This Blue Lights season 2 ending explained recap contains spoilers... Things can change quickly and even quicker on the Mount Eden Estate, as the team from Blackthorn Station find in this tense season finale.
After young Henry fired a gun into Stevie and Grace's car, we're obviously terrified that another much-loved character has been killed off, as Gerry was in last year's first season. Hopefully they're both okay though!
Meanwhile, Lee Thompson now has the community in his grip, yet his promises to change things for the better and remove drugs from the streets seem rather fanciful and his ambitions to expand beyond Belfast are worrying. He's set himself up as something of a local Godfather, yet we've already had a glimpse of him manipulating the community for his own ends by ordering that march. As for poor little Henry, we hope he's okay...
We know he ordered the death of Dixie and also petrol-bombed his house, yet the police currently have no way of proving that. To make matters worse, DS Canning seems to have entered into a pact with him in a bid to keep the crime rates down, which is very dangerous ground for the detective indeed.
Elsewhere the truth about Chief Nicola Robinson's past and the operations of Special Branch in the 1970s and 1980s have finally been revealed, but what will Happy Kelly, who lost his father and brother in a bombing that could have been prevented make if it?
Here's how the finale went down...
Are Grace and Stevie okay?
Thankfully the two Constables survived the shot through their back windscreen, yet the danger has not yet passed because in the aftermath young Henry wanders into the street still holding the gun.
Grace moves forward and begs him to put the gun down, yet as she approaches armed swat men turn up screaming at the youngster who seems frozen to the spot. Luckily Stevie is able to hold them back while Grace disarms him yet the whole incident has been filmed by neighbours.
At the Blackthorn incident room, Canning wants to hold off on bringing Thompson and McQuarrie in, yet this is nowhere near enough as far as McNally is concerned. She demands Chief Robinson orders the arrest of both men and sends forensics into the house. “It’s all back room deals and compromises with you isn’t it?” she says to Canning. “Anything for a quiet life!” Robinson reluctantly sides with McNally.
With the adrenaline still coursing through their veins, when Stevie and Grace return to the station they share a kiss. Yes! Yet they’re soon forced to cut things off when Sandra comes in. Boo.
At the subsequent briefing, Sandra explains that Henry is a nephew of Lee Thompson, who is a suspect in the murder of Jim Dixon, although there’s no proof linking him to that crime at this stage. “The evidence we get from that crime scene could be the key to everything that’s been going on in Mount Eden,” she says.
Sgt McCluskey — from the exercise at the start of the series — will be taking control of the response on the ground that evening.
When Lee Thompson sees the video, he orders his team to circulate it online in a bid to stir up ill-feeling towards the police. The clip falsely claims the police drew their guns on a young boy who was carrying a toy gun. “The worse it gets, the better,” he says.
DS Canning then turns up at The Loyal Pub to arrest Lee and Craig, yet not before Rab turns up to vent his spleen at them “Wee Henry could have been killed!” he shouts.
What crime did Rab commit?
When Grace talks to Henry and Mags after the briefing, the youngster’s furious with his mum for revealing that he was with Lee and Craig before he fired the gun. Grace and Jonty take Mags outside and suggest that her son has been indoctrinated. “He needs to hear the truth about his uncle Lee,” says Grace. “Is there anyone who can get through to him?”
When Rab gets there he tells Henry why he was sent to prison before The Good Friday Agreement. He explains how he lured a Catholic taxi driver down to the docks and killed him. “His name was Francis. He was crying, he said he had two wee girls,” he explains. “You cross over a bridge and the bridge crumbles behind you and you can never go back,” he explains through tears. “The world is dark forever.”
Rab says if Henry stays with Craig and Lee he will cross that bridge, which is enough to finally get the young lad to open up about what happened that day.
Yet elsewhere in the station, McNally is coming up against some problems while interviewing Lee Thompson. “It’s not my house, it’s not my safe and it’s not my gun,” he tells them. What’s more, the gun Henry had wasn’t the one used to kill Jim Dixon.
When they speak to Craig McQuarrie they find that as a former British soldier living in Northern Ireland, he applied for a gun licence, so the firearm isn’t illegal. The money is also his “life savings from his army pay” apparently. Basically the police have nothing.
