Episode 7

With time running out, AC-12 attempts to unmask H, the fourth individual commanding the network of corrupt officers behind Gail Vella's murder. The finale has been building towards this since the season began, and the episode does not waste a minute of its length. The cover-up, however, has powerful friends, and the forces working against the team are as organised as the corruption itself. The team has been chasing this name for a long time, and the chase has cost them pieces of themselves.

The episode is a race against the clock and against the people who control the clock. The team knows the truth is close. But finding it is only half the battle; the other half is keeping it from being buried. The interrogation rooms are busy and the pressure is immense, and the show keeps the tension at a level it has spent six seasons learning how to hold. Every scene is another test, and every test narrows the options. The episode trusts the audience to remember the details, and it rewards the memory. The pressure is the point of the episode, and the pressure is unrelenting.

Jed Mercurio wrote it, Jennie Darnell directed. The finale brings the whole company together: Martin Compston's Arnott, Adrian Dunbar's Hastings, Vicky McClure's Fleming, Perry Fitzpatrick's Lomax, Kelly Macdonald's Jo, Anna Maxwell Martin's Carmichael, Amy De Bhrún's Corbett and Steve Oram's medical counsellor. It is a cast that has earned the ending. The finale is a reunion of sorts, and the show makes the most of having everyone in the room.

Finales live or die on whether the reveals land, and this one has earned its reveals the hard way. But the identity of H is the destination, and the journey has been long enough to make it matter. The episode is a satisfying exercise in procedural tension, and it understands what the audience has invested. The cover-up was built to outlast the investigation, and the episode shows how close it came. The answer, when it lands, is the answer the whole series was pointing at, and it lands properly. The truth comes out, and the price is what it has always been.