Bodkin ending explained: What happens to Gilbert, Emily and Dove?
Bodkin ending spoilers follow.
Things are not what they seem in the small, fictional town of Bodkin and the same is true of Netflix's Bodkin, the show, as well. What starts out as a true crime-inspired thriller with lashings of humour and Irish culture soon becomes a deeper dive into the nature of storytelling itself.
As their investigation deepens, intrepid podcasters Gilbert, Emily and a reluctant journalist named Dove uncover truths about the people lost during Bodkin's annual Samhain celebration, but also themselves as well.
This all comes to a head in the final episode which begins with the sentence, "There's only one ending. Everyone dies."
Gilbert's onto something with this, sure, although his dark portent might not relate to actual death as much as a rebirth into something new. Or so we hope.
Join us here at Digital Spy as we break down Bodkin's "one ending" and do some sleuthing of our own regarding this seventh, final episode.
Netflix
"We solved the mystery," claims Gilbert at the start of the final episode. But with a whole hour left to go, that's clearly not the case. Sure, he has Maeve's confession ready for the podcast, but there are still some mighty big loose ends to tie up, not least the rising tension between him and Dove.
In a somewhat uncharacteristic move, Dove opens up about her mother's heroin addiction and how the hunger she had for drugs is now echoed in Dove's own hunger for the truth above all else. That's why she took Krtek's laptop and left him hanging there all that time ago, as seen in the show's first gruesome scene.
The pair begin to fight over how they both use other people in the name of journalist. Except, "you're not a journalist," says Dove. "You're a pornographer." Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes.
Gilbert is released from the cell they're sharing then, so Dove makes a deal with Interpol to get them everything they need, including Seamus. The cops put an ankle tracker on Dove so she can't pull a fast one and then they release her to stir up trouble.
Meanwhile, Edna reveals she's the one who's been trying to scare the podcasters off, driven by the fact that her adopted son Sean must never learn the truth about Seamus – that he's actually Sean's real father.
As Gilbert and Emily plan what to do next, Dove is already with Seamus, but before she can make any kind of deal with him, the McCardle family show up to kill him.
The pair crawl into a secret hidey-hole and watch as the gang shoot Seamus's dog before heading off to find Gilbert who's become their next target.
Seamus refuses Dove's help then, pointing out that she can't even help herself: "Darkness sticks to you like f**king treacle."
Dove finds Gilbert next and after they share the news that Sean is actually the son of Fiona and Seamus, she tells him the McCardles are looking for him, and it's not going to go well. With her Interpol deal in mind, Dove suggests that Gilbert should tell Seamus the truth. He'll then go to Sean where Interpol can arrest him.
Everyone will be safe from the McCardles and the podcast will end on a perfect, heroic note.
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Gilbert says yes, despite his fear of Seamus, a man who once stapled someone in the face right in front of him.
Sean has a plan of his own, to take the extremely expensive eel stash (don't ask) and sell it to the Yakuza before running off to Romania, the country he believes he was adopted from. Emily is quick to point out then that the Yakuza aren't really Yakuza at all. They're Interpol, and this is all part of one giant sting operation, but Sean is too focused on the money – and the Romanian women he desires – to listen.
With the Samhain festival kicking off, Gilbert reveals to Seamus that his former lover, Fiona, died 25 years ago in childbirth with the nuns at Inish Mac Tire. There, she gave birth to Sean, his son.
Mrs O'Shea raised Sean and never told him the truth. She's the one who faked his adoption from Romania. "I thought he was a f**king idiot," responds Seamus. "But he's not... he's my boy."
As Gilbert takes Seamus to Sean in order to stop the Interpol eel deal, Dove calls up Interpol and says the plan to intercept them and arrest Seamus is on.
But before they arrive, Seamus reveals to Sean that he's his father. "You're as Irish as Guinness," says Seamus. Sean doesn't want to believe him at first, reeling off facts about Romania to prove he's wrong. Thanks Wiki.
Seamus then flips and points a gun at Edna for all the lying and the years he stole from them both. To which she says, "Fiona didn't love you. She was running in fear from you."
Sean tries to defuse the situation by stepping in and pushing the gun upwards, but in doing so, Seamus pulls the trigger and accidentally blasts off his son's thumb. No more thumb wars for him!
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Amid all that chaos, Interpol then arrive to arrest Seamus who escapes by taking Gilbert hostage with the plan to give his "little podcast the ending it deserves."
Emily goes off on Dove for making the deal with Interpol and betraying them all: "You're not some noble journalist... I don't know how you live with yourself."
And while she's on a roll, Emily then pops off at Interpol too after they try to blame Dove for everything that's gone wrong. She even pretends to have recorded their obviously illegal entrapment deal. It's a bluff, but the bluff works and Interpol skulks off while Dove watches on, hugely impressed by Emily's newfound bravado and sass.
Dove and Emily drive the eel lorry up to the Samhain rave where everything's about to go down while Seamus ties Gilbert up in a cave below. Afraid for his life, Gilbert promises to delete the entire podcast, but Seamus points out that his own disappearance will add even more intrigue to the mysteries that surround Bodkin.
It turns out that this cave is where Seamus stashed away all the teddy bears he stole from the McCardles... which just so happen to be filled with Semtex explosives still. He's lost everything and it all started with these teddies, so "now they can end it too".
Interpol close in on their location by following Dove's ankle tracker while the McCardle's also arrive in disguise as a family of ghosts, as per the pagan festival.
Seamus rigs the explosives up – "f**k this world and f**k the next one too" – leaving Gilbert to die, but Emily and Dove find him when they hear the podcast recordings playing out the cave.
Netflix
Dove follows Seamus to the beach and stabs his inflatable raft so he has no chance of escaping. Just before he's about to press the detonator and blow up the entire hill, killing hundreds of festival-goers in the process, Dove tells him he's alone because he chooses to be, just like her. But now he does have a choice. Seamus can either go with Interpol or the McCardles. Either way, he can take back some much-needed control over his own life.
Seamus doesn't care though so he presses the button anyway, setting off an explosion that blows up the van and causes baby eels to rain down from the sky. Just another typical day in Bodkin.
Thankfully, Emily had already managed to lure everyone away from the rave by cutting out the music and leading them off with a traditional Irish chant to continue the party elsewhere.
Except, Gilbert is nowhere to be found still. Dove starts digging through the dirt to look for a potential body when he suddenly shows up fine next to Emily after managing to free himself just in time. Because, of course he did.
Netflix
With the day solved and all the mysteries solved, Gilbert's narration then kicks in about everything that he learned during this investigation. Namely, that everything he stooped so low to do, all the lying and cheating and manipulating, didn't help him save either his career or his marriage for that matter either.
And with that, Gilbert throws his recorder into the water, drowning the podcast forever. We guess people won't be listening to it, after all, eh.
"You probably think this is the end of the story," Dove says in her own narration then, but of course, it's not.
Emily's end is a happy one though. When Dove's boss tells her that there's no space in the special investigations desk for someone as inexperienced as her, Emily tells him that she's going to take the day off and then start first thing Monday. Is it realistic? Absolutely not. Does Emily deserve the job after everything she's been through? Sure, why not?
A brief, but cute scene between Edna and Sean unfolds where she tries to tell him more about Fiona, but he doesn't need to know, because he already knows who his "real Mum" is.
Finally, Dove visits the nunnery where she was raised after her mother's heroin addiction got the best of her. There she finds lots of old clippings the nuns kept of her work along with a toy wolf that Dove's mum said would always protect her if she needed it.
When the nun asks how long Dove is staying for, she reveals that she's working on a new story about the nun and the nunnery itself.
"And people will listen to it, will they?" asks the nun in that refrain which plagued our faves so much back when they first arrived in Bodkin.
"If we can't change the things that have happened, maybe we can change the story we tell," says Dove before she faces off against that imaginary wolf one last time.
Except this time, she's no longer afraid or shaken by what she sees. Dove is ready to face the past and herself in a bid to create a whole new story, a better story, moving forward.
Bodkin is now available to stream on Netflix.
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Credit: mark bourdillonDavid Opie
After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
