Forget Xavier, The Afterparty's St. Patrick's Day Mystery Is Way Better
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for The Afterparty episode 4.
The Afterparty’s Xavier murder mystery is intriguing, but the series has made the puzzling clues from their high school St. Patrick’s Day party even better. Apple TV+’s original series follows a group of former classmates who become suspects of a murder investigation when popstar Xavier (Dave Franco) is killed at the afterparty for their high school reunion. Each episode retells the events of the night in question from a different The Afterparty character’s perspective as Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) tries to find the killer, but the clues have made a past event even more interesting than Xavier’s death.
Part of what makes The Afterparty’s story so intriguing is that certain details of the characters’ pasts that seem irrelevant continue to overlap, leading to a mystery much larger than just that of who killed Xavier. The first three episodes of The Afterparty mentioned Mr. Shapiro’s (Christopher May) chemistry class in high school, with their old teacher also being at the party, suggesting his class may have increasing importance in identifying the killer. The Afterparty’s episode told by Chelsea (Ilana Glazer) has also given far more significance to the St. Patrick’s Day party from their senior year of high school, which is now becoming even more mysterious than which The Afterparty character killed Xavier.
While The Afterparty’s titular event led to the death of a notable alum, the series is hinting that the 2006 St. Patrick’s Day party is important in noting where all of the drama truly began. The Afterparty episode 4 namedrops the party on multiple occasions, with Chelsea citing it as the beginning of her downfall. Although little to no details of the party are actually given, Chelsea reveals that St. Patrick’s Day 2006 was the day that Xavier ruined her life, after which her friends turned on her and began to hate her. Chelsea explains that her reason for attending The Afterparty’s reunion was to get revenge on Xavier for that night, though she didn’t intend to kill him, only wanting to drug him with cat tranquilizers, take pictures of him naked, and leak them to TMZ. After The Afterparty's Yasper (Ben Schwartz) convinces Chelsea to confront Xavier, the first thing Xavier says is that she’s probably mad about St. Patrick’s Day, suggesting even the conceited singer knows what he did was horrible. It now seems unlikely that Chelsea killed Xavier, though her story, along with possibly-incriminating inclusions of other characters, leaves viewers not with the question of who killed Xavier, but of what on Earth happened at the 2006 St. Patrick’s Day party.
The Afterparty has made it clear that Xavier isn’t a great guy. But since he was considered unpopular back in high school, what could he have done that ruined the life of Chelsea, who was self-admittedly at the top of the social food chain then? However Xavier ruined Chelsea’s life, it seems to have begun as a joke, because Dave Franco's character only says that he “didn’t mean it” before Chelsea makes him sing that he was an a**hole. That said, it also appears that Chelsea had done something irredeemable at the St. Patrick’s Day party herself, as a mysterious texter sends her threats about returning for the reunion.
Without giving Danner any detailed revelations of the St. Patrick’s Day party, Chelsea accidentally lets it slip that Aniq (Sam Richardson) and Xavier’s first significant grudge began at this 2006 event. When Aniq wakes up covered in beer, he exclaims that “Xavier did this to [him] again,” with Danner clueing in that Xavier had already done something similar at the St. Patrick’s Day party. Whatever happened to Aniq at The Afterparty’s 2006 event must have been particularly terrible, as Chelsea feels bad enough for him that she writes “I’m sorry” on his wrist. With clues already being dropped in the stories of Aniq, Ike Barinholtz's Brett, and Yasper, it seems that once Danner solves the mystery of the St. Patrick's Day party, she'll have the details she needs to solve Xavier's murder case.
The Afterparty releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV.