Endeavour series 9 ending explained
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Endeavour series 9 spoilers follow.
After nine seasons – and three more episodes than Inspector Morse ever had – it’s time to say goodbye to the younger Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans) as Endeavour the series comes to a close.
With the writers knowing that series nine would be the last, goodbyes are said, loose ends are tied up, and the occasional tear is shed (and we’re not just talking about the viewers’).
The final episode begins with Morse at Blenheim Vale, the abandoned boys’ boarding school that was first featured in series-two finale ‘Neverland’, and where the bodies of Josiah Landesman and his former secretary Brenda Lewis have just been found buried in the grounds.
Landesman was the property developer who was part of a paedophile ring that abused young boys at the school, including Morse’s former colleague, DS Peter Jakes (Jack Laskey). Morse believes Landesman may have also been responsible for the murder of pupil Peter Williams, whose body has never been found, and he promises Jakes that he will keep searching for him.
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Back at the police station, Thursday (Roger Allam) discusses the Blenheim Vale case with Superintendent Bright (Anton Lesser). Bright is surprised that Morse has known Jakes’ secret for years, but Thursday reminds him that Morse is “the soul of discretion. If a secret wants keeping, he’ll take it to the grave.” Hmm – think we should note that line down in our policeman’s pocketbook as it may be needed later.
It’s time for the murder of the week, and Morse is called to a house where it appears a man has accidentally fallen down the stairs to his death. While he is looking around, he checks out the Oxford Mail newspaper and notices something rather odd – there is already an obituary on one of the pages for the man who has only just died.
It turns out that the man’s death is linked to another seemingly accidental death, a victim whose death notice also appeared in the papers on the day he died. Morse concludes someone is bumping off educated people and bragging about it in advance in the press. (Morse solves the case during this episode – it turns out the murderer is a man with a grudge against just about anyone with an opinion – but it's just a sidebar to the main storylines that need to be wrapped up, so we’ll get back to those).
Thursday meets up with a former colleague who warns him to drop the investigation into Blenheim Vale, and he realises his family could be under threat so pulls some strings to get Jim Strange (Sean Rigby)– who is about to marry Thursday’s daughter Joan – posted to Kidlington (the way Strange says ‘Kidlington’ when offered the transfer makes it sound like the seventh circle of hell, but it’s actually a pretty village north of Oxford).
Thursday, who is also selling his house and moving away from danger himself, warns Morse that digging up the boys’ school grounds could be dangerous, but there is no telling our dogged Endeavour, who is determined to find young Peter's body and lay him properly to rest.
Thursday’s son, Sam (Jack Bannon), meanwhile, is still up to no good, stealing money from his mum’s purse, hanging out in a dodgy bar and storing little bags of suspicious white powder in his pockets. His dad goes to find him, and when Thursday returns home he’s not in the best of moods – and not particularly thrilled to find Morse in his house, either. (He would be even less pleased to discover Morse has gone there to talk to Joan, although lovelorn Endeavour doesn’t end up saying anything to her about his feelings anyway).
Thursday seems a bit dishevelled and short-tempered, leaving Morse confused and worried, especially as his boss had collapsed that afternoon and refused to get a medical check up. Their relationship is still strained at the police station next day, as Thursday warns Morse that the excavation for other dead bodies at Blenheim Vale will stop at the end of the month if no more evidence is found.
The pair are then sent to a bar – yes, the same dodgy one that Sam has been drinking in – as one of the patrons, a denim-clad biker, has been found dead outside with a knife sticking out of his chest and a bag of drugs in his jacket. It turns out his name is Raymond Kennet (aka Tomahawk), and he had a lengthy criminal record for drug dealing and assault.
Morse looks around the crime scene and finds a military jacket button – just like the ones on the jacket that Sam wears.
Back at the station, Bright says his final goodbyes as he heads off for retirement, and, while we all try and get rid of that lump in our throats, Morse heads to Jim and Joan’s wedding rehearsal and finds Joan there alone and no sign of her dad. Awkward.
That’s because Thursday’s off having a clandestine meeting with his brother Charlie (Phil Davis), who warns him off the Blenheim Vale investigation, and then police inspector Arthur Lott (Danny Webb), who first antagonised Morse in the pilot episode of Endeavour, appears and reveals he was also involved in a police plot that kept the influential members of the paedophile ring protected.
He threatens Thursday and his family and then starts shooting, supposedly as a warning, before speeding off. When Thursday looks around, Charlie has scarpered.
Morse has had a breakthrough on the Blenheim Vale investigation – the man who is registered as owning the building, Lionel Chambers, doesn’t exist. Endeavour has discovered that same name on a gravestone in the local church, belonging to a child who died in 1920.
It seems whoever owns Blenheim Vale had used the child’s birth certificate to gain a false identity, and all clues point to Arthur Lott… though thanks to his earlier secret meeting, Thursday already knows that.
Thursday confesses to Morse that he had given his life savings to an in-trouble Charlie a few years before, and in doing so had left himself open to blackmail from Charlie’s associates, including Lott – and that if he shuts down the investigation, Lott has told him he can have his money back and his family will be safe.
