick horse June came out to the farm to treat.

Previously we wrote: When the Phone Rings ending explained: who the kidnapper really is