The ending of Bodkin ties multiple plot threads together in a mystery spanning back two and a half decades, so there’s a lot to unpack in Episode 7, “Empty Your Pockets”.
Gilbert, Dove, and Emmy were in the fictional town of Bodkin – filmed in various Irish counties for authenticity’s sake – to investigate the disappearance of three locals 25 years prior, including the brother of town bigwig Seamus.
Who killed Malachy?
Seamus’s brother Malachy turned up in the back of a car sunken in a bog, alongside a woman assumed to be Fiona but whom Seamus claims is someone else when he goes to see Malachy in the morgue.
It is subsequently revealed that Teddy killed Malachy. The truth is unveiled by Sergeant Power, Teddy’s father, whom Dove visits in hospital while he’s recovering from a heart attack.
It’s tragic, really. With the McArdles on the case, Seamus instructed Malachy and Fiona to leave Bodkin. Power helped them get out of town, and Malachy and Teddy got into a fight over Fiona, who they couldn’t find. Teddy killed Malachy with a brick, albeit accidentally.
In the aftermath, Power tried to cover up the event from Seamus, who would have surely been in a bad enough mood about the death of his brother to kill Teddy and Power both. Hence, the car ended up at the bottom of a bog.
Who was in the car with Malachy?
The next revelation pertains to the identity of the second body, which everyone assumed to be Fiona. As it turns out it’s Greta, the traveller who had previously been mentioned by Maeve.
Greta’s death was also an accident – Power hit her with his car when he was moving Malachy’s body. She sufficed as a body double, while the real Fiona found herself elsewhere.
Are Seamus and Sean related?
Fiona, who was pregnant with Seamus’s baby, took shelter at the Sisters of Mercy. However, she and her baby apparently died in childbirth.
This, obviously, isn’t true. Emmy later deduces that one of the nuns, Mrs O’Shea, left the nunnery when Fiona died. Her adopted son from Romania, Sean, is actually Fiona and Seamus’s son.
However, Fiona didn’t want her child to have anything to do with Seamus, which is why she had kept the pregnancy from him in the first place. Her dying wish was that Mrs. O’Shea kept them well apart. Since Seamus and Sean are both involved in the eel smuggling operation, she didn’t do a brilliant job of this task.
The eel operation meets a messy end
Seamus takes Gilbert hostage after finding out about his relationship to Sean, and plans to bomb the Samhain party when the McArdles arrive. Dove and Emmy are able to free Gilbert, but Seamus detonates the explosives. However, the collateral damage is the water truck full of eels waiting to be trafficked to the black market.
That’s that, then.
What happens to Gilbert, Dove, and Emmy at the end of Bodkin?
Gilbert gives up on the podcast, throwing the recorder into the sea, and leaves Bodkin, presumably for good.
With Dove still excommunicated from The Guardian and stuck in Ireland after violating some rather important British secrets laws, Emmy gets her old job as an investigative reporter despite her inexperience. She’s having none of the pushback, either.
But the most surprising turnaround involves Dove. Unable to return to her old job, she instead heads to the convent and retrieves a box of her old things, including the stuffed wolf. She’s going to stick around. And in a fun inversion of Gilbert’s fate, she’s actually going to embrace podcasting.
What did you think of Bodkin’s ending? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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