People spot Adolescence ‘error’ involving the knife but the creator has already addressed it

Netflix’s new show Adolescence has been perhaps the biggest hit of 2025 so far, but amongst shining reviews and calls for the government to take action, some people are still stuck on what they deem a silly error – the knife.

It should go without saying – but I need to repeat it because some people are still sharing doubts – Jamie undoubtedly killed his classmate Katie using a knife provided to him by a friend at school. However, that same knife magically disappeared and confusion ensued on Twitter.

“Just finished #Adolescence that shit blows my mind.. like he really did it and played that shit so well to the point he made the viewer believe he was a helpless 13-year-old. My next question is where is the knife???” one person questioned on Twitter.

Another said: “Them forgetting about the knife is so annoying.”

“The Knife: Massive part of the story that just went completely missing. No update, no follow-up. Nothing. That was the biggest piece of evidence they needed as well as the clothes. There was no mention of it,” someone else wrote.

But don’t worry, the creator of the show Jack Thorne has already addressed this.

Some people think they clocked an error with the knife in Adolescence

Speaking to Deadline, Adolescence writer Jack Thorne explained how the knife was never meant to show up. It was always going to be a slight cliffhanger, and no, that’s not to continue it into a season two.

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“I think that there is a real joy in the incomplete. There is a real joy in how partial this show was able to be. It was written in a really partial way, we couldn’t cover all corners. For instance, episode two has a whole question going through it, of where is the knife?” he said.

“That’s why DI Luke Bascombe is there. We cannot answer that. We don’t answer that. I could have tried to fit it into dialogue in episode three, but that would have felt inauthentic and wrong.”

Because the show is shot in one continuous take, you’re constantly questioning the points of view of its characters and how the narrative changes depending on who is on the screen.

The Knife: Massive part of the story that just went completely missing. No update, no follow up. Nothing. That was the biggest piece of evidence they needed as well as the clothes. There was no mention of it

— Miss Rashford 💐 (@xjodierashfordx) March 16, 2025

It’s deliberately done that way, as Jack further explained: “The audience understands the rhythm that we’re in as dramatists. An audience has certain expectations as to what will happen when that has been embedded in the backs of their heads through watching drama as long as we all have. What this show can do through the one-shot format is challenge those expectations in a different way.

“I’m not going to answer [where the knife is] because if I did, then that would spoil it… Stephen and I worked everything out. But the point is that we didn’t have to answer it, and by not answering it, we create a question, and that question hangs on.”

Jamie ultimately admits to killing Katie using the knife but the method becomes irrelevant as you learn the reason why. It’s not about knife crime or the act of physically killing someone, it’s about the content online that inevitably pushed him to make those decisions.

Even if that knife had been filed as evidence, the misogynistic content behind the barbaric act is still at large. It leaves us with the unsettling truth that the story is never really over because it could happen again, and again.

Adolescence is on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

Featured image credit: Netflix