Bad Sisters Needed That Brutal Twist

This article discusses, in detail, Episodes 1 and 2 of Bad Sisters Season 2.

If you’ve just finished watching the first two episodes of Bad Sisters Season 2, please accept my condolences. (And if you haven’t, here’s a second warning to stop reading this until you’ve watched—preferably with a box of tissues handy.) The gentlest and most fragile, but also the most lethal, of the five Garvey girls is dead. Two years after she strangled her psychopathic husband JP “The Prick” Williams, and just days into her second marriage, to a man who doesn’t rape her sisters or call her “mammy,” poor Grace has been crushed under the weight of the smoking, overturned car she used to flee a desperate situation. It’s a devastating end to the series’ two-part season premiere. In killing off such a sympathetic character, showrunner and star Sharon Horgan chose violence—and it was the smartest decision she could’ve made.

Conceived as a limited series, then renewed by Apple TV+ after an enthusiastically received debut, Bad Sisters felt pretty decisively wrapped up by the end of what turned out to be its first season. The big mystery was solved: Grace (Anne-Marie Duff) was revealed as JP’s (Claes Bang) killer, despite her sisters’ many failed schemes to do him in. And when she withdrew her life insurance claim, the amateur sleuth at the financially strapped company that issued it—Matt (Daryl McCormack), who was also dating the youngest Garvey, Becka (Eve Hewson)—burned his file on JP’s suspicious death. The sisters were finally free to frolic together in frigid water, and viewers were left with the sense that everyone, except The Prick, lived happily ever after.

Unless she was content to coast on the characters’ charm, chemistry, and enviable knitwear, Horgan would have to introduce novel sources of suspense in Season 2. A lesser series might’ve relied on loose ends from Season 1, as Big Little Lies did in its disappointing second season, or just set up the Garveys to take down another JP-esque villain. In advance of Grace’s death, Bad Sisters does feint in both directions. From the guilt Grace’s admirer turned accomplice Roger (Michael Smiley) feels about helping cover up the murder (and his unconcealed jealousy of her new man) to the discovery of a waterlogged suitcase containing the body of JP’s father George (Paul Bentall), the show effectively mines a few residual storylines.

It also gives the Garveys a new nemesis in Roger’s sister Angelica, played by the great Fiona Shaw in a performance perfectly calibrated to make your skin crawl. (To further the BLL comparison: Adding Shaw to your female-driven cast for a pivotal second season is essentially the Irish equivalent of hiring Meryl Streep.) Nicknamed “The Wagon” (Irish slang for bitch), she’s a lonely, uptight, conniving church lady who palpably envies the sisters’ bond and is desperate to insinuate herself into Grace’s life. The first thing we see her do is embarrass Roger by bringing up his crush on Grace in front of all five Garveys. Then, after crashing Grace’s wedding, she shoves Eva (Horgan) to the ground to catch the bouquet—deranged behavior. But while both villains use religion as an excuse to act like monsters, JP was pure evil, whereas Angelica reads more as dangerously pathetic. And so far, we know barely any of her backstory.

If I’d had to place a bet on who would die at the top of this season, I would’ve gone all-in on Angelica. Which is, in part, why Grace’s accident makes such an inspired twist. The original Bad Sisters thrived on a combination of murder mystery and black comedy, with the warmth, care, and humor that the Garvey girls show each other counterbalancing horrific revelations about JP. The idea that Horgan would break up her beloved sister act, much less consign the most sympathetic sibling to death just two episodes and a richly deserved wedding into Season 2, was all but unthinkable. It reminds me of The White Lotus creator Mike White’s decision to bump off Jennifer Coolidge’s fan-favorite character at the end of that show’s second season—another twist that was well supported by the plot but that no one saw coming because Coolidge seemed so integral to the series. A provocative series that wants to maintain its edge, rather than devolve into toothless sweater porn as the seasons progress, has to swerve away from fan service sometimes.

Besides, Grace’s death creates some really compelling suspense. We don't know for sure where she's going when she crashes or why she has a stack of cash with her, although there are certainly clues. While he seems like a stand-up guy, we know roughly as little about her new husband, Ian (Owen McDonnell), as we do about Angelica. And we never see how Grace's fight with him in the series premiere actually ends, after she confesses that she killed JP; we just know he’s disappeared by the next morning and she is prostrate with despair. The phone Becka finds hidden in Grace’s bathroom and the bloody garment Ursula (Eva Birthistle) pulls out of her laundry raise the possibility that he didn’t simply storm off. Grace’s daughter Blanaid (Saise Quinn) doesn’t know the whole story, either. Of the two people who do know what happened, one is missing and the other is dead.

At the same time, keeping Angelica around and her aims mysterious makes sense given the structure of the season. Whereas Season 1 toggled between the aftermath of JP’s murder and the events leading up to it—anchored by an incandescently diabolical turn from Bang—Season 2 is rooted in the present. For the show to work, though, the Garveys need a fully repugnant nemesis to band together against. Getting rid of Angelica early on would leave them with just one pair of mostly sympathetic antagonists: the detectives, Loftus (Barry Ward) and his awkward yet tenacious young partner, Houlihan (Thaddea Graham). Relying on the cat-and-mouse game between them and the Garveys would’ve made for pretty low emotional stakes.

So, yes, pour out a capacious glass of wine for Grace, prematurely eulogized by her surliest sister, Bibi (Sarah Greene), as “the best person any of us will ever know.” But when it comes to storytelling, comfort yourself with the knowledge that she died so Bad Sisters could live.