Happy Valley finale

What an absolutely electrifying ending. Sally Wainwright masterfully wrongfooted viewers, while the show's star was outstanding. Baftas surely beckon.

He had been blackmailing a pupil to send them, which put his grooming of Ryan and predatory looks into chilling light. Alison came good, as we knew she would, and found out that she had brought them from that “funny little fella” who runs the local pharmacy. He was “untouchable” and “Teflon” no longer. The final straw came when Tommy claimed he had loved Becky and blamed Catherine for driving them apart. Catherine triumphantly told Tommy that Ryan had seen through him (“That boy is a prince”). Many commenters had predicted a three-way face-off, paralleling the series one finale, or predicted he would lure Tommy into a trap. A hint that he will follow his grandmother into the force? He now realised she had given Ryan “a nice life”. Having found blood all over the house and bone fractures during the postmortem on Joanna Hepworth (Mollie Winnard), DSI Shepherd deduced that the toxic PE teacher Rob (Mark Stanley) had been beating her for years and brought him in for questioning. When he spotted a petrol can in the car, he snuck back to arm himself with Surroje’s beetroot knife. From the backseat, Tommy managed to stop the vehicle using the handbrake, but Zeljko drew his own blade (not one for chopping veg) and closed in for the kill. The day before her well-earned retirement, Sgt Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) woke up on the cramped couch of Alison Garrs (Susan Lynch) after a mere two hours’ kip.

“Most people just bow out quietly on their last day of duty,” the Detective Superintendent tells Sgt Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) on her retirement ...

As for Catherine, she will no longer lie awake at night, wondering what awful death or torture Tommy will mete out on her, or, what she might end up doing to him in a fit of anger, bringing her down to his level. It’s a tour de force performance from both Norton (sure to go down as one of TV’s best villains) and Lancashire, as the two characters who, above all, are absolutely exhausted; physically and mentally beaten down by living in this way. There are echoes back to the very first scene of the first series, where a drunk and drugged up man douses himself in petrol, threatening to kill himself. The past 24 hours had apparently also given him some time for reflection, and after looking at photos of Becky, Catherine’s daughter who he abused and raped, and later died by suicide, and 16 years of Ryan, his biological son, and the life he missed seeing, he began to cry. [some to theorise there would be a big arson attack](https://twitter.com/Nacnud321/status/1620130345680240640), with Tommy or Catherine going down in a blaze of horror. Oh, and she’s got a couple of other local murder sub-plots to tie up, but she’ll get to that in a sec.

Happy Valley season 3 has drawn to a close with an explosive finale, but how did the BBC drama end? Details about the final episode, plus who died.

[subscribe now](http://radiotimes.com/magazine-subscription?utm_term=evergreen-article). [Faisal](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/happy-valley-faisal-master-plan-newsupdate/), in the final moments of the episode when Catherine and Andy are talking, she notifies him about the fact he's been dealing drugs out of his small pharmacy. Catherine of course already knows, but tells him that she knows about his plans to flee the country with the teen. Ryan thoughtfully confronts Catherine later on about her treatment of Clare (Siobhan Finneran), telling Catherine also about Ann's (Charlie Murphy) emotional confrontation with him the previous evening. [fan theories](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/happy-valley-catherine-death-fan-theory/) have circulated for six long weeks as to [how the series will end](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/happy-valley-alternative-endings-spoilers-newsupdate/), nobody could have quite guessed how it would all go down. While Mike (Rick Warden) texts her about Tommy, we can't help but spy that Catherine has made plans to go off to "the highlands" on Saturday, getting a much needed post-retirement break after all. In the conversation, Catherine admits that she shouldn't have been frightened of Ryan meeting Tommy. It's not part of the plan and angers him so much that he manages to kill Marco and Viktor all from the backseat of the car that Zeljko is driving. She falls asleep and like a scene out of a jumpscare horror, Tommy appears directly behind her, peering in through the window. It's in the police station, though, that Ryan really turns a corner and it all kicks off after being complimented by Detective Superintendent Andy Shepherd (Vincent Franklin) who says there's "something about him" that made him think the teen was a new police recruit. Zeljko and Tommy have a very tense face-off which sees them drawing their knives like a duel, and for one moment, you think that Zeljko could actually kill Tommy. The episode then gets going properly with Ryan looking pensive the morning after speaking to his fugitive father.

TLR or Tommy Lee Royce has his fate revealed in the final episode of Happy Valley...

The love and stability that both she and her sister Clare had shown him throughout his life, even when nobody else would, had in fact had an immeasurable impact. Whether it was because he was too injured and incapacitated, or because he really was putting Ryan's needs first is anyone's guess. What's more, he's decided to forgive her for keeping Ryan a secret. Calling back to the season-one finale, he decided that he'd rather die than land himself back in prison. Tommy had become something of a liability for big bad Darius Knezevic, who'd seemingly ordered his brother to, shall we say, get rid. But this time, rather than trying to take Ryan and Catherine down with him on a canal boat, he opted for a more sentimental approach.

After six weeks of gripping television, the third and final series of BBC drama Happy Valley has come to an end. The popular show, written by Sally ...

Lisa Braund said: “#HappyValley well that was a huge disappointment. When a TV drama masterpiece like this gets the ending it deserves, there’s nothing better.” Well done @Calderdale playing a key part as a Character with all the locations.”

There was a warning from a BBC announcer at the start of the final episode of Happy Valley on Sunday night.

f**k I feel sick," with another tweeting: "“Prolonged violent scenes” uh oh" With strong violence, prolonged violent scenes and scenes that some viewers might find upsetting, for one last time let's head to Happy Valley." Seconds before it started, they issued a warning to viewers, saying: "What does fate have in store for Catherine then?