Well, that was quite the ending.
Steven Moffat’s series Inside Man has now come to a close, answering most of our questions while still leaving a couple somewhat open.
At the end of the last episode things looked pretty desperate for Harry Watling, while Jefferson Grieff was approaching his execution date. But how did things play out in the finale?
Read on for everything you need to know about the ending of Inside Man.
Why did Grieff kill his wife?
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Well, as it turns out… we still don’t know. Grieff (Stanley Tucci) told his former father-in-law that he would tell him where his daughter’s head was, only if he saved his life by stopping his execution.
Enraged, Grieff’s father-in-law beat him in the cell, with Casey allowing it to happen. Within three minutes, Grieff told him the location.
Casey then threatened Grieff’s father-in-law, telling him that if he didn’t help Grieff and save his life (provided the information was correct), he would pass footage of the assault on to the FBI.
However… we later found out he actually hadn’t given the correct address, and when quizzed on why he murdered his wife, Grieff said: “That’s a story for another day.”
So it seems that, at least for now, that mystery remains unsolved.
How did Beth find Janice?
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At the start of the episode, Grieff told Beth that he knew where Janice was “in principle”, but wouldn’t tell her what he had discovered. Similarly, Morag refused to tell her where they were going, simply saying they were on the way to “base camp”.
Morag took her to an apartment and left her there to go “shopping”. Then, when she later spoke to Grieff on the phone, she realised where she was – Janice’s apartment.
What was Mary’s fate?
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Mary realised that the email they sent from Janice’s address, cancelling her Skype call, was incriminating. Her phone was broken and her laptop was at Harry’s house, meaning she couldn’t have sent it from home as was written in the email.
Mary took the laptop from Harry along with Janice’s keys and went over to her house in order to plant it back there. However, when she got there, who should she find, but Beth!
The two faced off until Mary cut Beth with a bread knife. She then got a call from Ben and revealed to him what had really been on the memory stick.
Ben told her he was in the cellar, at which point his phone ran out of battery. Mary, realising her son was being poisoned down there, ran out of the apartment and tried to call Harry, but he missed it.
Beth approached her, at which point Mary frantically walked backwards into the road, shouting to be left alone. Then… smack. Mary was ploughed down by an oncoming vehicle, meeting a tragic fate and being killed instantly.
What happened with Ben and Janice in the basement?
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Down in the basement, Ben now knew most of the story and realised that Janice had assumed he or his dad had been a paedophile.
Enraged, and with the carbon monoxide poisoning which was messing with his head, Ben approached Janice with a hammer. She realised they were being poisoned and told Ben to switch the heater off, but he wasn’t listening.
He bashed Janice around the head with the hammer, leaving her seemingly murdered on the floor, just in time for Harry to rush down and find them both.
What happened to Harry?
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A frantic Harry rescued Ben from the cellar, reassuring him that he would confess and take the rap for Janice’s murder. Ben ran out on to the street where he threw up, only to be found by Morag, who had driven to the house.
Meanwhile, down in the cellar, Harry called the police to confess. At the same time, he realised Janice was in fact alive and that he had now to finish the job and kill her, to stop her from revealing it had been Ben that attempted to murder her.
Raising the hammer and ready to slam it down on her hand, Harry was about to cross that final line when he was suddenly stopped by Beth, who had come to the house and got in the front door that Ben had left open.
Harry violently confronted her, shouting that he was a loving husband and father and that she was insulting him by being afraid of him. Seeming that he could be about to murder not only Janice but also Beth, he was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of three men with spades and an axe, entering the basement.
In a subsequent video interview with Grieff from a prison in the UK, Harry was informed that the men had been sent by Grieff’s father-in-law. He had given him the wrong location to find his wife’s head and actually sent the men in search of Janice, ruining his chance at saving his own life in order to save hers.
He had deduced that as there was no missing persons report, Janice must be at the last location she was supposed to show up at – that being her appointment at the vicarage for Ben’s maths tutoring session.
Grieff said he now wanted to speak to Harry because murderers interest him, reminding him that if he hadn’t acted the way he did, Mary may still be alive.
And then, with one final speech from Grieff about humanity’s capacity for murder, that’s it, the series is done. Or is it…
Wait, what?
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In a final mid-credits sting, Grieff was visited by a new client… Janice. She told him that she wanted him to help her with a case regarding the murder of her husband, but when told that her husband isn’t actually dead, she said: “No, but he deserves to be.” She asked whether Grieff could help her with that, to which he asked: “How can I help?”
The scene throws up so many questions. Janice has a husband? She wants him murdered? We know this scene takes place two weeks after the main action of the series, as Grieff now has one week left until his execution rather than three. But does this mean we’ll get another season following up on this seemingly very different story? We guess we’ll have to wait and see.
All four episodes of Inside Man are available on BBC iPlayer now. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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