The latest season of Inside No. 9 is almost over, with the penultimate episode enlisting Spaced alum Jessica Hynes for a story about a mother and son with a troubled relationship.
One fateful day, a mysterious stranger named Bob (Steve Pemberton) turns up at the door and begins lending a hand in their lives, but can he heal the rift that has grown between them?
Co-creators Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have added a number of big name stars to the Inside No. 9 cast in season 7, with recent episodes featuring Sophie Okonedo, Jason Isaacs and Diane Morgan, among others.
For all the details, read on – but be warned that spoilers follow.
Inside No. 9 ending explained: A Random Act of Kindness
Viewers would be forgiven for feeling slightly uneasy about Bob, who appears at Helen’s door one afternoon with an injured bird and appears to know more about her son than he initially lets on.
Fortunately, his intentions are broadly good, as we learn in a shock twist that he is an older version of Zach from many decades in the future.
After becoming a science whizz, he was able to harness the power of black holes to travel back in time and implore Zach to be kinder to his mother, informing the teenager that his mother is dying of terminal cancer.
In the original timeline, Zach’s guilt over his treatment of his mother haunts him for his entire life and he wants nothing more than to fix how things ended between them.
The older Zach takes his own life after telling his younger self the mammoth secret, in a move which he hopes will close the loop and correct history.
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It appears for a moment that he has been successful as we are then shown a vision of the future in which Zach pioneered a miracle cancer cure that helped his mother live happily well into her 90s.
Additionally, Zach himself seems far more content as he no longer lives with an intrusive form of OCD which caused him to repeat the double letters in any word he spoke – likely developed as a result of his aforementioned guilt.
However, at his mother’s wake, a scientist named Rudolph (Reece Shearsmith) confronts him about his meddling with the timeline, which he is aware of only due to a message left on his phone by his former self.
It explained that Rudolph and Zach created time travel technology together, which the latter then used for his own personal goals, which has the consequence of eradicating their meeting.
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Rudolph is particularly angry about this as he is far less successful and respected in the new timeline, reduced to making online videos for children as opposed to conducting groundbreaking research.
Pulling out a futuristic gun, he attacks Zach and the two get into a scrap in his childhood kitchen. Cut back to the present day: while we don’t learn exactly how their fight ended, the implication is things did not go well for Zach.
Once again we see a bird fly into the upstairs window of Helen’s house and seriously injuring itself in the process, but this time, older Zach does not appear to retrieve it and ask his mother for help nursing it back to health.
Therefore, it seems that Rudolph was successful in stopping him from travelling back to prevent his regretful actions, meaning the younger Zach is doomed to repeat the same mistreatment of his ill-fated mother.
Inside No. 9 season 7 concludes on BBC Two at 10pm on Wednesday 1st June 2022. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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