Whelan chatted to RadioTimes.com about the twisted finale of The Tower 2: Death Message.

By Morgan Cormack

Published: Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 21:00 PM


*WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS FULL SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL EPISODE OF THE TOWER 2: DEATH MESSAGE AND HAS DISCUSSION OF RAPE WHICH SOME READERS MIGHT FIND UPSETTING.*

After four nights, we have finally gotten to the bottom of both DS Sarah Collins (Gemma Whelan) and PC Lizzie Adama’s (Tahirah Sharif) cases in The Tower 2: Death Message.

This season of the gripping ITV drama centred on crimes against women and explored the cold case of missing teenage girl Tania Mills, as well as the domestic violence against and unfortunate tragic killing of Georgina Teel (Rosa Coduri) at the hands of her partner Mark Brannon (Charley Palmer Rothwell) in the present day.

After the third episode, the hunt was well and truly on for Mark and the young daughter he shared with Georgina, Skye. But did Lizzie manage to find them, and similarly, did Sarah manage to figure out what happened to Tania Mills all those years ago?

Well, RadioTimes.com sat down to chat about the explosive finale with lead actress Gemma Whelan, who had previously teased to us that the finale is more “twisty” than you could possibly imagine.

Read on for a full breakdown of the finale of The Tower 2: Death Message.

The Tower 2: Death Message ending explained – Who killed Tania Mills?

Gemma Whelan as DS Sarah Collins and Niamh Cusack as Claire Mills in The Tower 2: Death Message, looking sad by some police tape
Gemma Whelan as DS Sarah Collins and Niamh Cusack as Claire Mills in The Tower 2: Death Message.
ITV

The finale kicks off after we’ve just seen that Tania Mills’s body has been found in Morville Park, namely in the memorial garden planted by music teacher Adrian Stephenson (Tristan Sturrock) and girls from Tania’s school in the ’90s.

Sarah was convinced that would be the place to find Tania’s body on account of the fact that Stephenson has never shown any interest in community work, and just so happened to plant the garden three days after Tania’s disappearance.

Sarah and DC Elaine Lucas (Ella Smith) then speak to Tania’s best friend at the time, Katherine Herringham (Rosalie Craig), to ask whether she knew about Stephenson’s abuse of Tania. Katherine admits that Tania told her that Stephenson had “persuaded her” to play the violin naked during their private lessons.

They go to Stephenson’s home to inform him about finding Tania’s body and then arrest him on the suspicion of her murder.

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After rescuing Lizzie from the threat of Mark (more on that below), Sarah and Elaine go to question Stephenson’s ex-wife Abigail Levy (Rebecca Calder) and find out that Abigail and Stephenson got married when she was young after meeting when she was in his youth orchestra, meaning she was likely his first victim.

The next day, Sarah and Elaine speak to Katherine again about the day of Tania’s disappearance, and she’s visibly teary as she recounts what Stephenson also did to her later that day. She says Stephenson drove her to a pub for lunch and got her wine, before sexually assaulting her.

But before that, Katherine explains that Tania was supposed to come round as they had plans to watch Princess Diana’s funeral together, but Stephenson got to Katherine’s home first, urging her to play the violin for him even though Tania was his ‘star pupil’.

Tania rang the doorbell and shouted that she knew Stephenson was there because she could see his car in the driveway. Stephenson went out to quieten her and she left. Katherine then tells Sarah and Elaine that Stephenson raped her.

Although she would like Stephenson to be nailed for Tania’s murder, she explains that he was with her the whole time. We then find out that the carpet that Tania’s body was found in was the very same carpet from Stephenson’s apartment at the time.

But Sarah is confused, because as his ex-wife Abigail doesn’t like him, why would she lie for him? Elaine then finds out from public records that their marriage certificate at the time falsified Abigail’s age, and she was actually 17 when they married and not 21.

They visit Abigail once again to question her about the day of Tania’s murder and ask what she was doing in their apartment when Tania came round to visit. Abigail explains that she slowly realised Tania was being abused by Stephenson and, overcome with anger, she shoved her down the stairs.

She left Tania’s body there and carried on drinking wine before passing out. When she woke up, Stephenson told her that he “saved” her by wrapping up the body and getting rid of it.