Episode 2

The walls close in this week. The police and George Cornelius converge on Luther's home at roughly the same time, and a demon from his past steps out of the shadows to meet him. The convergence is deliberate, the episode implies: both sides know where he lives, and neither is there to wish him well. The hour is partly about how much of that history Luther can carry, and the answer is less than he pretends.

The case gives him something else to think about. Halliday is convinced the body in the morgue is not the killer, and she is sharp enough that the assumption cannot be waved away. And if she is right, the real murderer is still out there. Every hour spent celebrating a closed file is an hour they are using. The morgue file stays open because Halliday keeps it open. Luther has to put his own troubles to one side to chase that truth, and the episode is honest about how hard he finds it.

Neil Cross wrote it, Jamie Payne directed. Ruth Wilson's Alice Morgan returns to orbit Luther's life, which never ends well for anyone, and Vincent Vermignon's Monsieur Awaritefe gives the case an international edge that complicates things nicely. Dermot Crowley's Schenk and Wunmi Mosaku's Halliday hold the police side together, while Roberta Taylor's Celia Lavender, who brings a worldly patience that suits the hour, Lex Daniel's Ronald Massey, Enzo Cilenti's Jeremy Lake and Hermione Norris's Vivien Lake keep the Cornelius thread moving.

The dual focus works. The procedural hunt gives the hour its engine, but the reckoning with Luther's past is what gives it weight. He has spent years outrunning his own history, and the episode is the bill coming due.

It ends with the morgue question unresolved and the demon still standing in his house. Neither is going anywhere.