| “ | I'm warning you! | „ |
| ~ Ransom threatening Harlan, foreshadowing his true nature. |
| “ | I'm going to say this just to you. No cameras, no courthouse, because you know it's true. We allowed you into our home. We let you watch our grandad, welcomed you into our family. And now you think you can steal it from us? | „ |
| ~ Ransom attempting to blame Marta for his crimes. |
Hugh Ransom Drysdale is the main antagonist of the 2019 murder mystery film Knives Out, the first installment of the A Benoit Blanc Mystery film series.
He is the son of Richard Drysdale and Linda Thrombey, and the grandson of the late Harlan Thrombey, a renowned murder mystery novelist and writer. Ransom had conspired to kill Harlan for cutting him out of the family inheritance, and intended to frame Harlan's personal nurse Marta Cabrera for the crime.
He was portrayed by Chris Evans, who also played Bryce Langley in Fierce People, Lucas Lee in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Robert Pronge in The Iceman and Lloyd Hansen in The Gray Man.
Personality[]
| “ | Blanc: So you storm out, you drive off into the night. You tell Marta later of what was it, feeling an overwhelming sense of... Marta: Clarity. That he has to make do for himself from here on out. Blanc: Exactly. Marta. The will. Harlan. 'You won't get away with this.' Do for yourself. And a plan forms. |
„ |
| ~ Blanc and Marta as they solve Ransom's plan. |
While his family is full of hypocritical jerks, Ransom is the only one who is truly evil because he is willing to do anything to get his part of the inheritance, including murder.
He behaves like a spoiled teenager, even though he is in his thirties. He claims to be seeking his "birthright," but does not care about the rest of his family as long as he gets his own share. Towards his family, he acts with a sense of entitlement and is obnoxiously rude toward the rest of his family, showing disdain for their hypocrisies. That said, he can be charming, disarmingly charismatic, and polite when he wants to be, in order to get what he wants. This is seen when he succeeds in earning Marta's confidence to help him get to the bottom of the case and further his own agenda.
However, his plan has several flaws. For example, he himself hired the master detective Blanc without failing to recognize the risk that he could investigate and solve the crime that he himself orchestrated. He also underestimated Marta's good nature, thinking she would not try to save the life of Fran; this ends up working against him and becomes his undoing. The psychopathic part of his personality comes when he is cornered by his self-confession of Fran's murder, by trying to murder Marta with a knife, simply out of spite and refusal to accept his failure.
Biography[]
On the night of Harlan's 85th birthday, during a party at his estate, Ransom had learned from Harlan that his inheritance, documented in his will, would go down to his young nurse Marta Cabrera, and that Harlan had intended to cut out Ransom and the rest of the family from the will. Ransom conspired to kill Harlan for doing this, intending to frame Marta by tampering with Harlan's medication in his study.
However, since Marta is a qualified nurse, she still injected the right product without reading the labels, simply because of her natural instinct.
After Harlan ended up killing himself to protect Marta, fearing she would be framed for his death, Ransom skipped Harlan's funeral to cover his tracks by switching back the medication, unaware he was watched by Fran, the estate's caretaker. Fran blackmailed Ransom after deducing he killed Harlan.
After the funeral, in an attempt to further cover his tracks, Ransom anonymously arranged for the private investigator Detective Benoit Blanc to investigate the family, while Ransom drugged and ultimately killed Fran with a morphine overdose. When the revelation that all of Harlan's inheritance has gone to Marta is revealed, Ransom goes on the run with her, urging her to confess to him what had transpired from her account the night of Harlan's death. To further implicate Marta in Harlan's death, Ransom redirected a part of Harlan's toxicology report and the blackmail letter intended for him from Fran to Marta, justifying the slayer rule; if Marta would be found guilty of Harlan's death, the rest of the family would regain the inheritance.
Later, Ransom would burn down the examiner's office with a molotov cocktail, ensuring that the remaining parts of the toxicology report would be destroyed. After Marta finds Fran's corpse when Ransom sends her an address via e-mail to her body, Ransom is taken into questioning, when Detective Blanc finds a part of the toxicology report on Fran's body (which reveals that Harlan wasn't poisoned at all with the incorrect medication), and deduces correctly that Ransom was the killer, and had intended to frame Marta for both Harlan and Fran's death.
When Ransom learns from Marta that Fran was still alive in the hospital, Ransom admits to his crimes under peer pressure. However, Marta vomits on Ransom, due to her inability to lie without vomiting, as Fran had really died at the hospital, swearing retribution against Marta after she had manipulated him into confessing to murder and arson, Ransom furiously attacks Marta with a knife, only to learn it is a stage knife. With his crimes exposed, Ransom is placed in police custody and taken to jail while his family is forced out of Thrombey Manor, which is now fully owned by Marta.
Gallery[]
Quotes[]
| “ | I know he didn't commit suicide, so look me in the eye, and tell me what happened to my grandfather. Tell me everything. | „ |
| ~ Ransom to Marta Cabrera, attempting to make her take the fall. |
Trivia[]
- According to Chris Evans, he actually begged Rian Johnson to cast him as Ransom Drysdale in Knives Out, telling him what he wanted to do with the role and what he could bring to the film.
- Director Rian Johnson has admitted that he regrets filming the scene in which Ransom eats Biscoff butter cookies with milk. Johnson explained that while the scene perfectly illustrates Ransom's character, he felt bad for Chris Evans, who had to eat the very buttery cookies during the whole day the scene was filmed.
- According to the screenplay of Knives Out, Ransom is in his early thirties.
- While explaining why would Linda and the rest of the Thrombeys not return in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Jamie Lee Curtis stated that following the events of Knives Out, Ransom learned to knit sweaters in prison and is now apparently in that business. This is most likely non-canon, however.
- Chris Evans throughly enjoyed playing Ransom and actually wishes to reprise the role in a further A Benoit Blanc Mystery film, musing that maybe Ransom could get out of jail thanks to expensive lawyers finding a technicality and run for office like Sideshow Bob did in a The Simpsons episode, but actually not redeeming himself and instead orchestrating how to take Marta Cabrera and Benoit Blanc down.