Bodkin – Season 1 Episode 7 “Empty Your Pockets” Recap, Review & Ending Explained

Empty Your Pockets

Episode 7 of Bodkin Season 1 begins with the arrival of the McCardle family into Bodkin. They don’t look happy!

Meanwhile, Gilbert and Dove are in a police cell. Gilbert is overjoyed that the podcast is coming together, but Dove, who is at risk of extradition, doesn’t share his joy.

As Dove talks to Gilbert, she reflects on what she did back in London. She tells Gilbert that Krtek begged her to kill the story. She didn’t do so and instead promised to protect his anonymity to guarantee his safety. But something clearly went awry, as she later found him hanging.

Dove then took Krtek’s laptop because it contained evidence related to corruption at the highest levels of government. She tells Gilbert she stole it so she could protect the truth. However, Gilbert blames her for Krtek’s death.

Gilbert is released from the cell. Meanwhile, an angry Seamus arrives at Mrs O’Shea’s house looking for Sean. When he eventually leaves, Emmy reveals to Mrs O’Shea that she knows the truth about Sean being Seamus’s son.

Back at the police station, Dove is taken to a van by Interpol. Before she is driven away, she cuts a deal with them, promising to deliver Seamus to them if they let her go. They agree but fit an ankle bracelet to her so they can keep tabs on her location.

At Mrs O’Shea’s house, the woman tells Gilbert and Emmy that she thinks she failed Fiona as Fiona’s last words to her was to not let Seamus have anything to do with Sean. Mrs O’Shea then reveals that it was she who burnt Sean’s car as she wanted to scare the podcasters away. She also mentions it was Maeve’s idea to burn Seamus’s boat to “put the wind up him.”

Mrs O’Shea asks Emmy to knock some sense into Sean by asking him to give Seamus back his eels. She also wants Emmy and Gilbert to promise that they’ll never let Sean know that Seamus is his dad. “You have my word,” says Gilbert while recording the whole conversation.

Meanwhile, Dove turns up at Seamus’s house and offers him a deal. We don’t hear what that is as the McCardles show up outside, causing the two of them to hide. 

The McCardle’s break into the house. There are three of them, including the father who is in a wheelchair, Bronagh, and the son. Bronagh can’t find Seamus so shoots his dog instead and then leaves with her family.

Dove tries to convince Seamus to get the eels back from Sean. She also asks him to protect Gilbert from the McCardles. But he declines on both counts. Dove then rushes back to warn Gilbert that the McCardles are in Bodkin looking for him. 

In the woods, Emmy finds Sean. He’s planning on moving to Romania, which is where he thinks he comes from. He’s selling the eels to make money for the trip.

Back at the house, Dove forms a plan with Gilbert that will suit everybody. She wants Gilbert to tell Seamus about his son as she thinks that’s the only thing that will bring Seamus back to Bodkin. Seamus will then go to the deal with Sean and get arrested by Interpol. This will protect him from the McCardles while also putting Sean in the clear. With all of this going on, Dove thinks the McCardles will stay away. 

Back in the woods, Sean tells Emmy that he plans to sell the eels to the Yakuza. Emmy tells him that they are really Interpol but he thinks she’s lying. He then leaves in his truck with Emmy hanging on from behind. 

At the festival, Gilbert runs into Seamus and tells him Fiona’s dead and that she died in childbirth. He then tells Seamus the truth about Sean and that Mrs O’Shea never revealed the truth about Sean’s parentage to his son. Gilbert then mentions Sean’s meeting with Interpol, which gives Seamus the incentive to attend the meeting himself. 

Sean arrives at the meeting place, along with Emmy, Mrs O’Shea, Seamus and Gilbert. Seamus tells Sean he’s his father and lets him know about Fiona. Sean, who still thinks he’s Romanian, thinks Seamus is telling lies.

This causes Seamus to get angry and he pulls a gun on Mrs O’Shea, who tells him that Fiona never loved him and that she was running away from him. Sean tries to wrestle the gun away from Seamus and gets his thumb blown off in the process. As Emmy and Mrs O’Shea rush to treat him, Interpol turns up to arrest Seamus. At this point, Seamus takes Gilbert hostage and drives away with him.

A short while later, Seamus pulls over and he and Gilbert get out of the car. Seamus realizes Gilbert has been recording everything and in a threatening way, promises to give Gilbert the podcast the ending it deserves.

