It goes without saying, that if you haven’t watched the finale of Netflix’s The Mole, there’s major spoilers and Mole-ish behaviour ahead.
Did you guess it? J’accuuuuuuuse!!!!! The identity of The Mole has finally been revealed after three weeks of yarn-walling it and pointing the finger at every player in the Netflix series.
Briefed by superb host Alex Wagner, the players on The Mole need to work together to complete missions in order to earn cash for a pot only one person can win. That person is the one who correctly guesses the identity of the Mole, a member of the group secretly working to sabotage the missions. After each challenge, the group must answer 20 questions about who they think the imposter is, and the furthest from the truth is sent home.
They’ve been trapped in jail in Brisbane, searched for crates in the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest, played a giant game of hide and seek across Sydney, and scaled one Australia’s of highest peaks. So, who was the Mole this entire time?
Going into the final two episodes we only had five options: software developer Kesi Neblett, commercial pilot Joi Schweitzer, professional gamer Avori Henderson, firefighter Jacob Hacker, and brand manager William Richardson. Essentially, they could all have been the Mole.
After a dramatic finale mission that took over Sydney’s Bare Island fort, the Mole was finally revealed. It’s Kesi!
William guessed right and took home $101,500, and sadly Joi was left with only memories.
So, where were the clues? How did Kesi manage to sabotage each mission to reduce the money in the pot?
Episode 1
Kesi plays it cool in the first Daintree mission, letting others take the lead on team selection and genuinely helping Avori retrieve the crate from the trees with William and Dom on the ground, all creating the ruse that she’s genuinely there to win that cash.
« First mission, my strategy was to get people to trust me, » Kesi says in the finale. « First impressions mean a lot. »
Episode 2
Kesi has an advantage in the jailbreak mission: She’d been there before! Thanks to an earlier briefing in the cell with the producers, Kesi sees her first opportunity for sabotage in the abandoned Boggo Jail. As we pointed out in our lengthy analysis of The Mole, Kesi tells Joi she doesn’t see a key outside her own door, but she has the same size door hole as William, who was able to see his key. Joi has a tiny peephole, so she can’t see Kesi’s key either — it’s the perfect cover to stall while throwing the audience off and making Joi look like the Mole. They escape in time, but Kesi costs the team $6,000 in time extensions.
« Of course I saw the key, » says Kesi in the finale. « I saw it in the first five minutes of being in the cell, but they didn’t need to know that. »
Then, whether deliberately or not, Kesi (who is, let’s remember, a computer software analyst!) lets other teammates take the lead on the code-cracking in the warehouse mission, then spells one of the passwords wrong typing it into the computer — « neone » instead of « neon » — which takes up an attempt and sets the team locked out for a crucial minute. Kesi’s team misses out on the exemptions, and the whole team forfeits $10,000 just for trying to crack the code.
Episode 3
In the Great Barrier Reef treasure hunt, Avori deliberately misses the dinghy on the shore from the helicopter, but Kesi is on the same side of the chopper, so she could have seen it herself and said nothing, using Avori as the perfect cover. And when they’re taking the diving equipment out of the dinghy, Kesi makes it look like one of the oxygen tanks is really heavy, stalls slightly, then easily lifts it out of the boat when joined by teammates.
Kesi doesn’t look at the dossiers in this episode, because as the Mole, she doesn’t need to! And luckily, Joi makes a huge play to drain the pot and secure an exemption card, which draws suspicion from the entire team.
Episode 4
Kesi is only one of two people (with William) to vote to bring Dom back into the game, an easy way for Kesi to divert suspicion by adding money to the pot. As the Mole, she doesn’t really have to worry about going home, so one more player doesn’t matter. The group outvotes her, which works in Kesi’s favour anyway because they lose $10,000 for ditching Dom.
Kesi should be quite the code-reader given her day job, so when she « failed » to recognise the money-based code in her essential logbook in episode 4’s bank heist, eyebrows were raised. Basically, Kesi has the team open almost every single lockbox in the vault except the right ones, and pretends to not have noticed later on in the confrontation.
« My goal was to give them as little help as possible, » says Kesi. « Of course I saw the clues: King Midas and Goldilocks. They were so obvious. I read out every other name apart from those. There was no hope. »
Episode 5
In a seemingly honest mistake, Kesi misses a $2,000 mailbag in the train mission in episode 5, although Greg easily grabs it — twice. But this was no error, people!
« Just a little flick of the wrist, and the money was gone, » says Kesi.
« If she’s the Mole, that was a good play, » Casey says in the episode.
Episode 6
In episode 6, when deciding who should stay behind on the mountaineering challenge in the Blue Mountains, Kesi has full knowledge of who has the money, since she put it there. Kesi says she should stay behind because she faux-predicts the money isn’t in her bag. When Avori asks Kesi if she wants to stay behind, she immediately agrees knowing full well she has the money — and successfully costs the team $10,000 before they’ve even started. Left behind with Greg, Kesi can stay under everyone’s radar.
But the biggest move Kesi made in the game? The one that caused players to gasp out loud after deeming her the « most trustworthy » of them all? That exemption card steal in episode 6, when Kesi leaves the team to sleep in a freezing cold, abandoned warehouse, chained to each other at the ankle, and costing the team $20,000 for the pot. Absolutely brutal — and what a savvy play from the Mole to divert suspicion while losing a bunch of cash.
« Surely, only a player would want an exemption bad enough to steal it, » says Kesi. Watching the confrontation in the hotel after knowing Kesi is the Mole is even more brutal.
Episode 7
As an interrogator in the Sydney challenge, Kesi tries to get Greg and William to say Avori is lying which would have cost them $20,000; unfortunately for Kesi, she’s overruled.
But the biggest clue comes in the elimination round. Greg’s number one suspect was Kesi over several episodes. But after his elimination in this episode, after Joi had turned all suspicion on Jacob at the table, Greg told Alex walking out, « I think she got me… I don’t know if Joi’s the reason that I’m standing out here with you tonight. » It appears Greg changed his suspect to Jacob, a devastating fatal switch as he had the Mole right so early in the game.
Episode 8
In episode 8, Joi suspects Kesi after her moves in the hide and seek challenge. Kesi seems to stall while looking for the circling pigeons from the rooftop even when Joi points them out, then later decides a rock-paper-scissors game is the best way to identify the right pigeon. Joi plays this mission too hard for these strategies to work, but they’re pretty good tries. When Joi outright accuses Kesi of being the Mole at the table, she doesn’t miss a beat deflecting it.
Episode 9
In the Snowy Mountains mission, which required contestants to haul literal blocks of ice cold cash up one of Australia’s highest mountains, Kesi hits peak Mole behaviour right out in the open by diabolically tossing cubes of cash right off the sled and dumping them in the snow.
« In the ultimate double bluff, I threw ice blocks off the pulk. No one would believe the Mole would be that obvious. »
« In the Snowy Mountains, it was time to switch from defense to offense, » says Kesi. « In the ultimate double bluff, I threw ice blocks off the pulk. No one would believe the Mole would be that obvious. »
Episode 10
Last chance to sabotage! In the finale fort mission, Kesi chooses to use just one suction cup to traverse the wall to get to the money, then « accidentally » slips and falls. But later she diverts suspicion by catching the last canister of cash.
« Sometimes the best spy, the best double agent, is the one that’s right in front of your face, » she says.
So, there you go, every move Kesi made to take money out of the pot and sabotage the missions — extremely well played. We take our hat off to « the most charmingly duplicitous person any of us has ever met, » as host Alex Wagner says.
