‘Righteous Gemstones’: Who’s Trying to Kill Eli?

The Righteous Gemstones Season 2 wraps up tonight, and hopefully, the finale will answer the season’s biggest mystery: Who’s trying to kill Eli Gemstone? The family patriarch, who’s played by John Goodman, has been targeted several times this season, with a fleet of ninja bikers trying to assassinate him. The show’s characters thought it was all a plot by Eli’s shady friend from Memphis, Junior (Eric Roberts). However, the previous episode revealed that Junior had nothing to do with the attempts on Eli’s life.

Junior has been the main antagonist of the season, so there’s no time to introduce a new threat — unless HBO is setting up a cliffhanger for the already-announced Season 3. But if the minds behind The Righteous Gemstones are ending this arc tonight, we have a couple of pretty good guesses about the attacks’ mastermind(s). Our top picks are Lyle Lissons (Eric Andre) and his wife Lindy (Jessica Lowe). 

While they haven’t been particularly antagonistic, they need the Gemstones’ cash for their resort project. Eli doesn’t want to invest, and the Lissons’ main Gemstone family allies, Jesse (Danny McBride) and his wife Amber (Cassidy Freeman), can’t get control of the church’s funds until Eli passes the torch — or passes on. The Lissons might be trying to kill Eli to accelerate that process.

As far as the multiple murders in the season’s second episode, Junior could be behind those, being as he only clarified that the bikers weren’t his doing. However, we think the Lissons might have wanted to take out reporter Thaniel Block (Jason Schwartzman) to either protect the Gemstones’ reputation (and in turn the investment they need) or to protect themselves from an unsavory expose.

If it isn’t the Lissons, we have a bigger twist in mind: Amber could be behind the attacks. She wants Eli out of the way for the same reasons the Lissons would. Plus, she has been even more frustrated about her and Jesse’s lack of power than her husband. While she was present for one of the attacks, it could have easily been staged in order to redirect suspicion.

The Righteous Gemstones airs via HBO on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET. It will be available to stream via HBO Max at the same time. HBO Max is currently streaming all episodes of the show if you need to catch up or revisit past episodes.