For Morse, the End Is Nigh

Although U.S. fans probably won’t see it (on PBS-TV) until sometime this coming summer, the last-ever episode of Endeavour, the Inspector Morse prequel series starring Shaun Evans and Roger Allam, is scheduled to debut in Great Britain this coming Sunday evening. “Exeunt,” as it is titled, will be the third 90-minute installment in Season 9 of that popular crime drama, bringing the total number of Endeavour episodes to 36—three more than were filmed for Inspector Morse and its sequel, Lewis (aka Inspector Lewis).

When this show’s action began in Oxford, England, the year was 1965. As Season 9 kicks off, it’s the spring of 1972, and Detective Sergeant Endeavour Morse (Evans) has returned to Castle Gate Police Station after taking some time off to deal with his drinking problem. But other troubles and tensions await. Joan Thursday (played by Sara Vickers), the daughter of Morse’s superior, Detective Chief Inspector Fred Thursday (Allam), is planning to wed Detective Sergeant Jim Strange (Sean Rigby), leaving our hero to be “the best man at a ceremony where he may once have hoped to be the groom,” as the Web site Den of Geek puts it. Meanwhile, there’s gang violence brewing in the historic university town of Oxford; questions are once more bubbling up about long-ago violence and abuse at the Blenheim Vale correctional facility for boys (integral to Season 2 of this show); and threats from Thursday’s past leave the DCI trying desperately to safeguard the people about whom he cares the most.

As Endeavour wraps up production, one big unknown remains to be addressed: What happened between Morse and Fred Thursday that led the former to never again mention his old boss, either in Colin Dexter’s original Morse novels or in the 1987-2000 Inspector Morse TV series? My gut-level theory has been that Morse did something which caused Thursday’s tragic demise, and the guilt he felt over that event led him to bury his memories of their partnership. However, Roger Allam suggests a different possibility in a syndicated interview about the finale episode, excerpted by The Killing Times:

We wanted there to be an end. A point where Endeavour can move off into John Thaw’s Inspector Morse. It felt the right time. We had done plenty of films. From my point of view, I also wanted something that had emotional heft that gave a good reason why Morse never mentioned Thursday in the later John Thaw years. Which I think we do satisfactorily in this. I think we covered all of those bases very well. Thursday says to Chief Supt. Reginald Bright (Anton Lesser) in this series that Endeavour is the soul of discretion and if a secret wants keeping, Morse will take it to the grave. And, as the audience will discover, there is something about Thursday that Endeavour will, indeed, take to his grave. There are also echoes of Inspector Morse in the final episode which I hope will be emotionally satisfying for the audience.

So there’s an important or perhaps horrible confidence Morse will be required to keep under his hat forever, preventing him from acknowledging his decade of mentorship by Thursday? UK viewers will apparently discover that secret on Sunday. Americans like me will have to wait for a few more months to find out the answer.