Previously on Season 1 of Guilt:
1x1 Pilot
1x2 #American Psycho
1x3 Exit Wounds
1x4 Blood Ties
1x5 Eye of the Needle
1x6/1x7 A Simple Plan / A Fall from Grace
1x8 Eyes Wide Open
1x9 The Crown v Atwood
1x10 What did you do? (Season Finale)
The first scene of the finale, written by Kathryn Price & Nichole Millard and Directed by Larry Shaw is a flashback of Molly who's on the phone and crying in the bathroom. “I don’t need your permission to do this, you don’t own me”. Grace strokes her face and begs her to come out to Diablo with her. “Don’t be lame Molly… come get murdered!” We then cut to the first scene of the pilot where Grace opens her eyes on the roof and the camera spins around her. What a cool opening.
Patrick is getting his guns ready for the third or fourth episode in a row while Kaley is getting her lingerie and her perfume on to meet with Theo. Theo lies that he promised “MUM’ to go to a meeting and can’t meet Charlotte and Philip tries to avert another disaster from ensuing. He’s one of the few characters with a conscience and he asks him “Do you understand the things I’ve had to do because you can’t control yourself?” Philip turns out to be the killer but it wasn’t Molly, it was Neville.
Theo confesses he went to her flat that night and saw her lying dead and removed the knife from her lifeless body. There’s a third person involved, of course. The DNA results of Jessica Marshall found traces of someone “we all know and love”. I could not have guessed that it was Luc Pascal but the foreshadowing of him slashing his painting right as we find out was top notch. Meanwhile, Grace is basking in the glow of running away from the prison but her dream slowly crumbles down to ashes when the Guard tells her she’ll never be able to contact Natalie ever again. He’s never going to let you leave and he’s essentially kidnapped you, babe.
Patrick's watching Kaley meet with Theo from the roof of the opposite building and aiming his rifle at the window. Kaley draws the curtains and tells him he deserves to be punished and Patrick loses his visual contact. Charlotte is being chased by the press and gets picked up by Philip. They're both done with Theo and instead of driving her to the palace he takes her to where Theo and Kaley are.
Luc is high off his mind and Scotland Yard is coming for them. Him being involved with Jessica Marshall’s murder is not shocking because this plot point was introduced only 3 episodes ago but what I did not see coming was what happens next: Bruno asks him if he killed Molly, which is a question I think we’ll be hearing a lot in this episode. He tells him he’ll never feel better until he tells the truth and so Luc does.
Luc’s the killer. He drugged Grace but she woke up when she wasn’t supposed to. Molly knew that he killed Jessica and he had to murder her to shut her up. A very disappointing revelation since Luc has been such an obvious and uninteresting candidate and there was no real build up. He confesses to the two murders in a matter of seconds and when he’s done he takes a knife and SLASHES HIS OWN THROAT. Bruno tries to save him because he needs evidence and Luc's last words are “I fed them to the dragon”.
Grace takes hold of the steering wheel and causes the van to crash into a building. The guard freaks out and feels betrayed because he's a pathetic wetwipe. Grace is calm cool and collected “you can start running, but it doesn’t sound like you have much of a head start”. Sorry Josh, it's your fault for trusting a convict you met a day ago.
The "Dragon" is not Roz, like I assumed but a take out place a few roofs next to Grace’s flat. Patrick’s about to killed the wrong guy when Charlotte walks in to find Kaley on top of the Prince. I honestly thought she was about to murder them both but neither Charlotte nor Patrick do anything. A loud bang echoes as Theo is shot by Patrick’s cousin (who wanted to avenge the Irish) and Charlotte literally doesn’t give a single damn.
Since Luc’s clothes matched with Molly Ryan’s EXTREMELY RARE blood type, the Judge clears the charges and Grace gets away in the nick of time. Innocent and not guilty, after all. Natalie’s ready to take her home (but if she does there will be no second season). There’s stolen glances and unspoken words between her and Bruno and I kinda liked them together.
