Aahana Swrup
‘Dept. Q’ is a crime thriller show in which an exceptional detective opens a cold case that leads him down a hot trail. DCI Carl Morck has a high solve rate and low people skills. As a result, when he returns to work after a traumatic shooting incident, a new department dealing with old cases becomes the ideal place to keep him out of sight and out of mind. However, what is meant to be a PR stunt quickly promises to bear real fruits once Carl recruits a ragtag team for himself, including Detective Rose and Civilian Akram. Consequently, the long-buried case of one Merritt Lingard, a prosecutor who went missing four years ago, begins to unravel, promising to unearth deep-held secrets. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Dept Q Season 1 Recap
In an unfortunate twist of fate, DCI Mork and Hardy respond to an emergency call about a dead body found in Leith Park. Soon after they enter the crime scene with a young local cop, Anderson, a masked man attacks, emptying his bullets on all three officers. While the latter dies, the two detectives survive, with the incident leaving Hardy paralyzed. Naturally, his partner emerges from the attack traumatized but stiffly unwilling to work through it in his department-mandated therapy sessions. Meanwhile, the investigation into the Leith Park shooting continues, hitting a wall. Similar low case rates, caused by systemic underfunding, put Chief Moira Jacobson under pressure from her superiors.
Thus, when the opportunity arises to get a shiny new budget by opening up a new department, focused on solving PR-friendly cold cases, Moira eagerly accepts it. Soon enough, a recently returned-to-work Carl finds himself solo-helming the department. The abandoned shower quarters in the precinct’s basement become his office, perfectly summarizing the hokey nature of the entire thing. Still, his assistant, Akram Salim, a Syrian refugee with many peculiar talents, picks out Merritt Lingard’s case from a mounting pile and insists they can solve it and even find the woman alive. Unbeknownst to Carl, his assistant’s intuition is right as Merritt remains alive and held prisoner in a torture chamber.
Merritt’s captors have been forcing her to dig deep into her past in isolation so that she can confess to the particular sin that has brought her to this nightmare. Yet, even after four years and multiple guesses, she has gotten nowhere. In her line of work, the prosecutor had made many enemies and even more mistakes. Carl and his team, which eventually includes Rose, the previously-benched detective, uncover these mistakes and more. William, Merritt’s brother, remains a crucial point in the investigation, since he was the last person to see her aboard the ferry, from which she went missing. However, his inability to continue efficiently due to his aphasia poses some prominent problems.
Furthermore, they also discover various other facets of the prosecutor’s life, most of which revolve around her last case concerning one Graham Finch. The man was on trial for his wife’s murder, for which he was ultimately found innocent. His blatantly corrupt means of winning the case compel Carl to wonder if he is involved in her disappearance. Yet, even once that loose thread, involving other players like the wronged almost-witness Kirsty Atkins and Merritt’s mentor, Lord Advocate Stephen Burns, is tied up, the detectives are no closer to finding Merritt. Eventually, a breakthrough discovery regarding Sam Haig, a crime journalist who died one day after Merritt’s disappearance, leads to an epiphany. Carl and his team realize that the answer to the prosecutor’s abduction lies not in her risky career, but rather in her small-town childhood.
Dept. Q Ending: Why Was Merritt Abducted? Who Took Her?
Merritt was abducted four years ago from a ferry between Edinburgh and Mhor. She had recently lost the Finch case and had been receiving numerous threatening text messages and emails. For the same reason, she decided to get away from the city with her brother, William. However, by the end of the ride, she had disappeared entirely from the ferry without any trace. In the aftermath, Fergus Dunbar investigated her case but came to no real conclusions. At the end of it all, the case went cold with the general assumption being that Merritt was likely dead by now. Nonetheless, an inkling told Akram that the story wasn’t that clear-cut. Even after her public loss against Finch, Merritt was at the top of her career and had a brother she loved and cared for deeply.
Therefore, there’s no real reason that the prosecutor would either jump off the ferry on her own or abandon her old life. The added fact that no dead body has been found in the following years, despite dedicated searches, proves to him that Merritt must still be alive and likely held captive. As it turns out, his theory is completely on the mark. Merritt has been held captive inside a Hyperbaric chamber for four years, with her captors keeping watch on her. They’re eager to have her repent for the exact misgiving that made them kidnap her. Yet, she has wronged enough people in her life that she keeps guessing at the end of every month and still falls short.
Merritt assumes that whoever has kidnapped her must hold a grudge against her for the morally ambiguous or straight-up unethical things she has done in her career as a prosecutor. However, the reality is something entirely different. The prosecutor had a tough childhood in Mhor after she lost her mother at a young age and her father turned away from his children and toward alcohol. In those times, she only had one person she could rely on: Harry Jennings, an equally tortured teen. She told him about her desire to run away, but her inability to do so without any money. Moreover, she told him about her mother’s various diamond rings that could set her up for life if only she were gutsy enough to steal them.
