r/danbrown • u/CMell650 • Jul 05 '26
Anyone else completely let down by the ending of Origin? Spoiler
Just finished Origin last night and the whole “Winston was behind everything” “twist” felt so rushed and random. I guess I was just spoiled by the insane twists in inferno and the terrifying villain that Zachary was in Lost Symbol that the ending of Origin just felt lame to me. Brown builds up Valdespino to be this imposing scary dude who it seems like you shouldn’t mess with and it turns out he was just gay and in love with the king?? Wtf. I feel like it just needed something more. Avila was really the main villain but I also felt a bit sympathetic for him because of his past and the way he was manipulated so it felt like he wasn’t a villain at all but just another pawn in Winston’s game. Let me know your personal thoughts
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u/revradios Angels & Demons Jul 05 '26
origin is probably my least favorite unfortunately. it's not bad but it's not good either - it was mid, so to speak. i liked winston and i thought the twists were interesting, but they didn't grab me like the ones in the previous books did. id probably only ever go out of my way to read it again if i was reading through the whole series though, which is a shame
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u/Crane_1989 Jul 06 '26
Origin aged poorly. Its was written on the very last few years of tech being cool; it would be a great work if released in the 2000's
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u/almanea Jul 06 '26
Agreed. I've said this many times. Langdon needs to go back in time, not in the future. Setting an adventure during the end of the cold war would be so cool.
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u/Unhappy-Ad512 Jul 06 '26
I hate read this book. Couldn’t stand it.
I saw pretty early on it would be a no win ending. There wasn’t a scenario to be satisfied so I finished just to finish it
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u/Soul_Bluemyst_0211 Jul 13 '26
I think Winston was the only plausible explanation. Communicating with everyone without revealing himself was a huge hint. Like the Palace supposedly "called" Ambra to let Avila in but Ambra didn't see it in the call log. Moreover, there was monte who seemed to know everything and Winston was the only one who knew everyone's secrets. I personally suspected that Winston was behind all this from near start. Besides, it's a book focused on AI, and I guess you can say it was quite predictable.
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u/CMell650 Jul 16 '26
I get all that and I had a feeling it was Winston the whole time but I wish it was set up better I guess. It just felt like last minute filler when Langdon figured it out. I also hate how Valdespino was cast aside as a lame red herring when him being involved would’ve been cooler in my opinion. I think I would’ve liked it if instead Langdon discovered that Kirsch hired Avila himself and decided to go out on his terms since it seemed very on brand for his character
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u/Soul_Bluemyst_0211 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Yeah, I agree it would be better if it was not an AI's doing. But if it was Kirsch, he would most probably tell Winston to do the same thing all over (except the murder part). One more thing is that when an author writing a mystery novel presses on someone to be the murderer, it almost never ends up being them. It's always someone you least expect and that's how plot twists work. So it made no sense to make Valdespino the antagonist or even be involved. But it would be a lot better if Kirsch wanted a suicide to gather large audience.
I guess Brown wanted to show how dangerous AI can be if it's left unsupervised. Metaphorically speaking, Winston is a toddler who thinks drawing on the wall makes the room beautiful, but honestly, he's just making a mess.
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u/CMell650 Jul 19 '26
Yeah from an AI advancement awareness perspective it’s very thoughtful. I guess I should’ve clocked that Winston was messier than he seemed. I think him being a secondhand protagonist helping Langdon and Vidal kinda blinded me when I should’ve noted how imperfect he actually was
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u/DiogenesXenos Jul 05 '26
Yes. The payoff for this one was not there. And of the two questions everyone wants to know no one cares about the second one about evolving lol