Every Inside No. 9 Twist Ranked
2. The Riddle Of The Sphinx - The Depraved Revenge Scheme
Plot: Charlotte (Alexandra Roach) breaks into the office of a cryptic crossword-writer, Hector Squires (Pemberton), to get revenge on him after her brother killed himself due to unfairly losing a crossword competition to Hector.
Much like Lip Service, this episode is basically a twist-athon. There's literally a plot twist every few minutes, yet every twist is incredibly clever and unpredictable, and feels wholly earned. It all leads up to an ending so twisted that comparisons with Oldboy (2003) are justified.
Charlotte tries to poison Hector... but he'd been warned about her by her supervisor and swapped the cups. Jacob Tyler (Shearsmith), who's actually Charlotte's father and not her supervisor, then arrives to set his own twisted plan into action.
Tyler plans to frame Hector for Charlotte's murder, in revenge for Hector having an affair with Tyler's wife and ruining his career. He forces Hector to eat some of Charlotte's skin... before revealing that Charlotte and her brother were actually Hector's children. Charlotte dies and Hector takes his own life.
So... Hector has just been tricked into murdering his own daughter and eating her flesh. Jesus.
This ending is a beautifully-written and fiendishly smart depiction of karma that'll haunt you, shock you yet also entertain you senseless. In spite of how nightmarish and brutal the whole thing is, it's so well-done that you'll be eager to revisit it.
it's perhaps the show's cleverest ending but it's not quite the best...