DTF St. Louis' Killer Seems Like A No-Brainer, So Is A Big Twist Coming?

Spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't yet watched the latest episode of DTF St. Louis on HBO or via HBO Max subscription.

Three episodes into DTF St. Louis, and I'm having more and more trouble with this show landing on the 2026 TV schedule sold as a "dark comedy." For all that I adore the entire cast, scenes come across more as laughably written than legitimately funny, and there's way too much emotional complexity and a big honking mysterious death to deal with for that much comedy to shine through. The biggest question at the heart of it all is "Who killed Floyd?" and that answer seems pretty cut and dry by the end of "The Go-Getter."

Unless that's just what the creative team wants us to think. Which, yes, is probably the case. (Just like they want us to think this show is located in St. Louis, which enrages CinemaBlend's Scotty to no end.) So let's zip through things.

The Cops Think Clark Did It, So He Definitely Didn't

Richard Jenkins' Detective Donoghue is a malleable caricature of a cop, bringing an Occam's Razor approach to every detail of the case, while Joy Sunday's Jodie Plumb is far more invested in evidence over gut instincts. Everything Donoghue has assumed has been mostly wrong, and seemingly nothing that Jodie's discovered actually points to Clark being responsible. That secret key will likely have some effed-up story behind it, but it doesn't seem like Clark is hiding that info from a guilty perspective.

Plus, Clark's initially suspicious silence has been broken up by what appears to be a genuine love for Floyd that may have more in common with the motel trysts than we think. Bateman's character seemed to be at his most vulnerable when trying to put any articulation behind his specific feelings for Harbour's kindhearted goober, which doesn't support him being responsible. So at this point, I have lost all motivation to believe that Clark is guilty of murder in any sense.

Carol Is Prime Suspect #1

With one apparent red herring out of the way, DTF St. Louis is planting all kinds of guilt-bearing seeds that I can only presume will sprout arrows pointing directly at Linda Cardellini’s Carol. Let’s talk about some of the details we now know about the character, shall we?

1. Carol instigated the affair with Clark.
2. Carol’s motivations for having the affair now appear to be more about money than kink-laden sex.
3. Carol also lied to the cops about her regular Jamba Juice order, and not just Floyd, which suggests a deeper sense of guilt.
4. Carol’s son Richard reacts to Floyd’s death not with grief, but with concern about the family’s financial situation.
5. Carol is very clearly manipulating Clark to supply financial support.
6. Despite the infidelity, Carol does seem to genuinely care for Floyd.

Speaking to the money situation, arguably the most damning circumstantial evidence against Carol is that she is obviously coercing Clark into taking out a life insurance policy on Floyd, while also convincing him not to tell her about it. The goal there, one would assume, is to make it look like Clark set the policy up specifically to kill Floyd for the payout. (A weird move for someone who doesn’t need the money, sure.)

Without any involvement or having actual proof of the policy’s existence, Carol can claim ignorance and plausible deniability without leaving much room to argue against it. I can’t figure out a way for the insurance situation to be explained away as anything other than a sign of Carol’s guilt, so why did the show already reveal this key piece of information to viewers in Episode 3?

This is where the casting choices really shine, since Linda Cardellini has been portraying strong, sweet and lovable characters for her entire career, going back to the Freaks and Geeks and Scooby-Doo days of yore, right up through her more recent work in Dead To Me and Nonnas, among others. (Sure, she played a self-proclaimed “badass b--ch” in No Good Deed.) It’s a smart move to play with the actress’ largely protagonistic career choices, especially ahead of her debut as the iconic horror villain Pamela Voorhees in Peacock’s Crystal Lake series.

I would love to see Cardellini get a big Bond villain breakdown scene where she lays out everything that went into her actions. Only if she's actually responsible, of course.

Will There Be A "Carol Isn't Guilty" Twist?

Maybe DTF St. Louis is setting up a different kind of reveal, where viewers are led to believe that Cardellini’s character is fully guilty of murder, only to discover she’s even more conniving than that. It’s possible that Carol is preying on Floyd’s very clear insecurities about himself, his physical appearance and his injury-bent genitalia, in a way that could drive him to potentially take his own life.

I don’t necessarily think that Floyd went to that community pool house with fully formed suicidal intentions, and I get that it’d be weird for him to poison his own drink. But I do think that whatever transpired that night between Floyd, Clark and anyone else was particularly devastating, and that life would have been all the more complicated for everyone had he survived. I’m obviously not sure why his nudie mag was there, but his feelings about it were made clear with the scratch marks.

Maybe Floyd’s kiss with Peter Sarsgaard’s “Modern Love” set off a full self-evaluation of his sexuality and emotional core that tipped more towards bisexuality or homosexuality. Maybe he found out about Carol and Clark’s affair, and that Clark wasn’t interested in also exploring Floyd’s newly untapped feelings. Would that be enough to do it? Not that it would explain where the poisoning comes into it, but still.

If DTF St. Louis somehow flips the story to make Carol 100% innocent through and through, the life insurance policy on my disbelief will kick in. Find out along with me and other viewers as new episodes hit HBO every Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. ET. If only we could get Jason Bateman’s Batman on the scene for his stellar detective skills.