'The Woman in the Wall's Bifurcated "Back to Life" Kicks Off a Strange Mystery

Most people, upon waking to find a dead body in their house, would be justifiably upset, calling the police, demanding answers, and generally deciding this was a bad way to start the day. However, for Lorna Brady (Ruth Wilson), it is merely yet another inconvenience in a string of bad moments that started her morning one day in 2015 in Western Ireland's Kilkinure. The day before, Lorna began by waking in the middle of the road surrounded by dairy cows and had to hoof it back to town in nothing but her nightdress and found she'd stabbed her painting of Jesus in the eye on the way out, damaging the plumbing in the process. That caused her to be late to work at Mrs. Moran's (Aisling O'Neill), narrowly missing someone who left her a note.

Lorna: I'm sorry Jesus.

But perhaps we should back up. Lorna's string of bad days has been going on for a while, arguably since she was 17 and her parents discovered she was knocked up. Rather than send her to uni, they shipped her off to the Kilkinure Convent at the advice of Father Percy (Michael O'Kelly), where her father, Jacob (Alan Devine), told her (and may have believed) that the nuns would care for her and the baby. (Her mother, Margaret (Fiona Browne) simply never turned and looked her daughter's way again.

From the flashbacks of a teenage Lorna (Abby Fitz) tied to the bed and a baby being whisked away, never to be seen again, their idea of "taking care of" the two of them was far different than what Dad was probably imagining, had he bothered to imagine at all. Lorna's sleepwalking has been triggered by the recent investigations in the news into the atrocities these convents committed against the women sent there. Her friend, Niamh (Philippa Dunne), tries to reach out to her, but Lorna rejects her, insisting there's no point, as the child is probably dead anyway. 

However, the note left for her claims to know where that child is and a phone number, which texts to meet at the nearby pub. There's a hen-do on in the back, probably for the bride Tabitha (Aoife Fitzpatrick), whose wedding dress Lorna has been altering at her seamstress job. As Lorna waits, drinking herself into a stupor, lashing out when an old schoolmate who's back in town for said wedding, Michael (Mark Huberman), tries to be friendly. It's the last thing she remembers before waking up to discover herself tucked up in bed and the body inconveniently downstairs. Lorna does not immediately call the police, as normal people would; considering the circumstances, it's probably a good idea to figure out who this woman is first. Perhaps that's for the best, as a quick survey confirms that the mobile number from the note causes the phone on the body to start ringing. 

At this point, a completely different series seemingly starts out of the blue. Det Colman Akande (Daryl McCormack) is home on the couch, eating breakfast, and arguing with his mother (Chizzy Akudolu) over Columbo and if a mystery series is really a whodunit if you meet the murderer in the cold open. We are blessedly rescued from this would-be sitcom by a phone call where the good detective is called... not to Lorna's house, apparently, but to the residence of the now-aged and suddenly-deceased Father Percy, the man who once took away Lorna and hundreds of girls like her across the county to their miserable fates, who met a nasty end at the bottom of a staircase, and not by his own power.

There's a photo of Percy with a young Black parishioner, and one of the Garda jokingly asks if that's Akande, landing a sharp admonishment from bagman Sgt Luke Drennan (Liam Heslin). But it turns out that photo actually is Akande; Percy was his priest growing up, who kept the young Colman out of trouble. Akande is already on the case, clearly making this personal, noting the priest's car is gone.

Uncertain about what to do, Lorna heads to Niamh's house, where the group she invited Lorna to be a part of is meeting. This is the first time the show mentions the magic words: "Magdalene Laundries." Apparently, Kilkinure Convent was one of these places, a slave labor house where women who had babies out of wedlock were used as slave labor for the church and state to profit from, but previous attempts to have it recognized as such have been failures, and those who have been through it before are gunshy. Lorna, who technically has bigger problems right now, quickly flees again.

Percy's car was found within Kilkinure limits, leading Akande to the local chief, Sgt Aidan Massey (Simon Delaney), who boasts this is a boring town and he likes it that way. He and his sidekick, Conor Skelly (Cillian Lenaghan), found the car near the cows where Lorna woke the other morning. Akande is determined to ask questions, and of course, the first person he starts with turns out to be one of Niamh's group, by the name of Amy Kane (Hilda Fay), who loudly tells him that there is no justice for what Father Percy did to them at the convent, that it was a Laundry, and that her alibi is several words that PBS doesn't allow me to write. 

Akande is shocked and demands to know if this is true as they leave her store. Massey's jovial facade falls when Akande threatens to investigate the convent, informing him that this will make a lot of noise and that Akande's superintendent probably won't be happy with it. Akande asks again if it's true, and Massey shrugs, saying that it's Akande who claims Percy was a good man, not him. Fine, Akande says.... are there other women from the laundries in town he can speak to? Funny he should ask...

It doesn't take Akande long to find Lorna, despite Massey doing his best to keep her off the detective's radar. Instead, he puts the two most harmless Laundry survivors in front of him, Peggy (Helen Roche) and Deirdre (Anne Kent), who didn't have babies taken from them and are the most emotionally stable. But Lorna comes up anyway, and her sleepwalking incidents, including one where she attacked a statue of Mary with an axe, come out. Massey insists that Lorna is harmless and refuses to question her. Akande goes on his own, but Lorna hides.

Unfortunately, this means she doesn't get to lock herself in the house before she falls asleep. Worse, earlier in the day, she went back to the bar to figure out how she got home; according to bartender Siobhan (Karen McCartney), the woman, now deceased in her house, arrived and took her home. But Skelly, who is dating Siobhan, came, so Lorna saw Father Percy's car on its way to being taken to the lockup. She recognized it too; it was the same car she had been taken away in all those years ago. So when she stumbles out of the house carrying an axe and a lighter, it's not a mystery where she's going or how fast it will put her on a crash course with our detective.

Of course, Akande assumes this was someone covering their tracks and not sleepwalking revenge madness. But he still comes to Mrs. Moran's the next day to question Lorna, a now-chastened Massey in tow. But one look at Lorna's traumatized face as Father Percy's name and her walled-off silence and Massey pulls himself together and ushers Akande right back out, insisting this can be done another time. Lorna gets sent home quickly after that, having ruined the bridal gown. But she remembered who the dead woman was — it was the nun who had taken her child away when she gave birth. Also, she needs to get rid of the body, so she does the sensible thing: Stuff it in the wall.