Credit: BBC
Under Her Eye
The Woman In The Wall: 7 theories about the BBC drama that could solve everything
2 years ago
8 min read
The BBC’s new murder mystery, The Woman In The Wall, is seemingly unsolvable… but can we crack the case?
There’s no getting away from it: The Woman In The Wall is not an easy watch.
Inspired by the harrowing history of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, which saw thousands of so-called fallen women – pregnant teenagers and others who were unmarried, labelled promiscuous or had been abused – forced to live and work in abhorrent conditions, the series begins with one traumatised survivor finding a body in her home.
How did it get there? Lorna Brady (Ruth Wilson) has no idea; she has sleepwalked ever since she was 15, when her baby was cruelly wrenched away from her by the nuns at the Kilkinure Convent.
And, you guessed it, she doesn’t remember anything about the night before – not how or why she met Aoife (Fiona Bell) or how the troubled former nun wound up dead in her home.
Credit: BBC
Miles away from this small Irish town, Detective Colman Akande (Daryl McCormack) is doing his best to solve a seemingly unrelated (but, let’s face facts, totally related) murder of a priest.
It’s soon revealed, though, that Father Percy (Michael O’Kelly) was the one tasked with taking women to the laundry – so, yes, there’s absolutely a motive for his murder.
How are the two deaths connected? Was Lorna involved in either? And, if not, who planted Aoife’s body in her home?
Here are seven theories that may just help us unravel this twisted tale:
1) Lorna’s daughter will make a comeback
History has shown us that countless babies died under the dubious care of the nuns at the Magdalene Laundries, but many fans of The Woman In The Wall have suggested that Lorna’s daughter not only survived, but that the young woman will be reunited with her mother before the credits roll on the show’s final episode.
“When you start reading about illegal adoptions and falsifying death certificates in order to prevent birth mothers from finding their sons and daughters, this idea of ‘move on’ just isn’t tenable,” said screenwriter Joe Murtagh previously.
If the baby was part of an illegal adoption process, it’s likely her parents may be involved in this case. Perhaps Aoife, who used to be a nun at the convent, helped facilitate the adoption. Perhaps she and her husband, Dara (Ardal O’Hanlon), took the child for themselves. Perhaps…
Well, you get the picture. Agnes is out there somewhere (we hope, anyway) and whatever shadowy forces led to her being snatched from her birth mother will be somehow tied to these murders.
2) Sgt Aidan Massey knows more than he’s letting on
If we’re looking for another institutional villain in this piece, one has to assume it’s the local police force.
Think about it: officers like Sgt Aidan Massey (Simon Delaney) may seem sympathetic to Lorna and the other survivors of the Kilkinure Convent, but they likely held positions within the force when the laundry was still in operation. And, as the state of Ireland and its government were so heavily intertwined with religion (and still are, in many ways), this means that the police would have been at the beck and call of Father Percy and the nuns.
Credit: BBC
We know that Murtagh is using his series as a vehicle for justice (“I was inspired to do this just by a sense of outrage,” he says), so it seems safe to assume he will want to touch upon the fact that evidence exists that Irish courts routinely sent women convicted of petty crimes to the laundries, and that the police were often tasked with returning escaped workers.
Throw in the fact that Massey seems hellbent on derailing Akande’s investigation, and you have a recipe for… well, for a potential murderer, we guess.
3) One of the other convent survivors framed Lorna
This is a popular theory floating around the internet, and it makes a lot of sense; after all, there is little love lost between Lorna and her fellow convent survivors. They each have a motive of their own for murder, too, and they will have been well aware of her sleepwalking habits, which means she’d have been the ideal fall girl for their crimes. And Amy Kane (Hilda Fay) has already been interviewed by the police.
All this being said, we really hope that Murtagh doesn’t go down this route. The real-life survivors of the Magdalene Laundries have been through more than enough to end up being labelled the villains of a series that is ostensibly seeking justice on their behalf.
On this same note: some have jabbed the finger at James Coyle (Dermot Crowley), the co-founder of the group who is trying to get the state to acknowledge what happened to Lorna and her fellow survivors. Again, though, this feels like an odd direction for the show to take. A twist, certainly, but an unpleasant one, when there are so many other real-life villains in the mix.
