The Bay – ITV Mini-Series – Episode 6 – The Finale – Recap & Review

The Killer Is Revealed

After five weeks of mystery and drama, The Bay finally draws to a close with its finale. We begin this episode with Jess whose none too happy with the police over what’s happened with Armstrong. She asks Med just why she should trust the police but he has no answers.

Meanwhile, the police interview Holly back at the station, asking her about the night and why Dylan’s body was moved. After a fruitless talk, D.I. Manning decides to take drastic action to flush out the killer and decides to tell the press they’ve arrested Holly. Later on down the line this has its intended effect as an anonymous call from the switchboard confirms as much, informing the police that Holly is innocent.

Before they can get there though, Armstrong goes hunting for her daughter Abbie who is walking the streets. She catches up with her talking to a boy about drugs and after discussing this with her daughter, she gives her Mum a name – Vincent Cook.

This immediately prompts Armstrong to rush over to the station and give Med this newfound information. A little bit of scouting later, the police arrest Vincent at his work and interview him back at the station. While the police pursue their line of questioning, Shaun is interviewed as well but refuses to speak to anyone other than Armstrong. 

With question marks still hanging over the series, we finally see the truth as Armstrong interviews Sam about the night the twins met their fate. Sam killed Dylan by mistake. They got into a fight and one punch knocked the lad down on the ground where he hit his head. In a blind panic, they moved the body as a way of hiding what they’d done.

This inevitably leads Sam to be arrested by the police while Manning begrudgingly allows Armstrong to interview Shaun. He agrees to name the people behind the drug operation if Armstrong looks after his family, which she agrees to. The episode then closes out with Manning informing his police detective that she’s still suspended but for now, things have at least settled down, given the case is now solved. 

As Dylan’s ashes are spread out at sea, Jess thanks Armstrong for all her work on the case and she smiles back, thanking Jess too before walking off down the bay with Abbie.

When it comes to underwhelming finales, The Bay is certainly up there. While the episode did include some nice bites of drama, for the most part it really serves to highlight just how indifferent and pedestrian a lot of this series has been. Given we knew most of what had happened around the midway point of the show, the finale really served as little more than a formality at this point. Still, we finally get the last pieces of the puzzle but there’s not much here to really savour. An underwhelming finish to an underwhelming series, The Bay will almost certainly be drowned in the sea of crime dramas released this year.