How did the police catch Dixie's killer?
On the Mount Eden Estate a crowd is already gathering near the crime scene after seeing the footage posted by Lee Thompson. They’re becoming increasingly hostile, but the squad are ordered to hold them off until the forensics team is finished in the house, which could be some time. Yet things go up a gear when Thompson’s men turn up and petrol bombs start flying.
However, just when things are looking bleak, Tommy finds a key piece of evidence on the doorbell footage Grace and Stevie picked up at the elderly lady’s house. It shows Craig McQuarrie was in the area on the night of Dixon’s shooting. That’s circumstantial, but it seems he was wearing Soupy’s old desert scarf from Afghanistan as a face-covering. It was a treasured keepsake for both Craig and Lee, so it’s unlikely he got rid of it and could hold important ballistics evidence.
McNally asks the forensics team to look in the house for the scarf and orders the squad on the ground to hold the line. With missiles flying and cars being burned, the line is on the point of breaking when Rab walks into the middle of the fray begging the locals to stop. When he’s hit by a petrol bomb he goes up in flames and Stevie rushes to try and help him.
Luckily the line holds long enough for the forensics team to find the scarf. Crucially, there’s a blood splatter on it that proves McQuarrie killed Dixie. The team also find a set of keys belonging to Dixie’s property that was attacked by a petrol bomb. Lee Thompson offers no comment on that when he's questioned, but next door McQuarrie is singing like a canary. He takes full responsibility for Dixon’s murder and says it has nothing to do with Lee. “You don’t know the meaning of the word loyalty,” he tells McNally.
Did Happy Kelly accept the settlement?
At the solicitor’s office, Jen finds that the Crown’s solicitors have offered Happy a settlement of £80,000 to make his case go away. He accepts and asks for the money to be sent to the Central Soup Kitchen. “It’s blood money, maybe some good can come of it,” he says. When Jen asks him why, he tells them that while he could never save his dad, his brother or Gerry, he can save her by dropping the case. It’s an emotional moment.
The next day, Jen arranges a meeting between Happy and Robin Graham, who admits he could have stopped his father and brother being blown up. He tells the source he protected that day saved dozens of lives through the information he passed on. “It wasn’t worth it,” says the ex-Special Branch officer. “I wish I’d never been there, I wish I’d never had to take those decisions.” Yet Happy forgives him and they shake hands. Powerful stuff.
What happened to DS Canning?
Chief Robison congratulates DS Canning on the result, yet after he leaves the room he asks McNally if it’s true Canning went for a clandestine meeting with Thomspon on the day Henry got hold of the gun. When she confirms it is, she replies “then make the call.”
Back at Blackthorn, Police Ombudsman official Geraldine Gilroy comes to talk to DS Murray Canning as she has a few small timeline queries about where he was on the day Henry got hold of his uncle's gun. “I told you we were on the same team,” she says to McNally before she walks into the interview.
It seems all meetings with suspected Tier 1 individuals must be recorded in notebooks and the duty log. But DS Canning obviously didn’t do that, so could be in hot water!
What happened to Lee Thompson?
With Craig McQuarrie taking responsibility for everything, Thompson walks out of Blackthorn scott-free, yet he gets a nasty surprise when he gets back to The Loyal Pub. After hearing about how he stirred up the riot that killed Rab, in a bid to help him escape custody, everyone in his community has rejected him. Mags also explains how he petrol-bombed Dixie’s house, had Dixie killed, how he’s been colluding with the cops and where all his drugs are coming from.
“You said you’d be different, but you’re not,” says Mags. “We don’t want you here. You hurt people Lee. You hurt me, you hurt Henry and look what you did to Rab.”
Later on, as the squad are drinking together Sandra tells McNally she’s not leaving for London - hurrah! - and tells Jonty she read his letter and offers to buy him a drink. On the dancefloor, Aislyn and Tommy are pulling shapes and Shane and Annie are getting on again, yet Stevie decides to leave. “You think too much,” Annie tells Grace as he walks away and she follows him out to the cab and they go home together. Happy days!
