Spoiler warning: Spoilers for the full film, including the staged resurrection and the final confession.
Wicks does not rise from the dead: the first death is staged, the real killing follows, and Samson impersonates the returning priest. Wake Up Dead Man builds its mystery by making those separate events look like one impossible act.
Who actually kills Wicks?
Martha devises the scheme with Dr. Nat. The initial blood display is an effect; Nat later kills Wicks for real while appearing to examine him. The confusion lets an apparent medical response conceal the murder itself.
Samson has a different role, emerging in matching clothes to create the supposed resurrection. Keeping his performance separate from Wicks’ body is the key to understanding how the miracle was manufactured.
The valuable jewel known as Eve’s Apple drives the plan. Nat’s desire to take it for himself leads him to kill Samson, and Martha subsequently kills Nat. The conspiracy does not remain under the control of the person who designed it.
Why does Jud hear Martha’s confession?
Blanc can identify the crimes, but Jud offers something outside a detective’s role: an opportunity to acknowledge the hatred and guilt Martha has carried for years. Her confession reaches back to her treatment of Grace, not only the deaths at the center of the investigation.
Josh O’Connor’s official interview emphasizes Jud’s wish to act as a priest who can care for people rather than condemn them from a distance. Martha is a difficult test of that commitment because she also helped frame him.
Forgiving her does not make the murders disappear. It prevents the ending from reducing a confession to a list of facts useful to solve the case.
Where does the diamond end up?
After Martha’s death, Jud conceals it inside the figure on the new wooden cross. He reopens the church under the name Our Lady of Perpetual Grace, with a sign welcoming everyone.
The object that has organized so much greed remains present, but its location is no longer offered as an invitation to claim it. The new cross also replaces the one Grace destroyed while searching for the family fortune.
The finale closes two different tasks. Blanc reconstructs what happened, while Jud decides what kind of institution can exist after the truth is known. The reopened church supplies his answer in its name, its welcome and the secret placed inside its central symbol.
Sources: official ending breakdown; official interview or additional context.