'Miss Scarlet's Season 5 Finale Encapsulates the Good & Bad of This New Era

The fifth season of Miss Scarlet — the show's first with a new truncated title and without former leading man Stuart Martin — is over, and several things are true. One: Season 5 improved as it went along. Sure, the mysteries have run the gamut from "completely forgettable" to "insultingly bad," but the show became more cohesive and watchable as the episode count ran on. The finale, "Dangerous Liaisons," is probably the best episode of the season (if you don't count "The Deal," an hour that felt like it somehow wandered in from mid-Season 3). We'd all be better off if we just looked at this new incarnation of the show like a straight reboot because Miss Scarlet itself sure is. 

Maybe "Dangerous Liaisons" is trying to tell us we're in a new timeline because its primary mystery revolves around a character who is technically dead. (In Season 2's "Angel of the Inferno," when we first met Fitzroy's father, the commissioner remarks how happy he was that his wife wasn't alive to see their son performing something as stupid as administrative tasks at Scotland Yard. I guess the joke is on Fitzroy, Sr., though, because according to this episode, Oliver's mom is very much alive and upset about her husband's infidelity! 

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that Miss Scarlet seemed to forget one of the few facts we know about Fitzroy as a character, but whew, it's just so darn sloppy. Not to mention unnecessary, since we never even see Mrs. Fitzroy learn the truth about what her husband's been involved in! What was the point? But hey, we're in a new world now, where Fitzroy's mom is resurrected from the dead, and Phelps turns out to be the nephew of London's most notorious underworld leader (a fact he has somehow never mentioned to anyone else). Welcome to the multiverse! 

If you can avoid getting fixated on the whole dead woman upset about her husband's affair thing (it's certainly too late for me), then the actual case of the week isn't all that bad. Yes, there's another completely laughable "shootout" sequence in which Blake and his men save the day (and the commissioner's life), and Mrs. Fitzroy's worries about her husband's fidelity are largely ignored despite the utterly scandalous nature of the company he's keeping. But on the whole, it's a fast-paced hour that's generally fun to watch. (Clarence and Eliza getting held up by gangsters is great.)

The story revolves around characters we care about, it allows Blake and Phelps to hash out the harsher angles of their professional relationship, and it gives the Scotland Yard gang a reason to pull together and rally around one of their own after Fitzroy gets beaten within an inch of his life. The Russian spy angle is unnecessary (I'm still not sure why they want to murder as opposed to blackmail the commissioner for info in the first place) but at least it introduces the most intriguing new supporting character we've seen on this series in years. 

The arrival of Miss Scott (Lindsay Bennett-Thompson) a.k.a. the Governess, a British intelligence officer who works for the Queen’s Department Level 3, is a breath of fresh air. Whether it's because she has the same sort of feisty, take-no-prisoners attitude Eliza displayed in the earlier seasons of this show or just because she's pretty darn cool in her own right, she's the sort of character who sucks all the air out of the room whenever she's onscreen in all the best ways. (Reader, I love her. I would watch an entire show about her and the other ladies of this intelligence division.) 

Eliza herself seems rather surprised that women are allowed to serve in such a position, and honestly, I wouldn't be opposed to this character becoming recurring, if only to show Eliza she has other professional options available to her besides loitering around the Yard waiting for Blake to hand her something to work on. (Wasn't her original dream to be a Scotland Yard detective anyway? Miss Scott's job doesn't seem that far off.)

Elsewhere, Ivy and Potts finally tie the knot this week, in an event that honestly feels a little bit rushed given how much whining and complaining and cold feet we've had to sit through to get to this point. If you were wondering whether the show would offer us any more information about Ivy's earlier reluctance to get married or her sudden change of heart, allow me to tell you that it does not. Ivy and Potts are happy now because the story requires them to be and while I'm in favor of this turn of events because I like the two of them together, it's still pretty lazy storytelling. That said, perhaps Ivy should quit the Yard and become a seamstress because these dresses she made are great. 

But once Ivy and Potts ride off into the sunset on whatever sort of honeymoon a dude like Potts finds romantic, Eliza is left all alone. Since the ten-minute version of "All Too Well" doesn't exist yet, she starts cleaning up the reception debris in silence, clearly thinking about the empty state of her life. The unsubtle metaphor here, if you haven't caught on yet, is that Eliza is lonely and sad, because she has no life or interests outside of work and even Ivy has managed to find love. 

This is all meant to show us the reason she chooses to head to Blake's house carrying cake in the hopes of being invited in to hang out. Which, is a familiar rom-com trope, of course, but in many ways it just feels sad. How does Eliza, a grown adult, not have anyone in her life outside of this random guy she just met? Go drink with Clarence if you're feeling low, that's what besties are for! 

But to return to the multiverse angle, this all works better if you just block out the fact that Eliza had a complicated long-term romance/situationship prior to this moment, because if you don't, what this starts to feel like in a lot of ways is a story about a woman incapable of being alone in the wake of his departure. According to the world of this show, Eliza literally has no other options for companionship, and seems deeply uncomfortable with her own company. Perhaps the true test is this: Whether you think Eliza turns to Blake simply because she likes him and his daughter and wants to hang out (this would be more believable if she didn't seem quite so desperate for an invite in at his door) or that she's running to him simply because she can't face being by herself. 

(I know I whined about this last week, but what is the rush to romance here? I can't be the only person who thinks a little time here would benefit us all? Blake's really a nice dude — that scene where he gave her a forensics book was exactly the right note to hit — can't we trust the story more than this?)

Perhaps when/if the series returns for Season 6, Miss Scarlet will be past these growing pains and more secure in its new identity than it feels at this moment. "Dangerous Liaisons" is proof its new format can work, but once again, if it's to be Miss Scarlet now, the show really needs to commit to centering her emotional journey as well as her professional one.

All episodes of Miss Scarlet are available on PBS Passport the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channe.