Carnival Row spoilers: Who is the murderer and why?

One of the big questions throughout Carnival Row is who has been murdering fae and humans. The Carnival Row Season 1 finale answered our question.

This post does contain spoilers for the Carnival Row Season 1 finale. If you haven’t seen it to the end, then you’ll want to avoid the answers unless you want spoilers.

The Carnival Row series premiere quickly answered the initial question about the murders and beatings. Someone was attacking fae, and we quickly learned that it was some sailor who would make it back to The Burgue every three weeks. But the end of the premiere gave us a new mystery, a new attacker.

It was soon clear that this attacker wasn’t acting alone. In fact, the attacker wasn’t even human or fae. It was a creature that had been made. A golem that was being controlled by someone else.

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By about the sixth episode of the season, I had my suspicions. It wasn’t until the last episode that all suspicions were confirmed. In the Carnival Row Season 1 finale, we learned that Piety Breakspear (Indira Varma), Absalom’s wife and Jonah’s mother, was the one controlling the golem.

Why would she want both human and fae dead? Philo realized that everyone was attached to him, but there was someone else everyone was attacked to: Absolem. Piety had received a blackmail note from someone claiming to be Aisling, threatening to expose the secret, illegitimate child she’d had with Absolem.

Piety had spent her life making sure the destiny told to her was about her son. Finding out that Absolem had another son (and despite finding out that Jonah wasn’t his son, Absolem still viewed him that way), Peity needed to get rid of Philo. To find out his identity, she took the livers to read their secrets to get the identity of Philo.

Fortunately, Vignette was able to kill Piety, which destroyed the golem. Philo was saved.

The storyline has wrapped up for the end of the season. Carnival Row Season 2 will now be about the divide in The Burgue, with Carnival Row being closed off to humans to lock all fae away. Tensions are high, but at least one (two if you count the premiere) murderer is dealt with.

What did you think of Carnival Row Season 1? Did you guess that Piety had everything to do with the golem? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Carnival Row Season 1 is available on Amazon Prime Video, free with your Prime membership.