Harry broke into the Lingard residence shortly after this conversation to rob it. Unexpectedly, William was in the house at the time and got caught in the middle of the robbery. In the end, the young Lingard got beaten up so severely that he sustained brain damage and developed aphasia, a neurological language disorder. Afterward, in trying to evade arrest, Harry took a ferry from Mhor and ended up drunkenly jumping into the water and to his death. For years, his mother and his brother, Lyle, blamed Merritt for what happened to him. As such, when she finally became a prosecutor and began talking about justice and its inevitability, the mother, Ailsa, decided to make her pay for her perceived wrong against her son.
Aisla already had unconventional methods of punishing her sons, namely locking them inside their family-owned Hyperbaric chamber, which can be used for isolation and torture through atmospheric pressure. Consequently, she applies this same approach to punishment toward Merritt and locks her up in the chamber to make her relive her worst mistakes. She believes the prosecutor is rotten to the core and is prepared to witness her brutal death inside the chamber to earn a sense of vengeance over Harry’s death.
Who is Behind the Leith Park Attack?
While Carl’s investigation into Merritt’s disappearance remains at the center of the narrative, the mystery of the Leith Park attack unfurls in the background. Unlike the former, Carl isn’t allowed to investigate this case, but he still manages to put in his two cents every now and then. On the day of the attack, Carl and Hardy coincidentally responded to Inspector Anderson’s emergency call about Mr. Allen’s murder. The cop himself was checking up on an emergency call from Allen’s daughter, who had grown concerned for her father after he failed to respond to her routine check-ins. Once Anderson arrived at his residence, he found the man dead in his living room with a knife sticking out of his head.
Shortly after Carl and Hardy arrived on the scene and began looking around, a masked man ambushed them and fired his shots. In the end, Anderson died, Hardy was shot in the spine, and Carl took the same bullet to his neck. While the former detective developed paralysis in most of his body, the latter walked away from the incident with grave survivor’s guilt. Initially, a woman steps forward as a witness, claiming to have seen a masked man emerging from the house in the aftermath of the shooting. Nonetheless, she soon withdraws her statement, likely due to outside threats. Either way, it puts the investigation, helmed by DCI Bruce, back to square one.
Over time, Carl’s tidbits of observations and theories create a more comprehensive picture. His inspection reveals that Allen actually never had a daughter, and so Anderson’s claim of a routine check-up was a work of complete fabrication. Furthermore, he asserts that since none of them heard the attacker in the house, despite the backdoor sporting many obstacles, it must mean that he was waiting for them inside all this time. This means all this time there were two assailants on the scene, one who fired the gun and another who drove the getaway car.
Consequently, the most logical conclusion remains that Allen’s murder might have simply been the bait used to commit the real crime. Nonetheless, this is where the investigation comes to a halt. Since both Carl and Hardy were on the scene by coincidence, neither of them was likely the actual target. Although this leaves Anderson as the only possible target, little is known about his affiliations and background to form a firm speculation. Thus, for now, the case remains open without any promising leads. The contrast between Carl’s ability to solve Merritt’s cold case and his inability to contribute meaningfully to the investigation into his own attack remains reflective of his tortured psyche, a trait that will likely follow the detective well into his future.
Do Carl and Akram Save Merritt? Does She Die?
Ailsa and Lyle keep Merritt imprisoned inside the Hyperbaric chamber for years before Carl even opens her case back up again. Yet, with those years, their lair’s maintenance also deteriorates. As a result, the prosecutor finds a small window to attempt an escape through the pressurized access hatch. Even though she manages to overpower the aging Ailsa, Lyle knocks her frail and underfed body down a peg with ease, returning her to the chamber. Afterward, they finally reveal the reason for her imprisonment. However, instead of any guilt or regret for her actions, as she has shown for the past four years, Merritt refuses to take any blame for Harry’s actions.
While Ailsa insists that her son only did what he did for Merritt, whom he loved dearly, the latter refuses to take the blame for her boyfriend’s actions, especially after what he did to William. As a result, Ailsa and Lyle grow further agitated. Worse yet, soon after Constable John comes knocking on their door, responding to an emergency call Merritt had managed to make during her earlier escape attempt. Consequently, after some snooping, he realizes that the prosecutor has been trapped and tortured inside the family’s Hyperbaric chamber all this time. As it turns out, he had known that Lyle was involved in her disappearance. However, the officer was under the assumption that the younger Jennings brother had simply witnessed Merritt falling overboard from the ferry.
For the same reason, he had helped hide his connection to the Jennings family all this time. Once he discovers the truth, he decides he can’t turn a blind eye anymore, which leads to his death at Lyle’s hands. Consequently, the mother-son duo realizes John’s death will inevitably bring the wrong kind of attention their way. Therefore, they decide to abandon their family grounds and go on the run. Before emptying the place, Ailsa decides to deliver Merritt to her death by lowering the atmospheric pressure in her chamber, ensuring a slow and stifling death. Meanwhile, an investigation into Sam Haig leads Carl and his team to finally learn about Lyle Jennings, Harry’s troubled brother, who showcases signs of mental disturbance and violence from a young age.