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If that wasn't stressful enough, it's now Jim Strange and Joan’s wedding day. Endeavour is moodily staring out of the window, Thursday and Sam are exchanging meaningful glances and everyone, including a now-retired Bright, plus pathologist Dr DeBryn (James Bradshaw) and journalist Dorothea Frazil (Abigail Thaw) are gathering at the church. Everyone, that is, except Morse, who has sent Jakes along with the ring to step in as Jim’s best man while he heads off in his Jag to a secret rendezvous at Blenheim Vale.
One there he meets Arthur Lott, who has a couple of bad guys lurking in the bushes. Morse tries to find out what happened to young Peter Williams’ body, but Lott says he wasn’t killed – instead he gave Peter to a family by the name of Kennet who adopted him. Oh no! It looks like the stabbed-to-death biker known as Tomahawk is the boy Morse has been searching for all these years.
Lott gives Morse a briefcase containing Fred’s savings – to finish the deal that means the end of the Blenheim Vale investigation – and then kicks Endeavour to the ground. Luckily for Morse (not for Lott) Kennet/Williams’ biker friends appear and the last we see of Lott is him being surrounded by them, presumably about to be beaten to a pulp, as Morse leaves them to it.
A little while later, a slightly battered Endeavour arrives at Joan’s wedding reception and locks eyes with the bride as he walks towards her.
“Truth is, I love you,” he says to her, “I’ve loved you from the first moment you opened that door and I should have told you. I should have said something… but now it is too late.”
“No, it’s not,” replies Joan, as they finally share a kiss after more than a decade of flirting and missed opportunities, and every Endeavour fan shouts ‘Yes! At bloody last!’ before the scene begins again… and we realise that what we have just seen is all in Morse’s imagination. Noooo! Damn you, Endeavour writers, damn you!
Instead of the romantic confession and kiss we’ve all been waiting for, this time around Morse doesn’t declare his feelings at all, and the pair just share a goodbye hug as a solitary tear rolls down Endeavour’s face and the moment is lost forever. And if you weren’t sobbing already, the camera then shows a solitary Morse standing watching the happy couple drive off, while Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ plays over the soundtrack. Gulp.
It’s now time for even more goodbyes. Morse rests in hospital following that beating by Lott, while Win and Thursday say goodbye to their home as they get ready to move on to pastures new.
Morse arrives to say farewell on his way to choir practice at Blenheim Palace, and says an emotional goodbye to Win, in case we haven’t had enough of those already. Sam tells him that he is going to try out for the police – a sign he is trying to clean up his act – and Thursday asks Morse if he has time for one last pint between colleagues.
In the pub, Thursday asks Morse if he can live with never knowing what happened to Peter Williams, unaware that Morse knows exactly what happened to him. “Someone once told me that not every question gets an answer,” Morse replies, “and the Peter Williams that Jakes knew died a long time ago.”
Thursday says that the bikers “did for” Lott, which we hope means he is dead, and Morse says he didn’t see what happened, and doesn’t know what happened to Charlie, either.
It seems that Morse is not going to tell his boss that the dead biker was actually Williams, and there’s a good reason why – he asks Thursday whether he thinks Tomahawk deserved his death. Morse reveals that he knows Sam didn’t kill the biker, and he has worked out that it was Thursday who really stabbed him.
Morse, crying, says “I know thee not, old man,” to his former mentor and a flashback reveals that Tomahawk threatened Sam behind the pub and Thursday, who had arrived looking for his son, tackled him and stabbed him after Sam had left.
Thursday says he doesn’t regret it and says Tomahawk “was nothing.” A horrified Morse almost reveals that Tomahawk was actually Peter Williams, but then he hesitates, and just says, “he was someone’s son.” To which Thursday replies, “But not mine.”
Endeavour says that Thursday’s secrets will stay safe with him (and we know from that Thursday/Bright conversation we noted down earlier that he speaks the truth), but the bikers may one day come for Sam, so he needs to disappear. Thursday says they will move much further away to keep him safe, and he asks Morse to keep an eye on Joan and Jim. Morse gives Thursday his missing money, and Thursday hands Morse his gun, which he places in the Jag.
“Endeavour,” says Thursday.
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“Morse, sir, just Morse,” Endeavour replies (a neat nod to the Inspector Morse series, where his first name was only mentioned once in the entire series) as the pair go their separate ways.
Later on, sat outside the church where Joan was just married, Endeavour loads the gun and as the camera moves away, a shot is fired, perhaps hinting that Morse contemplates ending his own life with everyone leaving him but – as we well know – decides against it.
As Bright, in voiceover, recites Shakespeare’s famous speech about the temporary nature of life, ‘Our revels are now ended…’ from The Tempest, the camera shows the empty police station, Bright’s empty chair, Morse at Blenheim Palace singing with the choir, and brief glimpses of some of Endeavour’s favourite characters, including a young Joan, Sam, Win and Thursday.
“Is that it?” Morse asks the choir leader as he goes to leave. “That’s it,” is the reply, and Morse gets in his black Jaguar and drives away.
Are you sobbing yet? If not, you will be soon as when he is leaving the palace grounds, Endeavour passes a red Jag going the other way and sees the driver reflected in the car’s rear view mirror. It’s older Endeavour – aka John Thaw – in a lovely nod to Endeavour’s first episode (where young Endeavour saw his older reflection), and a fitting (and heart-breaking) end to the prequel series.
Endeavour series 1-9 are available to stream on ITVX.
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