"The Heir" Offers Eliza a Life Changing Payment on 'Miss Scarlet & the Duke'

What a strange ride Miss Scarlet & the Duke Season 3 has been. Thankfully, after a pair of lackluster installments in "Hotel St. Marc" and "Bloodline," —in which half of the series' titular duo was almost entirely absent — the show returns to excellent form with "The Heir," a story that (finally!) sees the Duke return and gets back to the basics of what makes this drama so good in the first place. Miss Scarlet is a mystery series primarily about its leading lady's attempt to carve out a space for herself in both a profession and world dominated by men, and it's at its best when it allows its case of the week stories to dovetail with Eliza's own larger personal journey.

That we've had so many episodes of late that haven't done this is part of the reason why this season (and, if we're honest, a big chunk of Season 2 as well) has felt so off. However, "The Heir" neatly ties together several of Season 3's larger themes and stories into a satisfyingly cohesive whole. All season, Eliza has longed for a more stable financial situation, not just so she can hire staff to help compete with bigger agencies like Nash & Sons but so she can finally put her own name on her business instead of relying on her dead father's to get clients in the door.

It's the primary reason she takes the Martin Crabtree case to begin with, in the hopes of partly cashing in herself on his surprise inheritance from the father he supposedly never knew. (Heir hunters, by the way, still exist today, usually as part of a larger probate firm, and aim to locate people who are entitled to inherit from a deceased relative’s estate but are unaware of their legal claim. There's even a popular BBC series about them.) 

The Duke is back, though his new romantic relationship with Arabella makes things deliciously awkward and tense with Eliza. She's doing her best to convince him (and herself) that his private life is none of her business, even as the Duke refers to his "friendship" with Arabella. (It's something the show should unpack a bit more directly for modern viewers because, whew.)

The actual plot of the "case" at the center of "The Heir" is convoluted. There's a fake kidnapping, a fake heir hunter, a secret bastard who turns out actually to be a legitimate son given up to an orphanage, and a lot of gambling debt. Its story is much more interesting in what it says about Eliza, who spends the bulk of the episode desperately trying to get Martin Crabtree to a solicitor's office in time to declare himself and stake a claim to his deceased father's estate before it is turned over to the government. (Efforts that are repeatedly thwarted by the fake kidnapping, fake heir hunter, etc., etc.)

If she manages to do so, she's been promised a finder's fee of a thousand pounds. That may not sound like much to modern audiences, but that would have been a truly life-changing cash infusion for Eliza's business at the time (probably roughly equivalent to just under £155,000 today). You can see how much being able to put her own name to her work means to her. Also, having the funds to hire more help would mean she could take on more cases which, in turn, would mean more money and a higher profile as an investigator.

This is, obviously, a massive deal for her, and not just because it gives her some leverage to finally find out Moses's full name, which she does by the end of the hour, but not because she signed him to a more lucrative contract. (It was apparent from the first she would not be seeing a cent of Crabtree's money.) It's just because they're genuinely friends. My heart!! 

Throughout this season, we've seen Eliza presented with difficult choices, forced to actively decide to do the right thing when it would be easier for her to do otherwise. She faced up to the fact that her initial suspicions about Arabella were grounded more in her dislike of the other woman than actual fact. She refused to allow an innocent man to go to prison, even if doing so helped change his life for the better by keeping him out of the hands of his crimelord father. This week, she refuses to let Martin Crabtree get away with murder — even when his victim is long dead and sounds like the sort of man the world is better off without. Even when choosing to turn him in meant giving up the fee she'd been counting on to change her life and stabilize her business. 

Miss Scarlet & the Duke has never tried to imply that Eliza's anything other than a good, upstanding person who tries to live a decent and moral life that would make her father proud of her. But this string of stories emphasizes her willingness to look brutal truths in the face and acknowledge them. Even — almost especially — if doing so makes her own life harder.

William and Arabella's relationship, such as it is, is also as much about Eliza as it is anything else. William seems to like Arabella well enough when he's around her. Still, he also spends most of the episode thinking (and talking!) about Eliza, and his new girlfriend is jealous of his longstanding closeness with the other woman. For her part, Eliza's so snippy about him dating Arabella that everyone around her notices, from Ivy to Moses. His actions hurt her, not just because he's suddenly romantically involved with a woman she so vocally dislikes, but because he couldn't bring himself to tell her about it.

Yet, she does try to say the right things, and even forces herself to have tea with her frenemy for his sake. (I love these two, but William doesn't deserve her.) The dynamic between the two has been awkward at best and nonexistent at worst this season, and we still never dealt with the fallout from his near-move to Scotland last year. Yet, everything about this episode screams romantic tension and pining, and I'm suddenly back in my feelings about these two again. This begs the question: At what point does Miss Scarlet genuinely need to move this relationship forward somehow? 

Granted, William embarking on a romance with someone Eliza knows is a new and different roadblock for the two, a twist that will hopefully push her into potentially painful and long-overdue realizations about this relationship she so easily takes for granted. But, at this point, is it enough for William and Arabella to break up? For their relationship to run its course as we all know it will? Or do we need to see some definitive steps toward making the show's central pairing more official?