The podcasting trio were given quite the task with this mystery, but how did things end up for them?
*Warning: This article contains full spoilers for the ending of Bodkin.*
Across its seven episodes, Bodkin takes us on quite the true crime rollercoaster as we delve into the mysterious disappearances of some of the small town’s residents.
The Netflix series centres on podcast host Gilbert (Will Forte), investigative journalist Dove (Siobhán Cullen) and producer Emmy (Robyn Cara) who travel to Bodkin to investigate the disappearances of three strangers in the Irish town.
All happening during the town’s annual Samhain celebration, were they connected? And who was to blame?
As we see in the show’s final episodes, tensions between the team and the locals are at an all-time high, so there’s plenty left to uncover in the finale. Read on for a full breakdown of Bodkin’s final episode.
Bodkin ending explained: What happened to Gilbert, Dove and Emmy?
The finale kicks off with Dove in a prison cell with Gilbert, who is recording more of his podcast and is happy that they’ve solved the mystery.
Dove admits to Gilbert that her mother was a heroin addict and in her moment of honesty, opens up about the workplace investigation that she was initially sent away for.
The case in question was all about governmental corruption, and she reveals that one of her main sources, Krtek, told her to kill the story, but she told him she could protect his anonymity and guarantee his safety. She then recounts how she found him dead but that, even though he was hanging there, she spotted his laptop and couldn’t resist the opportunity to get the evidence of the corruption going on in the higher levels of government.
She admits she took his laptop and left him there for someone else to find. Gilbert is shocked by the story and concludes that Krtek killed himself because of Dove. But she’s angry at that sentiment and the pair get into a heated exchange about the ethics of both of their forms of journalism. An officer interrupts them and informs Gilbert that he is being released from prison but Dove is kept pending extradition.
Meanwhile, Seamus (David Wilmot) breaks into Mrs O’Shea’s home and threatens Sean because of their eel smuggling operation going awry and Seamus being chased by Interpol agents masking as yakuza buyers. Once he’s left, Mrs O’Shea eventually opens up to Gilbert and Emmy about her past and the promise she kept to Fiona of Seamus never having anything to do with her child.
That’s right, Sean is actually Seamus and Fiona’s son but was taken in by Mrs O’Shea, a nun at the convent who left after claiming she was adopting a Romanian child. All was revealed in episode 6 when Maeve explained that Fiona died during childbirth and was buried on the grounds of the convent and Emmy quickly cottoned on to the true identity of Mrs O’Shea’s son being Sean.
Mrs O’Shea admits to Emmy and Gilbert that she was the one who burnt her son Sean’s car, tried to get the trio out of town and burnt Seamus’s boat, but nothing worked to get Seamus to leave Sean alone. She tells Emmy to talk to Sean to try and get him to give back Seamus’s eels.
But Mrs O’Shea says that Sean can never find out that Seamus is his father, with Gilbert saying she has his word but also, we see he’s recording their conversation.
Later at the festival, Gilbert tells Seamus that Sean is his son and the pair try to make it to Sean before the other heavies do. When they find him, although he can reel off lots of facts about Romania, Seamus tells him that he’s not Romanian and is actually his son.
Mrs O’Shea arrives and steps in front of Sean, telling Seamus to leave them alone, but he points a gun at Mrs O’Shea. About to shoot, he misses and instead shoots Sean’s thumb off. The police arrive ready to arrest Seamus after Dove, who is working with Interpol and has been released, has notified them of his whereabouts. But Seamus points the gun at Gilbert’s head and runs off with him as a hostage.
Confronting Gilbert, Seamus is disgusted to see that Gilbert is still recording everything on his dictaphone. Similarly, Emmy lies to Interpol that she’s recording their conversation but is simply bluffing to get them to leave her and Dove alone.
The Samhain festival is well underway and Seamus uses the noise and distraction of it to take Gilbert and tie him up underground in a bunker. There, Seamus reveals he’s got a bomb and sets it off to detonate, leaving Gilbert there besides it.
Tracking Gilbert to the location – but overground – Dove and Emmy eventually find him underground and also find the bomb. Emmy tries her best to evacuate the area above and has to pour a drink on the DJ’s decks to bring some attention to what’s going on, eventually enlisting Teddy to sing a song which helps lead the procession out of the festival.
And it’s just in time, as the bomb does go off in the trailer, raining parts of eel on everyone. Speaking about the inclusion of the eel storyline, showrunner Alex Metcalf told Tudum: “Once we realised that eels were the biggest wildlife-smuggling crime in the world based in Northern Europe and Ireland, we were like, ‘How can we not do this?’ It’s so absurd and wonderful.”
Gilbert wasn’t in the trailer after all and is fine, much to Emmy and Dove’s relief. The next day, we see him doing some narration for the podcast, talking about how far he’d go for the story and how he’s got nothing from it in return. He then throws his dictaphone into the water and admits to Emmy that he has no idea what he’s now going to do in his career.
Back home, Emmy’s at work in the Guardian offices and, instead of accepting just praise from her boss over her investigations in Bodkin, she says she wants to join the Special Investigations team and doesn’t take no for an answer.
Back in Bodkin, we see Mrs O’Shea try to tell Sean about his ‘real mum’, but he says he already knows about her, meaning Mrs O’Shea and not the story about Fiona.
Dove also visits the convent that she was raised in and is surprised when a nun tells her that Sister Geraldine kept all of her stories in a scrapbook. But she’s even more surprised when she’s handed a box of her old toys from her time there. The nun asks Dove how long she plans to stay there and Dove says that she’s actually working on a new podcast about the nun in question, bringing out her dictaphone.
Although we’ve seen her afraid of the image of a wolf throughout the series, she sees it one last time and isn’t scared, signalling that she’s ready to create a new story.
What happened to Malachy, Fiona and Greta?
With so much going on in the series, you may have missed what happened in the main case – the disappearance (and eventual death) of the two bodies found in Garda Sergeant Power’s (Denis Conway) car.
While initially believed to have been the bodies of Seamus’s brother Malachy and his girlfriend Fiona, we actually found out that the female body was that of a tourist named Greta. But how did she end up dead with Malachy and in the boot of Power’s car many years later?
Well, back in the ’90s on the night of Samhain, Seamus received a threatening call from rival Northern Irish family, the McArdles. It was revealed that Seamus was actually Jackie McFadden, a major Northern Irish smuggler whose rivalry with the McArdles was set to reach a head. Fearing for the safety of his brother and girlfriend, he told them to leave Bodkin.
But on the night in question, Power’s son Teddy and Malachy got into a fight over Fiona and Teddy killed Malachy with a brick. Power helped his son and said he’d get rid of Malachy’s body but driving on the way to do so, he hit and killed Greta. So, he put her body in the boot of his car also and then drove his car into the lake, only to be found years later.
As for Fiona, we know she was Sean’s biological mother and was pregnant with Sean at the time but found solace in the convent on Inish Mac Thiere, staying there until her birth. Fiona unfortunately died during childbirth but told Mrs O’Shea, one of the nuns there at the time, to look after Sean and keep him away from Seamus.
Bodkin is now available to stream on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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