'Prodigal Son': Malcolm's sister Ainsley is helping her serial killer father from the outside, suggests fan theory
Spoilers for season 1 episode 1 of 'Prodigal Son' on Fox
Fox's latest crime drama is a thrilling mystery hidden inside a mystery. Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne) is a young intelligent criminal profiler who helps the NYPD solve murders and find serial killers. Bright was fired from the FBI for exhibiting 'psychotic inclinations' similar to that of his serial killer father Dr Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen). At his peak, Dr Martin, who also goes by The Surgeon, had murdered 23 people while pretending to be a doting, caring father to Malcolm.
Despite his past, Dr Martin wants to re-establish his relationship with his son Malcolm. He reiterates time and again that they are both the same only to be proved otherwise - as it is shown at the end of the pilot, it is Malcolm who had called the cops on his father. When he starts working for the NYPD, Malcolm, unfortunately, has to go back to his father seeking some help. When Dr Martin tries to reconnect with him once again, Malcolm notices that the cellar he is held in is very fancy complete with bookshelves, a carpet, and some more luxuries.
Through the episode as well, Dr Martin is shown to get information about the murder case through the live news reports by his sister Ainsley (Halston Sage). This seems like a convenient cover for a possible connection. At one point in the show, Malcolm even asks Dr Martin if he orchestrated the series of murders to get him back to the cellar to meet him - a crucial question that is left unanswered.
For this very reason, and some more pointers, fans are now speculating that Ainsley might be Dr Martin's protege and helping him from the outside. "The murders in the pilot are very clearly designed to get Malcolm to return to Dr Martin and rebuild their relationship, which means there will need to be more specific murders to force Malcolm back to Whitly," begins a fan theory.
"By using his daughter as the catalyst for those murders (whether she’s just a messenger or a serial killer herself), he gets to play the ultimate game of cat and mouse pitting his children against themselves." Some fans saw sense in this theory and corroborated with their own inferences. "Ainsley seems the sanest and most well adjusted of them, which is probably impossible, so maybe but I'd be surprised," said one. "Mom seems like a better suspect to me, how could she have been completely in the dark about all that?"
Ainsley has had limited screentime in the first episode and we can only deduce more about her in the next few episodes.
While there is some disagreement around the terminology used in the show, it opened to rave reviews and quickly gained a following with 4.2 million total viewers catching the premiere episode on September 23, 2019.
'Prodigal Son' airs Mondays at 9 pm ET/PT.