Requiem, episode 6: the truth about Carys came out – but what happened to Hal, exactly?
This was a not wholly satisfactory conclusion to a frequently invigorating journey, although perhaps your feelings depend on how explicit you need your explanations. There were probably too many loose ends dangling to claim that creator Kris Mrksa stuck the landing completely successfully, but the main narrative of Matilda’s fate probably fell on the right side of ambiguous.
Above all, what a pleasure it was to see a small-screen horror executed with real verve and confidence, bolstered by some excellent performances from a clutch of occasionally undervalued television stalwarts (Brendan Coyle, Tara Fitzgerald, Claire Rushbrook) and a starmaking turn from Lydia Wilson.
Mary saved the day
Confirmation came first that Mary (or Janice, as we had known her) did indeed save young Carys, who even at that tender age was understandably terrified of mirrors as the portals through which the angels could move. Mary kept quiet about her escape because she didn’t know who to trust – wisely, as it turns out, with virtually everyone over 40 in up to their necks in some sort of conspiracy. A wild card she may have been, but Mary did her job diligently for 23 years before Matilda’s growing public profile brought her back to the attention of Sylvia and co via that television interview.
Hal discovered his appetite
Now this was baffling – in one of several unanswered conundrums left by the series, we encountered Hal alive, if not exactly well, and feasting on the entrails of the poor farmer’s sheep. Later, he pitched up on Trudy’s doorstep (not long after her own uneasy reconciliation with her errant pa), dazed and confused. What did it all mean? Are we to presume that the previous ovine massacre came courtesy of Sean, and that both were somehow possessed (aka ridden) by angels (Sean presumably via all the mirrors dangling in his corner of the woods)? And if so, to what end?
Kendrick’s loyalties remained a mystery
The parent sacrificing everything – including a sort of objective morality – for an ailing child is a familiar trope of television drama, but Brendan Coyle still played this brilliantly. Graves certainly suspected him of something dodgy, even if Aron denied Kendrick was involved in the drug racket (another plot strand left unresolved). Once we heard that he was spooked by the devilish music and wanted to clear up the smashed mirrors after Ewan’s suicide, it became clear Kendrick was deeply implicated, yet Coyle almost sold me with his deliciously ambiguous turn in the last episode. I confess that when the crank call into the station came while Matilda was in custody, the last thing I expected was for him to set her free and drive them to Dean House, rifle cocked. More fool me.
The trap slammed shut
Urged into the basement by Kendrick, Matilda found the coven in session: Sylvia, the Sacklows, Kendrick and the terminally gormless, deeply pathetic teaboy Nick, who was just following orders, m’lud (“they told me to watch you… I just wanted to get my money… they forced me to”). The long game had been played quite magnificently by Sylvia, with a series of lures (perhaps even going all the way back to a possessed Mary leaving out the photos of Rose in Wales, thus tempting Matilda back to Penllynith) proving irresistible to her quarry. Even Davey was deployed as little more than bait – a back-up plan if Matilda proved intransigent.
The explanation
Sylvia, unsurprisingly, proved to be the brains of the operation and furnished a reasonably comprehensive explanation for the story so far. The poor waif taken from his alcoholic mother (Laura, conceivably?) had died after being given too much sedative, and so Carys was snatched. The ritual went off half-cocked, leaving Carys/Matilda with “something” still inside her, needing to get out.
Unbeknownst to her, that something was a trace of partially completed angelic possession; Carys had come pure of heart but not of her own will; Matilda could tick both boxes belatedly, if she took the leap. With the carrot of the truth being dangled, and the stick brandished of a mooted sectioning, a dead career, missing accompanist and comatose mother, Matilda couldn’t resist going into the cave. As she stepped in, the infamous five began the ritual.
Through the looking glass
I feared a low-budget take on 2001’s famously psychedelic Stargate sequence. What we got was altogether less ambitious and all the better for it. Through the cave was a well. Above the well was a full moon. In the well? A little girl, diabolical voices whispering “I’m your eye. Here I am.” The conduit, Matilda – her faces started to distort, her bones began to crack and her veins pulsed, before she levitated, possessed by an archangel, “a shard of the divine”. And then, a massacre.
The casualties
Matilda was found at a deserted Dean House, cradling Davey and apparently stricken with amnesia, but otherwise happier than she’s looked all series. She was reconciled with her birth parents, and her torment was over. Until, that is, she looked in the mirror, the eyes went black and the bones started creaking again…
As for who survived, we saw four graves at the end, all dug by Matilda if we judge from the dirt under her fingernails. One of the graves belonged to Kendrick: his watch poked out of the soil, and he was the only member of the coven who we saw getting stabbed. The Sacklows were likely occupying two of the others, after Sylvia’s dark warnings to both.
As for the fourth, that depends on whether you think Matilda was archangel or fallen angel: did she kill the unarguably evil Sylvia to put a stop to her misdeeds and spare useless Nick as the patsy he so clearly was (the tender brush of his cheek would suggest this)? Or did she follow Sylvia’s wishes, bumping off Nick and the others and keeping Sylvia to serve at her right hand?
Either way, it’s clear the cultists underestimated the power of the entity they were summoning, having more or less successfully controlled lesser beings in the past. Once summoned, it’s not clear what use the archangel/Matilda would have had for this hubristic bunch. As an aside, the archangel clearly came blessed with super-fast cleaning powers, given the mess the murders must have made. Graves certainly eyed that mop with suspicion.
The future
Supposedly this was conceived as a two-series show, although it’s difficult to imagine six more episodes being squeezed out of it. Where would Requiem go from here? Hal, Trudy and PC Graves teaming up to tame Evil Matilda? Matilda becoming an avenging angel, roaming north Wales and righting wrongs? On balance, I think I favour the idea of this remaining a cultish one-season oddity, destined for rediscovery in years to come.
