Looks like we’ve got another HBO Sunday night mystery on our hands, and just like The White Lotus, Task, Mare of Easttown or any number of others, it’s up to us, the viewing public, to figure out the culprit. So: who killed Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour) on DTF St. Louis?
I’m not putting a spoiler warning before that because we saw Floyd’s dead body in trailers. But I will put a spoiler warning here, as we need to talk about the actual plot of the series premiere, “Cornhole.” In it, we meet St. Louis weatherman Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman) as he befriends ASL (American Sign Language) interpreter Floyd and Floyd’s wife Carol (Linda Cardellini), who works at Purina. And then halfway through the episode, Floyd is dead.
Enter investigators Detective Donoghue Homer (Richard Jenkins), the weathered “expert,” and special crimes officer Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday), a younger, more ambitious investigator. Together they begin looking into why Floyd’s dead body was found lying in a pool house (a Kevin Kline pool house, to be precise), and who is behind it. By episode’s end, they’ve got a pretty strong suspect… But come on, it’s episode 1 of 7, the mystery isn’t that easy to solve. So let’s get into it by breaking down the suspects.
1. Clark Forrest Killed Floyd Smernitch
This sure seems to be the most likely possibility, right? And it’s the one the investigators are leaning towards at the end: Clark Forrest killed Floyd. Backing that up, the true story this show is sort of based on found a dentist having an affair with his patient’s wife allegedly killing the patient through poisoning. Given Clark seems to be having an affair with Carol, and Floyd likely died of some sort of poisoning, you can see where this is going.
Add in that Plumb finds blurry video footage of a sitdown bike, the kind Clark rides, pulling up to the pool house close to the time that Floyd died.
…But that seems too obvious, right? Unless we’re on a dark journey of the soul, having the most obvious suspect be the perpetrator is no fun.
2. Carol Smernitch Killed Floyd Smernitch
We don’t spend a lot of time with Carol this episode, other than her being patient with Floyd while he thinks Batman might die in a comic, and chatting with Clark at a party. But Cardellini is deep in the murder fare thanks to shows like Dead to Me and Netflix’s No Good Deed. She’s been a femme fatale before, and that sure seems how the show is positioning her.
3. Richard Smernitch (Arlan Ruf) Killed Floyd Smernitch
An outside possibility, but Floyd’s stepson Richard clearly has some emotional problems, and was throwing rocks at Clark’s house. Is it possible that a kid with violent tendencies could have killed his stepdad; accidentally or otherwise?
4. Floyd Smernitch Died Of Natural Causes/Killed Himself
This is both the saddest possibility and the biggest bummer: nobody killed Floyd, he either had a heart attack — he talks constantly about his heart health in the first episode — or died by suicide after discovering Clark’s affair with Carol. The toxicology report comes back that Smernitch died of a lethal ingestion of the pharmaceutical amphetamine, Amphezyne, which did cause heart failure. So that rules out accident — maybe — but not Floyd ending his own life.
5. Someone Else Killed Floyd Smernitch
Again, we’re pretty early here and there are more characters to meet — for example, Peter Sarsgaard is in the cast and hasn’t even shown up yet. So perhaps we haven’t even met the murderer yet. That also seems unlikely because that’s not how mysteries work, all the pieces need to be in place from the beginning. Whoever did it? We’ll know in seven short weeks.
DTF St. Louis Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of DTF St. Louis premiere Sundays on HBO and HBO Max at 9 p.m. ET. Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in DTF St. Louis with premiere dates.
- Sunday, March 1, 2026: DTF St. Louis, Episode 1 – “Cornhole”
- Sunday, March 8, 2026: DTF St. Louis, Episode 2 – “Snag It”
- Sunday, March 15, 2026: DTF St. Louis, Episode 3 – “The Go Getter”
- Sunday, March 22, 2026: DTF St. Louis, Episode 4 – “Missouri Mutual Life & Health Insurance Company”
- Sunday, March 29, 2026: DTF St. Louis, Episode 5 – “TBA”
- Sunday, April 5, 2026: DTF St. Louis, Episode 6 – “TBA”
- Sunday, April 12, 2026: DTF St. Louis, Episode 7 – “TBA” *Season Finale*
Where To Watch DTF St. Louis
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