*Warning: This article contains spoilers from the finale of The Capture.
The Capture closed with a huge shocker tonight as Shaun Emery (played by Callum Turner), after an entire series on the run, handed himself over for years behind bars and a murder he didn’t commit on his shoulders.
And then Rachel Carey (Holliday Granger) decided to throw us the mother of curve balls by taking a drastic U-turn after trying to expose corrupt CCTV footage to end up joining the team behind it. Although, her motives seem questionable and will no doubt lead to a series 2…
Ben Chanan, the genius behind The Capture, explained to Metro.co.uk why Shaun’s fate was sealed from the get-go, but Rachel’s was a little more complicated.
‘I knew that’s how I was going to end it for Shaun, he told us. ‘It had to be a sad ending. But there is a ray of hope – his ex is now talking to him, showing him pictures of her with the kid.
‘Shaun doesn’t care about other people; he cares about what his daughter thinks and his closest friends and relatives. He doesn’t want his daughter thinking he’s a murderer and he kidnapped her; Karen is going to make sure of that. So he gets that.
‘I knew the system had to win. Shaun and Carey can’t bring the system down – the system always wins.’
But Rachel’s outcome wasn’t a done deal even while filming the final scene, which saw the detective bursting into a private meeting with Danny Hart (Ben Miles) and DSU Gemma Garland (Lia Williams) to take a sudden U-turn and join the crusade to take down potential terror threats via any means possible – even if it means lying.
Ben revealed Holliday Granger actually filmed multiple endings.
‘I knew she wasn’t going to expose them, but I didn’t know when I was writing it that she would join them,’ he continued. ‘We did a lot of takes – that last shot of her walking in we did a lot of takes. We actually did a lot of versions of that to play around with the intention and that was a lot of fun.
He added: ‘What I liked about the plot was its ambiguity.’
The showrunner also hinted that a series 2 is being spoken about, though he couldn’t ‘confirm or deny’. However, he did admit tonight’s cliff-hanger leaves questions that surely need to be answered…
The Capture is available to stream on BBC iPlayer now.