Episode 6

Andrew the dentist, who has been informing for the Gardaí, packs his wife and children off for the weekend to close the final deal. Fran kills him, the coverage describing the method as a plastic bag, both because he has worked out the informer and, in that reading, because he can. The finale thus resolves the drugs importation and the surveillance operation, kills Wayne and Andrew, and lets its criminal lead walk free.

Janet has gone cold on Nidge, and the first scene shows him dressing in the brothel after a night with her. It is established that Nidge does not notice how far the Gardaí have come, and that Fran now believes Nidge has cut him out, a grievance he airs with his friend Deano.

Wayne is still the teenager of the opening episode, mocking a friend who falls off a bicycle. While digging for the Glock, the same friend, who has been in the background of the series, appears behind him and shoots him dead; the coverage reads it as belated revenge for the cat, though the episode does not explain the killer's motive. Meanwhile Nidge has been using Tommy as the only point of contact for the drug shipment, promising him enough money to take Siobhán and their child away. Tommy asks whether Nidge had Darren killed, then collapses with a brain haemorrhage, bleeding from his nose and ears; Elmo tells Nidge it is not just a nosebleed.

Moynihan, who has the shipment and the gang within reach, faces the moral choice the series is built on: keep waiting for the container and risk Tommy dying, or call an ambulance and exposé the operation. He sends the ambulance, which alerts the gang and wrecks the surveillance. The shipment can no longer be used as evidence and Nidge gets away with everything. After they walk free, Nidge says that if he had not used Tommy he would be inside, and Fran answers with the episode's theme: "The universe, Nidgey, the universe."

Janet gives Nidge a parting gift of a session with a Lithuanian woman newly working at the brothel, instructing her that he likes to kiss; her origin is later tied to the series 5 plot, though the sources disagree on her name, billing the actor as Denise while the coverage calls the character Violet. Nidge goes home to Trish, and the episode and series close with his deliberate arrest: he urinates on the milk outside a Garda station, gets himself taken in, and in his cell punches the walls, scratches his chest and screams as Anarchy in the UK plays. The series leaves him alive, unpunished and apparently unravelling.

The closing cell scene is the run's boldest ending and the moment its theme about unpunished power is stated rather than implied. The weakness is that the resolution rests on Tommy's haemorrhage, a coincidence rather than a consequence, and that the episode is padded with atmospheric footage; the Irish Times saw the speeded-up Dublin footage and skyline shots as filler in place of a resolution, and the series is felt to end as a mid-season rather than a full season, shoe-horned into six episodes.

The finale drew an average of 1,007,500 viewers and a 54 per cent share, with a peak of 1,276,800, the series' largest audience in its four-series run to that date; the fourth series averaged about 1,017,000 viewers with a 53 per cent share. Reception was divided. The Irish Times ran a news report noting viewers puzzled by loose ends and quoting complaints that the Tommy nosebleed was an improbable plot device, alongside a review arguing the series fell apart after episode 1. The Irish Examiner reported that viewers felt the plot's shortfalls were covered by atmospheric shots, and the Irish Independent's Darragh McManus headed his review Little to Love in Love/Hate finale. Even the critics admitted the cast leads remained strong, and Nidge's crazed close gave the writer an ideal launch pad for series 5.