Elsewhere, Emmy gives Dove a piece of her mind. She then does the same thing to Interpol who are threatening to take Dove back to the station. Emmy calls them out for being incompetent and acting against guidelines. Before they can protest, Emmy tells them she has recorded their conversation. This causes them to leave, giving Emmy and Dove the chance to go and find Gilbert.

We cut to the festival which is in full flow. Seamus leads Gilbert around at gunpoint. When they get to a secluded area, Seamus reveals the perfect end to the podcast – Gilbert’s disappearance. The American had come to Bodkin to investigate the disappearance of others, but in a twist of fate, Gilbert would go missing too.

Seamus plans to kill Gilbert and blow up the festival at the same time, using Semtex which is hidden in a teddy bear. He plants the bomb and leaves the scene.

Emmy uses her phone to track down Gilbert. When she and Dove find him, Gilbert tells them about Seamus’s plan and that he has the detonator.

Dove goes after Seamus while Emmy tells Fintan to stop the music and warn the crowd about the bomb. He doesn’t believe her about the explosive so she tries to tell the crowd herself. They can’t hear her because of the loud music so she pours beer over the sound equipment to make it malfunction. She then calls on Teddy to sing a song to appease the baying crowd. Teddy does so from atop a moving tractor and the festival-goers follow him to a place of safety.  

Dove tracks down Seamus and tries to bring him to his senses. Then Interpol and the McCardles show up. Seamus owns up to his past to Dove but tells her he doesn’t feel a thing. He then sets off the bomb. Dove and Emmy are worried about Gilbert as he was tied up beneath the sound stage. They both run in his direction and discover that he escaped the blast. 

We then skip to a future scene where Gilbert is recording the closing chapter of his podcast. After finishing, he throws his recorder into the sea. He then gets in Sean’s car with Emmy and Dove, and the four of them drive away.

The fate of our podcasters is revealed below.

Bodkin Explained

Who killed Malachy?

Teddy accidentally killed Malachy after getting into a fight with him over Fiona. His dad tried to protect his son by hiding Malachy’s body but in the process, hit a woman named Greta with his car. He then put Greta’s body in the boot, along with Malachy, and sunk the car in the bog so their bodies wouldn’t be found.

What happened to Fiona?

Fiona got pregnant with Seamus’s baby and fled to the convent to hide. While there, she died in childbirth, but the baby survived. It turns out the child is Sean and that Mrs O’Shea, his adoptive mum, was the nurse who cared for Fiona at the convent.

Why does Dove see a wolf?

At several points during the series, Dove sees a wolf. The wolf isn’t real. Rather, it’s a figment of her imagination, inspired by the toy wolf her mother gave her as a child. It’s possible that Dove had buried the memory of the toy wolf along with the memory of her mother. But when she arrived in Bodkin, those memories began to resurface. 

Ending Explained – What happens to the podcast team?

As the episode closes, we see that Emmy has wangled her way into Dove’s old job at The Guardian.

Meanwhile, Dove returns to the convent and finds her toy wolf,  which is what her mum gave her as protection. She has lost her job at the paper, presumably because of the controversy over her last news story, but at least she didn’t get extradited due to the deal she made with Interpol. At the end of the episode, she reveals to the head nun that she’s going to stick around on the island to make a podcast about the convent. 

We don’t know what happens to Gilbert but there’s a chance that his podcasting days are over. As his podcast destroyed his marriage, there’s a chance that he intends to do something else with his life. This was alluded to when he threw his recording device into the water in a previous scene. 

What happened to Seamus?

We don’t know. Did the McCardles get him? Was he arrested by Interpol? It’s hard to say as we didn’t get to see any of these characters again after the explosion.

The Episode Review

So, Bodkin has come to an end. Was it worth the watch? Just about. While it didn’t bring the expected comedy after the quirkiness of the first episode, it still managed to get its talons into us with its twisty story and engaging cast of characters. 

By the end of the show, we received the answers to the central mystery but we were still left with questions about the nuns and their drug factory, as well as questions about Seamus and the McCardles who seemingly vanished. 

Perhaps these unanswered plot points are intended for a second season, should it be given the green light. 

Overall, the series was a good one, but it was a bit illogical at times. For some reason, Dove was run down by Interpol in an early episode and then threatened by them. Is this really how Interpol operates? And are they really the kind of people who make deals with the people they’re planning to arrest? I’m not so sure. 

For our other opinions about Bodkin, check out our full episode review which is linked below.