* This post contains spoilers for Vigil season 2 episode 6 *
The drone attack at Dundair that kicked everything off seems like a while ago now, but DCI Silva and DI Longacre are finally getting somewhere in their bid to discover who was behind it. It's a trip that's taken DCI Silva to Wudyan and back again, while her partner has faced plenty of peril back home in Scotland — but now it's time for some answers...
We pick up moments after gunshots are heard on the military plane taking DCI Silva back to Scotland from Wudyan, as she finds Wes Harper lying dead and Eliza Russell seriously injured. Russell says she killed Harper after he tried to snatch her gun, but it’s clear DCI Silva has her reservations about that story.
Back in Scotland, DI Longacre meets with Ross Sutherland hoping he’ll finally tell her who sent him to kill Chapman. Whoever did tell him he was fighting terrorism, but it was actually part of a plan to send more British troops into Wudyan and sell more weapons. However, he still won’t reveal who’s been giving him orders.
By following him, she learns the man who set it all up was Alban-X boss, Derek McCabe, who she films executing Sutherland. She flees when he spots her (leaving her phone behind in the process) and miraculously only sustains a single bullet wound as she completes a three-point turn in the road. Luckily for her he's a terrible shot!
Meanwhile, DCI Silva is slowly putting the pieces together after landing back in Scotland and realizes that Russell's story doesn't add up and she murdered Harper on the plane. However, before the police can arrest her she’s intercepted by the intelligence forces. To make matters worse, McCabe has also managed to get out of the country.
In parliament, the situation is escalating quickly and politicians are set to vote on sending troops into Wudyan in response to the attack on Dundair. Dark forces are blaming on Jabat Al-Huria and while it's pretty clear they weren't behind it, proving that will be very tricky indeed.
Did Eliza Russell act alone?
Yet DCI Silva doesn’t give up easily and tracks Daniel Ramsay to a secret location, where she finds him questioning Russell. To Silva’s surprise, Air Marshall Grainger allows her to interrogate Russell herself and after learning of a secret iPad Anthony Chapman had from his daughter Sabiha, she starts uncovering the truth.
It was Russell who piloted the RPAS that murdered the seven soldiers on that fateful day at Dundair and she was paid to do it by McCabe. But why did she have to kill so many people? “It had to look real and be something they couldn’t ignore!” she shouts, before confessing to everything — from hiring Ross Sutherland, to sending those messages to Sabiha and killing Wes Harper.
She says she did it all for the money, before hinting the intelligence service had a big part to play in it all once the interview is over. It doesn’t take a genius to work out she’s still covering for someone and with Ramsay’s help DCI Silva works out it must be Grainger. Not such a surprise as he's been giving us bad vibes since we first met him!
Why did Air Marshall Grainger stage the attack at Dundair?
Grainger made the weapons test look like a terrorist attack in a bid to push Britain into a conflict, but DCI Silva will need Ramsay’s help to prove it and must do it “off the books” to ensure those files aren't disappeared. We weren’t sure about Ramsay, but he’s certainly proving his worth as this tale reaches a climax.
Ramsey discovers a smoking gun that shows Grainger was behind the whole plot when he proves the he manipulated Sabiha to steal the RPAS console. The Air Marshall to give a disingenuous speech about the nature of defence, telling DCI Silva and Ramsay "the bigger picture is hundreds of thousands of lives." He did it all so we could put petrol in our cars and heat our homes apparently. Alright mate.
Grainger and Russell go to trial in closed court and receive life sentences for treason. “The truth will come out eventually, just not when we’re alive,” says Silva, anticlimactically — but realistically. Later on she urges intelligence bosses to do what they can to get Sam Kader’s 30-year sentence commuted. Fingers crossed on that front.
Yet the most stirring moment of this finale comes when Firas Zaman — the journalist caught spying on the weapons test in the first episode — arrives to deliver a victim impact statement. He lays out how the arms sales will continue to profit those in the UK while those in the Middle East suffer, in a comment that feels more prescient than ever.
