Quite honestly, nobody could have predicted how Happy Valley would end. All of us, it seemed, had been utterly duped by the red herrings Sally Wainwright had scattered throughout the series – red herrings which suggested that Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) and Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) would both be killed off in an epic fight-to-the-death over Ryan’s soul. That Ryan (Rhys Connah) would fall foul of the eternal nature vs nurture debate and betray his grandmother. That we would, essentially, be served up a steaming plate of misery and despair – and that we would eat it all up in one greedy gulp, before demanding more.

As it turns out, though, Happy Valley ended on a note far more befitting of its name – or, if not happily, then hopefully.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

1. No time for toxic shitbag men

All too often, high-profile murder cases become sensationalised: the perpetrator (usually a man) inadvertently takes on a starring role in media coverage, as all angles of his story are pored over. Meanwhile the voice of the victim (usually a woman) is washed away: left behind in the onslaught of frenzied speculation. 

You better believe, then, that we loved Wainwright’s radical decision to purposefully turn the cameras away from the likes of Tommy Lee Royce, Darius Knezevic (Alec Secareanu), Faisal Bhatti (Amit Shah) and Rob Hepworth (Mark Stanley).

As Shaun Kitchener puts it in his now-viral tweet about the series finale: “I love that the evil men’s fates didn’t even need to be shown. Darius? Busted off-screen. Faisal? Arrested off-screen. That Hepworth prick? Charged off-screen. And Tommy Lee Royce? Tried to die on-screen but ultimately bumped off via text. Glorious.”

2. Ryan, Ryan, Ryan

Everyone thought the worst of Ryan – this writer included (I’m sorry, kid: I was an obnoxious little shit for ever doubting you) – solely because the blood of Tommy Lee Royce runs through his veins. In fact, we all got so bogged down in the “nature will out” side of things that we failed to even acknowledge the fact that Ryan has been raised in a loving home by his hard-working grandma.

And so, just like that, Wainwright subverted expectations by having Ryan simply come clean, a speedy 15 minutes into the finale. Ryan revealed that he’d spoken to his dad via his video game console, and told the police manhunt team all about the big Marbella escape plan, but was quick to reassure Catherine that he never had any intention of going. 

All of this means that, despite the odd burst of bad behaviour, Ryan is “a happy, well-adjusted, pretty flipping normal kid” – or a “prince”, to quote the Sarge (if he’s a prince, it’s all because she’s a queen). And we love that for him and her, quite frankly.

3. A sisterly reunion

The aforementioned Ryan convinced his gran to reconcile with Clare (Siobhan Finneran) – and she only bloody listens to him. With zero melodrama involved, she pops round to see her sister and admits that she should never have been so afraid of letting Ryan meet his dad.

“Are you stopping?” asks Clare simply.

“Yeah,” says Catherine.

Sisters united! Women on the same team! Familial dramas resolved in an utterly realistic way (because who hasn’t had a stinker of a fight with their sister one minute and then sat down to watch TV together the next?)!

We! Love! To! See! It!

4. Tommy Lee Royce’s “Shades of Grey” treatment

When Catherine found her arch-nemesis in her house, we assumed the worst – a furious and bloodied battle to the very end, Obi-Wan vs Anakin Skywalker-style. Instead, the pair opted for a brittle conversation over the kitchen table – in which the bleeding villain shared his narcissistic view of events: that he’d loved Becky, that he could have been a good dad, that he forgave Catherine for denying him that chance, that he thanked her for giving his boy “a nice life”, and that he was very proud of himself for not killing her and burning her house down. Hmm.

As James Norton tells GQ: “There is this constant question: ‘is Tommy a psychopath?’ and I have talked about this with people in the production and Sally [Wainwright] and Sarah [Lancashire]. The hints were almost laid in the very first series, in episode five, when he’s just been stabbed and he’s facing his own mortality, his own death.

“And he’s sitting in that high rise and he bursts into tears. He thinks, ‘Shit, I’ve wasted my life and if I had a different childhood maybe I could have been something in me.’ And if you think back to there, that was where Sally was already planning and carving out this ending I think, because there is humanity there. My final conclusion on Tommy is that I don’t think he is a psychopath, he’s just incredibly damaged.”

Come the end of their domestic duel, TLR doused himself with petrol, lit a match and began screaming. Which leads us to…

5. Love triumphs over hatred

This series is an incredibly dark one, but there are gorgeous moments of light, too – and a lot of them we owe to Catherine. Because, while she may be a damaged person who’s made mistakes of her own, she is always ruled and driven by love. 

It is love that prompts Catherine to grab a blanket and smother the flames that have swallowed up her enemy with a blanket. It is love that drives her to call for an ambulance in a bid to try and save his life. It is love, too, that allows her to weep – out of sight of her colleagues, fine, but in the arms of her sister – for all that has been lost. And it is her love for her family, for her job, for herself, that fills her with the strength she needs to save the day, over and over and over again.

Plus, the fact that Tommy Lee Royce isn’t defeated by a gun or a taser, but by a photo album filled to the brim with happy smiling images, is well worth thinking about for a very long time.

6. And Catherine lives, damn it!

Everyone knows – thanks to the law or retirony – that any cop nearing retirement is doomed to die a miserable death. Once again, though, Wainwright’s drama subverts all expectations and allows our hero to walk away from her job unscathed. She sneaks out of her leaving do, gives Becky’s grave a kiss goodbye and finally departs on the dream Himalayan road trip we all never dared to believe she’d get to make a reality.

Better still? Catherine does so happily, knowing that the world is finally at peace. That this dark chapter in her story is finally closed. That her beloved Ryan has “something about him” – something which prompted her DSU to mistake him for a new recruit. That, just maybe, the Yorkshire Police will have another Cawood in uniform working for them someday. Because the apple really hasn’t rolled far from the tree, after all – albeit a different tree to the one she suspected, in an entirely different (and far nicer) orchard.

Outstanding work, quite frankly. If only all the other writers sat penning police procedurals right now could take note, eh?

So, anyone else fancy a Happy Valley spin-off series?

Here’s our pitch to the Beeb: make good on Catherine’s retirement plans and give us the spin-off of our dreams. Let her fix up that old van, grab her passport and go driving all over Nepal. Give us the Sarge in backpacking mode! But, for the love of all that is good and holy, make sure that she invites Clare along for the ride. Because an intense drama about the Cawood sisters reconnecting over a globetrotting roadtrip? Just call it Barun Valley* and greenlight the damn thing already. You know it makes sense.

*An extra special joke for geography nuts (hey, it’s better than our OG working title of Nepally Valley).

Happy Valley series 1-3 are available to stream on BBC iPlayer

Images: BBC