This clause bear spoilers for all existing episodes of HBO’sThe Night Of .

In the opening minutes of " Ordinary Death,“The Night Of ’s next-to-last episode , Safar Khan , the female parent of accused murdererNasir Khan , exit the court in the middle of a cross - test . She ’s agitate not only by the graphic images of victim Andrea Cornish shown by the prosecution but the estimate that her son might be capable of having committed such a crime .   As she bolts from her seat and the courtroom threshold shuts , the camera turns back to show the reaction of Naz , his lawyer , the justice , and the jury members . Each facial expression and motion suggests a possible conclusion to the trial ’s testing of the true .

We ’ve seen cases like Naz ’s in over 800 - plus episodes ofLaw & Order , yet this summertime , The Night Ofstands aside as an fascinating , original , and pulse - pounding piece of music of adjective fiction . The reason is misleadingly unsubdivided : the series , from Richard Price ( author onThe Wire ) and Steve Zaillian ( Schindler ’s List , Moneyball ) , works on us two ways . There ’s what we see and what we do n’t , and both are heading toward an inevitable conclusion : did Naz do it ?

the night of naz murder clues

HBO

Probably not . Here ’s why .

Every moment inThe Night Offeels like a clue

Price and Zaillian spent the entire time of year crafting intricate flight for their persona . At fourth dimension , the details are so pointed , they feel like clues to a mystery that may never manifest . We see this in people like John Stone ( John Turturro ) , Naz ’s on - again , off - again attorney whose foot problems are at once inane , crude , and metaphorical . We see this in Mr. and Mrs. Khan , who are pressure to reconcile with the possibility that they " lift an fauna " in Naz .

Most important , we see this in Naz ’s withering shift . From nebbish private instructor of basketball musician to drug - smuggling con , our booster undergo a complete metamorphosis . He plane his head , bulks up , and tattoo the words " Sin " and " Bad " on his brass knucks .

Zaillian use shoot close - ups in a fashion not unlike how Sarah Koenig sift through hour of intimate headphone calls to humanize and test the unity of Adnan Syed onSerial .   The television camera often lingers on a face that is process emotion . It strike solacement in the muteness , the tension builds , and we start questioning everything .

the night of john turturro and riz ahmed

HBO

Our conjecture is part of the drama

Like any brilliant procedural , The Night Of ’s labyrinthine plot invites the viewers to become amateur sleuths , one episode at a meter . It ’s sappy , but we all do it , parsing through entropy dispensed to us , recreating situation , and imagining scenarios of how it all unfurled . Great display provoke us enough to produce our own pet hypothesis , but brilliant shows likeThe Night Ofdemand dramatic coherency .

deliberate this :   Petey ( Aaron Moten ) may have had some intimacy with the slaying of Andrea . The fictitious character who committed felo-de-se in " Ordinary Death " really appears in the serial premiere – double . The first time , 43 second in , Petey can be see standing in one of the cells when Naz is ushered into the precinct . He pops up again just past the hour mark , when we see and hear him say , " Can I call my moms ? " ( Side note : his female parent is the principal prison drug supplier from the exterior . ) Was Andrea – affluent and a known drug exploiter – getting into transaction , thus step on someone ’s toes ? Did someone ( possibly Andrea ’s stepdad , Don Taylor ) enlist Petey to plunder Andrea ’s lavish brownstone , but then panic when she press back ?

Is it possible that these rhetorical interrogative are ridiculous and Petey ’s appearance is just a co-occurrence ? Maybe . But that ’s one of the pleasance ofThe Night Of– for about 10 hours , we subsist in the headspace of the mass on sieve , pray the truth will emerge .

the night of clues and theories

HBO

While the insaneness will come to an end in the finale , there are enough loose yarn inThe Night Ofthat the finis could go in any guidance . The savage killer could be Petey , just as it might turn out to be Duane Reade ( the grim - face guy wire who was walking by Andrea ’s house with Trevor that night , and who later fled when Stone attempted to call into question him ) , or it could be Don ( the gold - dig up ex - stepfather , played by Paul Sparks ,   who confronted Stone at the gym ) , or it could be that brooding hearse driver who say to a dazed Andrea , " You want to be my next rider ? "

The Night Ofcould also seize with teeth its tongue over Andrea ’s unfeigned liquidator . John Stone never desire the answers , anyway . " The trueness does n’t help you , " the lawyer tell Naz in Episode 2 . " And if you ca n’t get that through your head , you could forget about the rest of your life . " Perhaps in this story , in the material criminal DoJ system , a satisfactory close does n’t necessitate the unveiling of a culprit .

There will beonesolid answer

You know who did n’t kill Andrea ? Mr. Nasir Khan . Unless the show has been keep back a bevy of accuse entropy ( i.e. , a multiple personality disorder , or some penchant for sleepwalking ) , there ’s no part of me that believes Naz viciously murdered Andrea Cornish .

If Naz did it , would he do it so sloppily ? With his business acumen and chameleonic power to blend into his environment , Naz has prove his effectiveness at connive . He ’s persevering , careful , and crafty . A Naz criminal offense scene would appear antiseptic and inconspicuous – without a shed of traceable grounds . Maybe we ’ve been beguile , though . Utterly befool by Naz ’s bookish news , shivering but present moral scope , and repeated sworn purity . Or maybe strong political party drugs do that to a guy wire .

But I ca n’t look past the original image of Naz : a taciturn coach who was practicing launching on the street before he run to that political party Downtown ( " Hi , my name ’s Naz , nice to fill you – I ’m on the coach side of the team " ) . The lightweight drinker who can barely consume half a pellet of tequila . The guy who admits Andrea is " only the 2d girl I ’ve slept with in my life . " The guy who lives at home base with his parents and whose aggressive tumultuous disturbance were in self - defense mechanism to post-9/11 Islamophobia .

naz the night of

HBO

Or am I lost in a cloud of sympathy that Price and Zaillian planned on from the beginning ?

We ’ll all observe out next Sunday , when the summertime ’s most gripping drama rests its case .

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