The Little Things Ending Explained: Who was the killer in The Little Things?

The 2021 American neo-noir crime thriller film The Little Things has caused quite the stir ever since it was released on January 29, 2020. Helmed by John Lee Hancock, the plot follows two police officers Denzel Washington and Rami Malek who try to catch a serial killer in 1990s Los Angeles. However, in their tryst, they come across a strange man played by Jared Leto who may or may not be the top suspect. Find out what happens in The Little Things Ending.

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The Little Things Ending

Some fans might be disappointed to know that The Little Things doesn’t have a big “twist”, however, the film does decide to go in a different direction when it reaches its final act. The chief suspect is the creepy Albert Sparma, who delights in taunting the detectives every now and then, but there’s no definitive evidence that he has something to do with the murders. In the third act, Sparma lures Baxter (Rami Malek) to a deserted field and tells him to dig to find a missing young woman. Sparma continues to taunt Baxter as he digs and as expected Baxter ends up hitting Sparma out of spite.

Baxter hits Sparma so hard on the head with a shovel that he is killed. When Deke arrives on the scene, realizes what’s happened, and immediately helps Baxter orchestrate a cover-up. Audiences then get to know that the reason Deke has been so haunted over the years is he too engaged in an accidental killing and covered up the murder.

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The Little Things Ending Explained

Who was the killer in The Little Things?

We see in the film’s final montage, the FBI has come to Los Angeles with them state of the art psychological profiling techniques have been bought to hunt their killer. If the FBI never finds him, and there are no more murders, then perhaps Sparma really was the killer. However, even at the end, the truth remains elusive. But it is also important to note that Sparma was a weirdo who confessed to a murder he didn’t commit eight years ago.

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Was Jared Leto the killer?

Sparma also has a fetish of imagining agonizing death. But according to FBI profilers, phoney walk-in confessors never actually meet the profile of the real killers. Another suspect is Stan Peters, the sex criminal Jim and Joe interrogated earlier. He had an odd reaction to the name Mary Roberts. Afterwards, he also puts a shotgun in his mouth. If Peters was the serial killer, then that could also explain the inexplicable absence of new disappearances and bodies. Thus this would mean that Sparma was an innocent man when the cops put six feet of dirt on his head.

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Source: HBO (Official website)