Summary
Dept. Q sticks the landing in Episode 9, providing an ending with a good helping of emotional payoff, which is just reward for how long it took to get here.
The ending of Dept. Q is all about payoff, which is perhaps just as well given how long it took us to get here. The mystery of Merritt Lingard’s disappearance hasn’t always been smooth sailing, but Episode 9 finally brings her plight to a close while also giving each major character their own little moment in the spotlight. Of course, this being a Netflix series, the door is left open for Season 2, but not at the expense of resolution in this case. Although, be warned, anyone really invested in more clarity on Akram’s backstory is going to be left sorely disappointed.
But if details clearly left on the table for subsequent seasons is the only issue with a finale, I think we can consider it a success. It also leaves us with a fair amount to go over, including two brutal deaths by clubbing with a blunt object, hallucinations, throwing knives, and a primer on how hyperbaric chambers work, so let’s just get on with that, shall we?
Who Kidnapped Merritt Lingard?
The finale of Dept. Q finds the police finally catching up with the audience in figuring out who kidnapped Merritt Lingard. As it turns out, it was Lyle Jennings, whom Merrit knew as Sam Haig, and his mother, Ailsa, all for revenge over what happened to Lyle’s brother, Harry. You’ll recall that Merritt and Harry had conspired to rob the Lingard home, but it went wrong, resulting in William being beaten into a coma and Harry dying. For the latter, Lyle and Ailsa blamed Merritt.
Lyle’s interview tapes from his time in juvie paint a bleak portrait of his childhood. After the death of his father Clive — which it’s later intimated Lyle might have been responsible for — Ailsa kept the children in line by frequently locking them inside the hyperbaric chamber that Clive had bought for his business. The chambers are used to treat divers with decompression sickness, aka “the bends”, which is caused by the kind of rapid pressure changes that divers often experience. Lyle, being a nutcase seemingly from birth, never saw anything particularly weird about this.
In Juvie, following Harry’s death, Lyle had begun to obsess over another inmate at Godhaven, Sam Haig. Lyle believed Sam to be his brother, proving his bonkers bona fides. This additional context gives the Department Q team most of the information they need to investigate the family property, including the business premises, on the Isle of Mhor.
What Really Happened to William and Sam Haig?
The team brings in William to confirm some more details, now they have an image of Lyle Jennings. It never quite sat right that Harry was the one who beat William, given that he had no prior history of violence, and we see in flashbacks that it was actually Lyle. William had caught Harry during the break-in and struck him with a hockey stick; Lyle, who had followed Harry, fearing he was going to run away with Merritt, used that as an excuse to viciously beat William into a coma until Harry stopped him. William had flipped out on the ferry because he recognised Lyle. He also confirms that Lyle is indeed the man they’re looking for by matching up his ID with his sketch.
Meanwhile, Lyle and Ailsa are cleaning house. During Merritt’s escape attempt, she briefly managed to call 999, which lured John Cunningham out to the docks. It becomes clear that John was aware that Lyle had supposedly killed Merritt and chose to look the other way, but he had no idea she had been kept inside the hyperbaric chamber for four years. When he discovers this, he’s furious, and Lyle beats him to death with a hammer to prevent him from exposing the truth.
Lyle’s flashbacks while he’s cleaning up the evidence also reveal what happened to Sam Haig. Sam had reached out to him as an adult to apologize for what happened between them during their time in Godhaven. When Sam followed Lyle up a mountain, Lyle attacked him with a brick and threw him off the edge, staging his death to look like a climbing accident and assuming his identity.
Alexej Manvelovin Dept. Q | Image via Netflix
Morck and Akram Find and Rescue Merritt
With Lyle and Ailsa having left the pressure on in the hyperbaric chamber, Merritt is slowly suffocating, adding a ticking-clock component to the ending of Dept. Q. Morck and Akram head to the Isle of Mhor while Rose and Hardy look further into Lyle’s background, and eventually into the nature of the hyperbaric chamber itself, which Lyle had used to torment people he became obsessed with. On the journey, Akram confesses to Morck that his wife is dead after having “operated on the wrong person”, but he doesn’t elaborate any further beyond lamenting the fact that neither of his children is likely to follow in his late wife’s medicinal footsteps — they want to be TikTok influencers instead.
Through Colin, John Cunningham’s son, Rose learns that the hyperbaric chamber was declared a toxic waste site almost exactly four years ago, which is too suspicious for Morck and Akram not to break in, despite lacking a warrant. They find Merritt, who is currently experiencing hallucinations of Harry and Lyle as children, her younger self, Harry, and her father, locked inside, but getting her out isn’t a simple matter. Hardy informs them that the only way to safely do so is to stabilize the pressure until emergency services can arrive with a hyperbaric stretcher, a smaller version of the chamber. Rapid depressurization will kill her.
Lyle arrives while they’re messing with the various levers and unloads his shotgun in their direction; Morck takes the pellets in the shoulder to save Akram, and Akram returns the favour by killing Lyle when he attempts to finish them off. They’re able to stabilize the pressure for long enough for Merrit to be saved, and Ailsa commits suicide when her escape is cut off by the police.
Three Months Later
Dept. Q ends with Morck having taken some time off. He blackmails Lord Advocate Stephen Burns into giving him the remainder of his allocated budget, fast-tracking Akram’s promotion to Detective Inspector, and getting him a new car. The gunshot wound wasn’t serious, and he’s significantly less haunted thanks to the unexpected progress of Hardy’s recovery.
Speaking of which, Hardy returns to work. He’s still on crutches, but he’ll be working in Department Q alongside Akram and Rose. Moira, though, claims she has a case for him when he’s gotten everything sorted out, which will probably be that of his own shooting. Earlier, it was determined that the uniformed officer, Anderson, was probably in on the sting, and Moira threatened to take Logan off the case and give it to someone else.
As for Merritt, she intends to return to Mhor with William and reconcile with their father. She wants to thank Morck before she leaves, but he isn’t in the basement. Unbeknownst to her, she bumps into him as she’s leaving, but he doesn’t clarify who he is.
