Exeunt

The final episode begins with something odd in the Oxford Mail: death notices that appeared before the deaths, each carrying a cryptic message, each death looking accidental. Morse follows the notices to a series of funerals and then behind the curtain at a funeral directors', and the closer he gets, the more the case forces him to confront mortality, his own included.

Thursday is dealing with confrontations of a different order. A former colleague warns him to stop the investigation into Blenheim Vale, and his past starts closing in from every direction. He resorts to desperate measures to protect the people he loves most, and the Blenheim Vale case ends in a way nobody predicted. Around them the institution is shifting: Strange looks set for a transfer to Kidlington, and Bright is eyeing retirement. What that leaves for Morse and Thursday is the question the whole episode keeps circling.

The farewell, when it comes, is quiet and exactly right. Morse bids goodbye to his mentor and drives off in his black Jaguar, passing a familiar-looking red one on the way.

Russell Lewis wrote it, Kate Saxon directed. Mo Sesay is Reverend Thamwood, Brian Pettifer is Jephthah Claypole, Will Brown is Hal Claypole, Victoria Alcock is Violet 'Vi' Bingley, Jack Bannon is Sam Thursday, Caroline O'Neill is Win Thursday, Sara Vickers is Joan Thursday, and Meg Kubota is Dr Andrea Massey.

For a farewell, the episode keeps its focus small and human: death notices, funerals, a man reckoning with his own endings. Thursday's desperate measures are the episode's emotional core, and the Blenheim Vale conclusion arrives with a quiet finality rather than a bang. Strange's transfer and Bright's retirement talk give the station a sense of dissolution that makes the farewell to the mentor land harder than any of the violence.

Professional departures and personal weight, all of it landing at once, and a finale that understands what it owes its characters.