4) Niamh is the real killer
Wait, what?
That’s right; fans of the show are suspicious of Lorna’s BFF Niamh (Philippa Dunne), largely because she’s campaigning for justice on behalf of the women impacted by the laundries. They feel she has access to all of them, has been meddling just a little too much in their affairs, and has taken things too far.
“She’s not a survivor herself, but she is carrying the baton for her mother who is deceased,” explains Dunne. “Her mother was a survivor who never lived to see justice or recognition for what happened, so she was very much campaigning for her mother’s memory.”
We get it; in many ways, Niamh has motive and means to murder – but she’s also heavily pregnant and a seemingly grounded, focused individual who has the best interests of the survivors at heart. Sure, she might want to pin a murder on someone else so she doesn’t have to give up her own baby (as one viewer pointed out), but still. She loves Lorna. She wants the best for her. Would she really stoop so low?
Credit: BBC
5) Detective Akande is the son of one of the Kilkinure Convent survivors
We know that Colman Akande was born in a mother-and-baby home; that is, after all, why the case is hitting a bit too close to home for him. We know, too, that Father Percy looked out for him a great deal when he was younger.
With both of those thoughts in mind, wouldn’t it be a beautiful (albeit extremely neat) twist if it turned out that Akande was born in the Kilkinure Convent? And that, through this investigation, he finally comes face to face with his birth mother?
“As he meets with truths about both the mother-and-baby homes and the murdered priest, he is being provoked by his own past – a dark past that he hasn’t really decided to look at,” says McCormack of his character.
“So, he really becomes a lot more rash and emotionally driven, which was obviously great fun to play, because he becomes slightly unhinged in that regard. He cannot go back and not be involved with the case, so when these emotions come up for him, it only forces him to try and go through it as quickly as possible. And that causes him to go to all sorts of places.”
6) Aoife killed Father Percy
Dara has already explained that Aoife went to Father Percy’s house on the night he died, but it was “only to talk to him” because they used to work together.
He has admitted, too, that his wife used to be a nun at the convent. Could it be that Aoife bumped off Father Percy before she met her end in Kilkinure?
7) Sister Eileen is a monster in a habit
Sister Eileen (Frances Tomelty) was Mother Superior at the Kilkinure laundry. She has expressed sadness that Father Percy was killed and made a point of telling Akande that she and her fellow nuns “did all they could” for the girls that were sent to them, but Akande pushes back and claims people would “paint a different picture” of the place.
Flashbacks have already suggested that Sister Eileen ruled the institution with an iron fist. That she allowed, too, unspeakable atrocities to be carried out in the name of God.
And, while it doesn’t necessarily make sense that she would kill Father Percy, we can sort of see her at least arranging the murder of Aoife… especially if Aoife was meeting with survivors to reveal the truth about their missing children.
Bonus theory: Lorna DID do it!
There are plenty out there who think Lorna did indeed kill Aoife. That she met with her, invited her back to her home, flew into an alcohol-induced rage and did something truly regrettable.
Personally, though, this writer doesn’t see it – especially as the story seems to be set up as a means of Lorna healing (somewhat, anyway) from the traumas inflicted upon her as a teenager.
“She’s a survivor of a traumatic experience that was instituted, governed, and covered up by that state where she lived,” says Wilson.
“She becomes a woman on a mission and throughout the course of the series, you see her gaining confidence and clarity about what she has been through and what she’s looking to find and resolve. She is odd, quirky, funny, a loner, but in some ways, she discovers that being an outsider gives you power, you have little left to lose.”
The final flourish in Lorna’s story, then, seems far more likely that “she learns to find support, to ask for help” then she’s whisked away to prison for murder.
Then again, maybe she simply asks for help in covering up a crime once and for all, eh? Only time will tell.
The Woman In The Wall episode 3 will arrive on Sunday 3 September on BBC One at 9pm.
The series premiered on Sunday 27 August 2023.
Images: BBC
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