Happy Valley aired its fiery finale over the weekend as Sergeant Catherine Cawood finally faced off with Tommy Lee Royce on the West Yorkshire BBC One hit.
The closing scenes of Sally Wainwright’s epic West Yorkshire trilogy series aired to instant acclaim on Sunday night after viewers had been gripped for weeks.
Sergeant Catherine’s story came to an end in a nerve-jangling extended finale, which offered a satisfying ending for many longtime fans of the show after dramatic scenes.
In the show’s final gripping moments, Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) and Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) traded insults and emotional home truths for 15 minutes in an incredibly tense final meeting.
The scene ended with critically wounded Tommy Lee setting fire to himself after pouring over pictures of his son Ryan over the years.
This Morning aired an extended Happy Valley special segment on Monday morning to react to the tense final episode, as Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield quizzed criminologist David Wilson and former Met Police senior detective Sue Hill on the scenes.
Holly asked the pair their thoughts on Tommy Lee’s intentions, as she wondered whether he had been reformed and simply wanted to spend time with his son Ryan – who they speculated could be the subject of a future spin-off amid hints in the finale of a future in law enforcement.
Yet criminologist David insisted that was not the case, explaining: “He was using his son because that was the final piece of power and control that he had.”
Former Met officer Sue echoed his thoughts, saying: “We used to talk about ‘Are they mad or bad?’ He’s thoroughly bad.
“He’s a wrong’un. He’s just vile. To watch Catherine with him, you wonder how she never shot him.”
Sue theorised Tommy Lee could have been trying to provoke her deliberately in the final scenes to bring about a suicide by cop’ ending for himself.
She praised Sergeant Cawood, saying: “She had such professionalism, control, compassion,” as David added of Tommy Lee: “It was narcissism on his part until the very end.”
Phil questioned whether the final self-immolation was the ending a crime expert would have expected for a psychopathic character such as Tommy Lee.
Phil asked: “Is what he did to himself the final power?” David replied: “In a word, yes.”
He then added: “But go back one stage – by the time there is that confrontation with Catherine, he’s also been injured in his previous fight. He’s actually physically quite weak, which takes away some of the incipient threat he might have.
“Is that the ending he might want? Yes, of course. He wants to go down in a blaze of glory.
“He doesn’t want to be judged by the criminal justice system. The way he can control it is by not letting that system deal with him, so he commits suicide. It’s narcissistic. It’s about power.”
