@thenotoriousscuttlecliff made a post speculating about what the next Knives Out movie will be like. I agree with the logic that, following the theme of the four seasons and classic mystery settings, the next film will be winter on a means of transport.
But the question remains, what means of transport?
The classic, and even desired, answer is train (@imperiuswrecked "He hasn't even been on a train yet" post has 130K notes). Throughout mystery literature, trains are a classic setting, a subgenre in themselves.
But, when trying to speculate on the theme of the next mystery, there is another factor that must be taken into account: social commentary.
The first three films have a general critique of the wealthy class and current power systems in general, but they are also obviously American.
This is not a surprise, Rian Johnson is an American screenwriter who famously discusses and criticizes American society (I'm not about to whatabout Rian Johnson) and the Knives Out trilogy is no exception. All three films address American problems and american people (Glass Onion takes place in Greece but with a 100% American cast).
The first film criticizes the rhetoric of the United States as a country of social mobility, without the rigid class systems of traditional Europe. The Thrombeys show how the descendants of self-made fortunes see themselves as deserving of wealth and those below as deserving of misery, because they did not earn more. They feel that in addition to the fortune, they also inherit the suffering and effort of those who actually created it. The film shows how entitlement and greed do not need the divine right of kings or the myth of good breeding to justify themselves, as they are completely illogical and selfish.
The second film goes a step further, destroying the "self-made rich" themselves. In Glass Onion, we are confronted with the fact that the current capitalist system rewards those who feed the system itself and not those who create things that truly benefit humanity. The powerful class remains in a closed circle of complicity and enablement, yes anding each other to the end. They are not only completely disconnected from the truth but willing to rewrite the truth for their own benefit. Creativity and intelligence are secondary to the ability to control the narrative and present oneself as the one who can distribute more power, not to mention how classic biases will remain and how the system maintains the status quo (I could write an entire post about Andi as an ambitious Black woman and how this is directly linked to her death)
Finally, in the third film, we move away from the super wealthy word famous class and see how "ordinary" powerfull people are affected by the current power dynamics and how religion is embedded in such a system. Although Wicks' fortune is a point of conflict throughout the film and hovers over the entire narrative, for most of the story it is a theoretical source of power that cannot be immediately used to physically affect reality. But it shows how those who were once seen as having power struggle to maintain it, using fear and tradition to keep their subjects subjugated.
All these films have undeniably American characteristics, Wake Up Dead Man takes a characteristically British setting, spring in the countryside (cozy British mystery being a genre of its own with Father Brown being an example that is cited in the film itself), and puts an American twist on it.
Then the question arises of how Rian Johnson will put an American twist on the mystery of a means of transportation and connect it with a recent social commentary.
Currently, the train is not a common and efficient form of transportation in the United States, which in itself could be a source of commentary, but this is due to the much-discussed situation of America as being centered on cars due to the heavy lobbying of the fuel and automotive industry. Personally, I don't see how it would be possible to run a murder investigation in moving cars; at least not in a way that maintains the classic themes and situations of the genre and the large cast model. But also, there's a reason I'm not the critically acclaimed director, so maybe Rian Johnson will find a way to make it work, I think that would be my preferred scenario, even if it's the most unlikely.
If we were to go the boat route, (the transatlantic cruise beeing one of the first althernatives of the means of transportation mystery) one way to incorporate the winter theme would be through an Arctic cruise, a less common but existing practice among the more privileged American classes. It would also be an opportunity to delve deeper into the environmental themes presented in Glass Onion with Kear fuel; addressing both the melting ice caps and the environmental impact of cruises as a whole. Cruises are also a great narrative tool to discuss the dynamics of foreign labor in the service industry.
A third option, the one most frequently used by mystery writers when trying to modernize the train mystery, is the airplane. Like its predecessor, "death on a plane," it has quickly become a genre of its own, with almost every modern murder series having an episode on a plane (also serving the function of a "bottle episode"). If you had asked me a few months ago, I would have said that the airplane option would be my least favorite, mainly due to the limited settings and opportunities for cinematic scenes that are characteristic of the franchise. But that was before the recent events related to the TSA, the cuts to the air traffic control department, and the cover-up of the Boeing scandals (when was the last time you thought of John Barnett?). Currently, a death on a plane would be the perfect scenario to cover up the dismantling of public infrastructure by governments controlled by the interests of the wealthy and the dismantling of the companies themselves in pursuit of individual enrichment.
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