Grotesquerie Season 1 premiere ending explained: Did they find the killer?

Grotesquerie Season 1 debuted on FX on Wednesday, September 25, 2024, with two new episodes, and it didn't take a lot of time to lay out the thrills and kills the series promises.

Episode 1 opens up to introduce one of the main protagonists, Detective Lois Tryon (played by Neicy Nash-Betts), who wakes from a nightmare and receives a phone call about murders.

She arrives at the crime scene to see a horrific picture of an entire family murdered inside their home. The image of the crime is so bad that a police officer throws up in the flowers, and when Lois enters the house, she sees just how bad the murder is.

She sees the bodies of a mother and two kids tied to the dining chairs, making it look like they are having dinner. Meanwhile, a headless body, the father, is on the kitchen floor, and there are more blood and body parts throughout the room. When Lois sees a pot boiling on the stove with a green-looking soupy liquid inside, she sees something so horrific she can't bring herself to say it.

Per the official logline, Ryan Murphy's Grotesquerie Season 1 follows Detective Lois and a nun investigating heinous crimes that unsettle their small community. In the season premiere, Lois and Sister Megan (played by Micaela Diamond) try to find clues that would give them the identity of a killer, only for Lois to find a letter in one of the crime scenes signed by one named "Grotesquerie."

Disclaimer: This article contains major spoilers for Grotesquerie Season 1. Reader discretion is advised.

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Did Detective Lois find the killer in the Grotesquerie Season 1 premiere?

The first two episodes of Grotesquerie Season 1 featured a series of murders in a small town and the police, headed by Detective Lois Tryon, trying to solve the killings. Sister Megan, a nun and slash reporter who likes true crimes, wants to join in on the quest to find the killer so she can write about it in a publication focused on social justice.

Lois talks to Sister Megan about the murders "in background," and the nun has theories of her own about the killer's motivation. Lois calls her "a religious psychopath," with her penchant for finding correlations between the symbolism of the murders and passages in the Bible.

In Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 2, Sister Megan is ready to publish about the murders because she has found an angle she's not sure is right but not sure it's wrong, either — Satanism. However, when she tells all these to Lois over the phone, the detective tells her that she's "wrong on this" and not to write anything yet.

Lois tells the nun that there's new intel on the killings because they found blood drops on the sidewalk, and they have a hit. Their suspected serial killer is Sullivan Firkus, an organ harvester who "racked up dozens of bodies in the '90s (and) sold them for parts on the black market."

The detective tells Sister Megan that Firkus used to kidnap refugee kids from war zones, and he was jailed for the crimes. He served 21 years, but Lois tells the nun that Firkus got out of prison nine months ago.

Detective Lois in Grotesquerie Season 1 (Image via FX Networks)

They think that Firkus is the killer and that he "must have started planning his comeback first thing" after he was released from prison.

Lois also tells the nun that they have a lead as to Firkus' whereabouts, saying that he currently lives with his mom. Lois and the SWAT police are en route the house, and when they arrive on the scene to arrest the suspected killer, they are met with another horrific murder scene.

They find their suspected killer, Sullivan Firkus, in the basement of the house in Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 2, but Firkus is dead. Shortly after finding Firkus' dead body, Lois and Sister Megan meet at a restaurant where the detective tells her that the crime scene was staged, saying that Firkus' blood and DNA were left for them to discover in the house.

She also tells the nun that the guy has been dead for weeks, so, he's not the killer they had first assumed.

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What did the killer leave at one of the crime scenes?

In the "trap house slaughter" where Detective Lois and the police find Sullivan Firkus dead in Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 2, the detective gets her first clue about the real killer as she inspects the chilling details of the murder scene. She finds a note signed by the killer in the basement, tucked under a blood-stained silver kidney dish.

Grotesquerie's note (Image via FX Networks)

During her conversation with Sister Megan, Lois calls the note the killer's "calling card." It reads:

"I belong to those who have troubled the sleep of the world. May all your dreams come true."

When Sister Megan asks Lois what name the killer used to sign the note, the detective replies that the killer signed with the name "Grotesquerie."

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Who ended up dying in the Grotesquerie Season 1 premiere?

The first murder in Grotesquerie Season 1 happened early in Episode 1, and it was pretty horrific that one of the police vomited in the flowers.

The first murder was that of the Burnside family. There were three bodies posed at the dinner table, with their hands wired behind their backs and mouths stuffed with human organs. Meanwhile, a headless body lies on the kitchen floor, and more organs are on the chopping board on the kitchen counter.

When Lois peaks into the bubbling pot, she's visibly horrified. She wouldn't dare tell Sister Megan what she saw inside the boiling pot during one of their conversations later. She simply tells the nun that it was "the worst thing you could ever see boiling in a pot," alluding that it was the baby.

She also tells Sister Megan about the dad being seasoned with fennel seeds and cayenne and roasted in the oven for two hours, and how his cheeks were sliced and served alongside his lungs, kidney and liver. Lois added that the mother and children died of heart failure after "some kind of acute shock" from possibly watching the killer murdering and cooking the father.

The second murder also happened in Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 1, involving two men whose bodies have been cut up and displayed on the wall. However, the police can't find any blood anywhere. However, there's the same "acrid" fluid on the crime scene, the same one found in the Burnside's home.

Sullivan Firkus was the third murder victim, and several unhoused people and the beggar to whom Lois had previously given money were the fourth. In the final scenes of Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 2, Lois and the police are eerily silent as they watch the murder scene — a depiction of the Last Supper with the beggar as the Jesus figure and the rest of the homeless people playing the disciples.

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Catch the latest episodes of Grotesquerie Season 1, now streaming on FX. New episodes are also available for streaming on Hulu the following day.