They further uncover the fact that Lyle had been catfishing Merritt by pretending to be the crime journalist weeks before her disappearance. Consequently, they decide to pay the Jennings’ a visit. During the car ride over, Rose discovers that Lyle had previously lured another teenager to his family’s Hyperbaric chamber in an attempt to kill him. Thus, they realize there’s a strong possibility that his latest victim, Merritt, might have also met a similar fate. Eventually, all these puzzle pieces fall into place, leading Carl and Akram to discover the lair, which holds the prosecutor’s prison chamber. In the end, after surviving an ambush attack from Lyle, Akram and Carl manage to save their missing person, finally winning her freedom from her cruel and torturous detainment.
Did Finch Kill His Wife? How Did He Get Away With the Murder?
Even though Merritt’s disappearance ends up having little to do with her professional work, a conspiracy was indeed afoot surrounding her last case as a prosecutor. There had always been certain gaps in the original investigation. Despite being a high-profile case, it was handed to a virtual nobody detective in the department. Still, even Dunbar managed to pick up the dubious threads connecting Merritt and Graham Finch. The latter was a wealthy businessman who was on trial for the murder of his wife. The prosecutor had a detrimental witness against him, Kirsty Atkins, who was dropped at the last second.
Kirsty was a criminal lowlife who met Finch’s wife, Andrea, at a women’s shelter. As the two got close, she learned all about her husband’s abuse and even saw the scars the wife had to show for it. Down the road, when Kirsty got arrested around the same time as when Finch went on trial, she offered up this information to Merritt and even agreed to testify in court. Nonetheless, the lawyer turned her back on the offer at the last second. As it turns out, her mentor Graham convinced her that the witness’ testimony in court won’t amount to anything given her dubious background. Unbeknownst to her, at the time, the Lord Advocate was also being threatened by Finch, who had sent his goons after Graham’s daughter.
Likewise, Finch also sent out a hit on Kirsty at the prison, which resulted in a brutal attack that left her blinded in one eye and forever silenced. In the end, he had indeed killed his wife and used his money and means to threaten anyone from proving his involvement in the crime. Even so, out of everyone he threatened, Merritt, his direct enemy in the public eye, wasn’t one of them. Carl’s investigation helps him uncover all of this with varying amounts of evidence to back it up. Yet, in the end, he can’t really go after Finch. The man can no longer be tried for Andrea’s murder since he has already been proven innocent. The only way he can be arrested for a crime is if Kirsty decides to pursue him for planning the attack on her, which is highly unlikely.
Why Did Lyle Kill Sam? Why Did He Steal His Identity?
One crucial part of Lyle and Ailsa’s plan to exact their revenge on Merritt included the former incorporating him into his target’s life without her noticing. In order to do so, he tricked the prosecutor into believing he was Sam Haig, a crime journalist who bore a striking resemblance to him. Lyle met the other man at a camp for troubled boys, where the two got in frequent fights. In the aftermath of Harry’s death, his brother suffered greatly, unable to reconcile with the fact that the other boy is really gone. Consequently, he would often confuse Sam Haig for Harry, which led to intense tension between them. In fact, on one instance, Sam beat Lyle up so bad, he turned one of his eyes black permanently.
Years later, after they grew up and Sam carved out a career for himself as a successful crime journalist, he decided to write a book about his time in the Godhaven camp. Therefore, he reached out to Lyle to make amends and get his permission to pen down their shared past. Thus, he ended up on the Jennings’ radar. The latter realized he could use the journalist’s already well-hidden identity to get closer to Merritt. As such, he was able to form a close connection with her and learn about her life, including her plans to take the ferry to Mhor on the fateful day of her disappearance. After kidnapping the prosecutor, Lyle went back to kill Sam to ensure no one could track the reporter back to him, even if they learn about his apparent connection to Merritt.
What Happened to William? How Did He Develop Aphasia?
As it turns out, Lyle Jennings is a master of making himself invisible. He infiltrates Merritt’s life, but hides behind Sam Haig’s name. Similarly, he did the same thing years ago on the night of the robbery at the Lingard house. After Harry drove out to sneak into Merritt’s house, his brother followed after him. Therefore, he was there when William inadvertently smashed a hockey stick on Harry’s head, believing him to be an intruder. Although the entire thing could have been shrugged off as an accident, Lyle decided to act impulsively and attack William with brutality.
Lyle had always retained a potential for great violence, as evidenced by the neighbor’s dog he murdered at a young age. That night, he unleashed the same violence on William and beat him to near-death. By the time Harry was able to drag his brother away, the damage had already been done. In the end, the older brother decided to bear the cross instead of Lyle to spare him the consequences of his actions. William always remembered the real culprit behind his attack, but could never share his identity due to his own condition. For the same reason, he started showing signs of distress when he spied the younger Jennings brother on the ferry to Mhor.
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