From the Defeated: Part 2

The second part of From the Defeated resolves the chain of killings and escalates the pursuit. The offender who has been hunting the killers is identified, the stalked woman's place in the plan is paid off, and Michael's vendetta against Hill moves to its final stage — though, as with several of the final series' second halves, the published record describes the resolution in general terms rather than naming the answer.

What the pair achieves structurally is worth stating plainly, because the show had not done this before. The victims are killers, which means the investigation cannot proceed by establishing innocence and then seeking a culprit. Every murder is both a crime and, in a crude sense, a correction, and Hill's job is to work out not who is dangerous but who has decided to do something about it. That is a more interesting proposition than a conventional body count, and it is a fair use of a final series determined to find new shapes for a formula that had been running since 2002.

The episode's other business is Michael, and it is the reason this story matters more than its rating suggests. A Bible passage pinned to a car windscreen and a telephone call are the series' starkest use of a returning offender, and they convert the show's central proposition — that Hill's understanding of the people he deals with gives them access to him — into a sustained threat rather than a single crisis. The official press material for the series describes Tony's battle with Michael as the backbone of the whole eight-week schedule, and this is where that spine is fully visible.

There is one production note the credited data raises. This part carries two screenwriting credits, Simon Block and Claire Hirsch, where Wikipedia credits Block alone and where every other episode of the series carries one. That may indicate a script that was worked on by a second hand, and it is recorded rather than explained.

The part drew 5.03 million viewers and is rated 7.6, marginally up on its first half. The pair as a whole is the least successful of the four final stories and the most dependent on plot mechanics, and its weaknesses are the weaknesses of a series that had started to value complexity over clarity. Its strengths are genuine: a premise no other episode attempts, and the middle movement of the show's last and best sustained threat.