‘Mythic Quest’ director, stars break down exciting murder mystery episode with shocking ending

One of the biggest successes of the Apple TV+ show Mythic Quest is that even in Season 4, the series continues to surprise us with unique episodes. This week, that came in the form of a murder mystery episode.

In the episode titled “The Villain’s Feast,” the MQ team gets invited to a murder mystery party on a private island by a secretive host. Jo (Jessie Ennis) serves as the “games mistress” who leads the murder mystery, with one villain who kills off the innocents. The game is over when the villain is identified, or none of the innocents have survived.

Spoilers for Mythic Quest Season 4, Episode 4 included beyond this point

But aside from the game, a core element of the episode is that this is an opportunity for Ian (Rob McElhenney) to come face-to-face with Poppy’s (Charlotte Nicdao) boyfriend Storm (Chase Yi), an awkward encounter we’ve been waiting for since the beginning of the season.

The murder mystery game is all leading up to Dana (Imani Hakim) proposing to Rachel (Ashly Burch), and the possibility of Poppy being pregnant.

Directed by Megan Ganz, who’s also a co-creator, writer and executive producer on the show, her love of Agatha Christie stories made her the perfect fit to craft this episode.

“We wanted an opportunity for Ian and Poppy’s boyfriend to be in the same place, so that Ian could be messing with him a little bit, because we felt like that was where we wanted to take that story,” Ganz explained Yahoo Canada. “So we needed to get them out of the office and I happened to be a really big fan of game night episodes in like sitcoms.”

“So I think we were starting from a place of them doing a games night, but I was actually breaking another episode in a different room, and then I guess they got on to the notion … of it being a murder mystery, Werewolf-type, Traitors-type game, and … somebody ran into my office and summoned me, ‘You have to be a part of this episode!’ Because I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan. I love puzzles and murder mysteries and always love detectives, and all of that stuff.”

But Ganz admitted it was also a particularly difficult episode to break, even though the cast and crew found it a fun episode to work on.

“It’s hard because you have this whodunit, but you also obviously want to have these emotional arcs with your characters that pay off,” Ganz said. “So it was pretty tricky and there were definitely times we were like, this isn’t going to come together.”

‘It’s giving high art’

For Naomi Ekperigin, who plays Carol, the actor really enjoyed working on a episode where the cast got to come together.

“Most of Carol’s scenes, especially in the first few seasons, are one-on-ones,” Ekperigin highlighted. “Because someone has come to her with their problems.”

“So any chance for everyone to be together is so fun. I don’t get a lot of time with Ian or Poppy in general, so to get everybody together, that’s always so nice, and to be out of the office. It also felt to me, I was really just feeling actor-y. … We’re in period costumes. We’re in this gorgeous setting. It’s giving high art.”

But with that “high art” also came some costume difficulties.

“It was 10 minutes if I had to go to the bathroom to take things off,” Ekperigin admitted. “I was a little dehydrated, but that’s what you do for the art.”

For Jessie Ennis, she enjoyed getting to go to different spaces and levels with her character Jo.

“Something that’s really great about Mythic Quest is that we do these special episodes … where the characters kind of get to play characters themselves,” Ennis stressed.

“So watching Jo be someone who speaks in a British accent, I think was very fun to try to keep grounded and explore. And I just really, truly, had a blast working with Megan Ganz on that episode. … She has such a love for Agatha Christie and so getting to kind of transition our show into this completely different tone is something that was particularly exhilarating.”

We’ll have to wait for future episodes to see how some of the big events of Episode 4 unfold, but this murder mystery episode is certainly a highlight of the entire series.