Gwen is crying and I’m crying because I feel for her. She tells Bruno that the whole reason she became a prosecutor was to prevent innocent people getting hurt. He apologises but she tells him not to because she hates the way she doesn't hate him. This is how you develop your characters. They laugh and cry and flirt.
Vena knocks on Stan’s door to tell him he’s looked into his past and she’s figured it all out. He’s her FATHER. This was SO soapy but it works because it wasn’t dragged out and it gives us a chance to see more of Vena. She tells him years of abandonment can’t be fixed by a few juicy scandals and leaves him.
Grace is packing her things and says she still can’t believe it. Not sure if she means that Luc is a killer or that he dated such an idiot. She’s questioning the revelation and so am I. She tells Natalie she needs to go to their old flat so that she can pick up an old sweater which seems like a very obvious lie... Something wicked this way comes.
Grace walks up to her old flat, drawing a parallel to the night of the murder. She could be the one that ends up dead for all we know. Molly’s voice heralds her to their old bedroom. Is it a ghost? A voice recording? A videotape? It’s a projector playing a video of Roz and Molly. THEY WERE TOGETHER and here I was thinking Grace was the one who was romantically involved with Molly. Roz is in tears as she tells Grace her story. She couldn’t bear the thought of Molly being in love with Theo.
Grace pieces the rest together because she knows Roz wouldn’t get her hands dirty by getting rid of Molly herself. Roz ran the Courtenay and had power over Luc so she forced Luc to murder her. ROZ DID IT! “I needed her to be gone”. Grace gives her a warm smile which turns into a violent outburst. She attacks and tackles her to the floor and grabs an ashtray. There’s a new murder and Natalie saw all of it. Guilty or Innocent? Definitely Guilty after all.
My final prediction for the killer: Roz
The killer: Roz
I always thought Roz would be the killer because from the very beginning she’s always been in the background without casting any suspicion on herself. We never knew what her relationship with Molly was like and she was never called in for questioning by the police. I loved Roz and her big bad speech was amazing. The main theme of this season was love and it's the reason why Roz murdered Molly and then started dating a ginger Irish girl who looked just like her. Technically Luc is the one who killed Molly with the knife but as always, Luc only does what other people tell him to do because he’s a poorly drawn outline of a character.
Notes:
So, Freeform. How many queer female characters am I going to have to watch being bonked on the head on your shows? From the start I said, please don’t you dare touch Roz she’s the only compelling character on Guilt. The show doesn’t actually need Grace. Grace could have been the one that was murdered instead, leaving us with a more shocking development for the next season. There goes another one of my favourite queer female characters.
Favourite shot:
Molly says she doesn’t want to go to Diablo because she’s seen Roz DJ’ing a hundred times and Roz appears in the background, through the mirror. Very subtle and genius foreshadowing.
Favourite scene:
Roz’s confession in the bedroom that’s bathed in the blue light from the projector. The power play between her and Grace and the way they’re illuminated in different colours gave a really good climax to the big reveal.
Best quote:
Grace rests her head on Molly’s shoulder and gives her a big grin
“You only live once”
"What did you do?" Rating: 4/5
Season 1 Rating: 3/5
Initially, the show seemed to be a formulaic product of what a teen audience would enjoy: A murder mystery, a beautiful and mysterious protagonist, a sexy dirty cop, an angsty rogue guy wearing a leather jacket and a lot of sex. The finale was great and over the course of the first season most of the characters have been vastly improved from their initial shallow archetypes but Guilt did not surpass all the other good murder mysteries.
Next on Guilt:
As of now, I don’t know if the show will be renewed but should it go forward the finale left a lot of cliff-hangers for a second season to explore. Prince Theo and Charlotte, Kaley and Patrick, Stan and Vena, Natalie and Alex and of course the new murder. Season 1 was about finding out whether or not Grace killed someone and it looks like season 2 will be about whether or not Grace will get away with killing someone.
