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| “ | These things I did with… hatred in my heart. "Vengeance is Mine," said the Lord. And that is the story the crime scene will tell the world, but… inside my heart, I know… vengeance is mine. | „ |
| ~ Martha confessing her crimes to Reverend Jud. |
Martha Delacroix is the main antagonist of the 2025 mystery film Wake Up Dead Man, the third installment of Rian Johnson's Knives Out film series. She is the right-hand woman and later the mastermind behind the murder of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks.
Originally a servant of Wicks' grandfather, Prentice, she has lived and worked in the church for her entire life and was thus held to high regard by those around her. After her promise to Prentice is compromised, she devises a plan alongside her boyfriend Samson Holt, and enlists an accomplice, Dr. Nat Sharp, to kill Wicks.
She was portrayed by Glenn Close, who also portrayed Cruella de Vil in the 1996 remake of 101 Dalmations and its sequel 102 Dalmations, as well as Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons, Claire Wellington in The Stepford Wives and Dr. Caroline Caldwell in The Girl With All the Gifts. As a child, she was portrayed by Cecilia Blair.
Personality[]
Having been a part of the Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude parish since she was a child, Martha is a deeply religious woman with a narrow-minded view on faith. This makes her very high-strung, condescending, self-righteous and neurotic to a fault. Whenever she is confronted with something shocking or surprising, she resorts to melodramatic outbursts such as screaming and accusing the devil of mischief. Having worked under Prentice Wicks before his death, she has a fatherly attachment to him and is willing to go to extreme lengths to protect his parish. She was even willing to go so far as to spite his biological daughter Grace by revealing that her father would never give her the fortune. This devotion leads her to follow Jefferson Wicks despite his hate-spreading dogma. Despite this, she is also secretly cunning as she was able to plot out Wick's murder while secretly framing Father Jud for her own actions.
However, her close-mindedness is her greatest default as she underestimates many people, leading to many unnecessary deaths and her scheme being exposed. For starters, she fails to comprehend how dangerous Wicks is until his affair is exposed and she realizes that he plots to steal the fortune for himself. This lack of oversight really backfires when recruiting Dr. Sharp, not knowing how far he was going to go for the diamond, leading to the death of her husband who also participated in the scheme. This leads to an immense regret that she has carried over since she kept the truth about the diamond from Grace and leads her to seek atonement before her death. Despite her narrow-minded fanaticism, she is shown to truly care about people and believe that she was protecting the church through her actions. In the end, she expresses remorse for how her secrets and lies had killed the man she loved and led to all of the chaos that ensued in the congregation.
History[]
Origins[]
Martha first met the Wicks family when she was a child, being taken in as an apprentice by Prentice Wicks.
Grace Wicks, Prentice's daughter, had at that time birthed a son out of wedlock, much to Prentice's hatred. To spite her, he made a false promise to let her live with him at the church at the cost of being verbally and psychologically abused for her sins in return for his fortune. When the time came, however, Prentiss instead bought a pink jewel that he called "Eve's Apple" that costed him his entire fortune and swallowed it to forever deny Grace her inheritance. Martha was aware of this and kept it a secret on behalf of Prentiss. Grace would later go insane from her torments and die shortly afterwards.
Grace's son, Jefferson, would then inherit the church after all of this and Martha would swear allegiance to him like she did with his grandfather as Jefferson began to mold the church into a hateful and oppressive place where only a handful of people attended.
Wake up Dead Man[]
Martha is introduced as the second person Jud meets after arriving and she would introduce Jud around the church, as well as revealing the story of Jefferson's mother, although in a more demonizing way than it actually happened.
She was later seen with Wicks' other followers (Nat Sharp, Simone Vivane, Vera and Cyrus Draven and Lee Ross) in Jud's prayer group as he had begun noticing Jefferson's corruption of the church and wanted to help them better. This, however, fails and they leave the room. Before leaving, Jud confronts Martha on her loyalty to Wicks, asking if she can genuinely confess to him without fear. This motivated her to confess to Wicks later but ends up unknowingly giving him the location of Eve's Apple.
Sure enough, at a meeting held by Vera, Wicks reveals that he is now shutting down the church once and for all after Cy is revealed as his son. While he tries to hide his motives behind this, Martha deduces that he has found the jewel after contacting the company he hired to help him dig it up. Thus, Martha plans to kill Wicks to prevent his schemes from happening.
With assistance from Nat, Martha drugs Wicks and Nat kills him using a lamp head shaped like the Devil. Due to Jud feuding with Wicks, he is deemed a suspect. At the funeral, Martha and Nat switch Wicks' corpse with her lover Samson to pose as Wicks so he can find the jewel at the cemetery with Nat and give the illusion that Wicks was resurrected by a miracle.
Sure enough, Martha goes to the cemetery afterwards and sees that Samson did locate the jewel and escape, but was also murdered by Nat, who also stole the jewel. Devastated by Samson's death, Martha confronts Nat at his house, but fakes allegiance with him. Nat attempts to give her poisoned coffee while he justified the killing, but Martha switched their coffee beforehand after deducing their plan. Nat is killed afterwards by the poison and Martha dumps his body in a tub of acid while positioning Wicks' corpse to look like a resurrected Wicks drowned Nat in acid.
The next day, before Jud is arrested, Benoit Blanc attempts to explain the situation, but realizes that Martha would only confess if she had the choice. Thus, he feigns defeat, causing a remorseful Martha to confess to them and beg Jud for forgiveness. Jud forgives her and Martha reveals that she poisoned herself before arriving and dies in Jud's arms after giving him Eve's Apple.
Trivia[]
- Martha differs a lot from previous Knives Out main antagonists:
- Martha is the first killer in the series to be a woman. She is also the oldest out of all of them.
- Martha is the first main villain to die in the series. As Ransom Drysdale and Miles Bron were both arrested at the end.
- Both Ransom and Miles have greedy goals in their schemes that only benefit themselves. Martha's goal in her scheme is her 'justice' fanaticism. As she does not want the Eve's Apple for herself or any greedy individuals.
- Martha is the first main antagonist to recruit others into her plan unlike Ransom and Miles who both acted alone.
- She's also the first one somewhat remorseful of her plan. Confessing to Father Jud of her crimes and regrets using Samson for her plan.
- She's the only one who did not directly murder to the deaths of the main victims.
- Ransom intentionally switched the medicine (morphine and ketorolac) in hopes for Marta Cabrera unintentionally kill Harlan Thrombey.
- Miles poisoned Andi Brand's coffee.
- Martha only put tranquilizer on Wick's wine, making him sleep. Nat Sharp finish the scheme by putting the knife at Wick's body, killing him.
- While Martha is the main antagonist of the movie, she's arguably less evil than her pawn Nat Sharp.
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 Villains
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Drysdale Family The Disruptors Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude | ||