'Grantchester' Season 8's Fourth Episode Feels Like the Beginning of an End

Even if Masterpiece hadn't already announced that Tom Brittney would be leaving Grantchester at the end of this season, at this point, I think most of us would be expecting it. (Though, admittedly, I do appreciate the powers that be confirming that the show will continue with Whitstable Pearl star Rishi Nair.) Season 8's primary arc this far has been about Will in varying states of emotional and professional crisis, as he struggles to come to grips with the accident that left a stranger dead. From recurrent PTSD episodes and grouchy chainsmoking to an inability to turn to the faith that has for so long given him comfort and a fear that God has abandoned him, it's very obvious that Will is spiraling, and that's before he started sneaking a dead boy's anti-anxiety medication.

Will's slow-motion emotional collapse isn't particularly shocking --- his repeated insistence that he's totally fine to all and sundry, his outsize reactions to almost every element of the cases he's worked on recently, his obvious and palpable fear that he's been somehow abandoned by the God he's spent so long-serving --- but it is rather heartbreaking to watch unfold.

WIth just two episodes left in the season, it feels increasingly unlikely that this is an issue that can (or should) be neatly tied up before the final credits roll. In fact, it's hard to imagine a scenario where Will's situation, whether due to some sort of internal moral debate about whether he can live with himself in the wake of what happened or the damaging external forces of what is surely his new drug addiction, allows him to remain in Grantchester. He's miserable, and a fresh start for him, his family, and their new baby certainly makes more sense as.an exit strategy for his character than a sudden interest in the American civil rights movement did for James Norton's Sydney Chambers a few seasons back.