The Woman in the Wall – Season 1 Episode 1 “Back to Life” Recap & Review

Back to Life

Episode 1 of The Woman in the Wall begins with Lorna Brady regaining consciousness in the middle of the road. She is clad in a white dress and is in bare feet. The story is set in the town of Kilkinure, a fictional and quaint Irish town where Lorna resides. When she comes back home, Lorna is shocked to find a knife plastered in a portrait of Jesus. As soon as she removes it, water is sprayed through the hole. The knife has possibly damaged a pipe. Lorna closes off the supply using a wrench.

She is afraid to keep it back in a room lit by a red light and probably does not know that an unopened box is on the table. Lorna works as a seamstress in a nearby shop. She is skilled at her craft but Lorna doesn’t like mixing up with other people too much. While buying supplies, she runs into Niamh, an old friend. Listening to their conversation, one can glean that Lorna has a habit of sleepwalking.

It is a smart plot device that can easily be used to trigger tension and mystery. Given Lorna’s hazy memory, it makes even more sense. Niamh tells her that someone saw her the other night, sleepwalking. But no harm was done. This explains why she woke up in the middle of a road. Lorna is one of the unfortunate women who were victimized by a Catholic church. The media refers to the asylum where Lorna and the others were abused as Magdalene Laundry.

Niamh invites her to meet with other survivors at her house the next day. But Lorna isn’t interested, having already given up hope of being reconciled with her daughter. The Laundry used to operate in an exploitative way. Sisters and clergy members from the convent would snatch away newborn babies from mothers to be sold for a profit to wealthy customers. All of this was done under the garb of smearing these women as unstable or psychotic. 

Lorna carries out the repair work. She takes a look at the note the mysterious woman left for her at work earlier. It reads: “I know what happened to your child.” Lorna is shaken. She is traumatized by the memories of her time at the laundry. There is a phone number on the back of the card. When she calls, Lorna does not get a reply. However, she receives a text from the number, asking to meet her that night at a pub. In a brief flashback, we see how Lorna was sent away by her parents when they discovered she had an unwanted pregnancy. 

All of this was done against her will, which is the case with most women who suffered at these convents. Although Lorna waits for a long time, there is no sign of anyone. Her solitude is interrupted by Michael, who knows her from their school days together. Lorna doesn’t recognize him and is startled. She misconstrues his casual remark and attacks him. The night passes and she wakes up the next morning at her house. Lorna descends the staircase and spots the unopened box in the “red room.”

Unexpectedly, and to her absolute horror, Lorna also finds an unconscious old woman, bent over on the floor. When she suspects it is the woman who was supposed to meet her, Lorna calls the cell. And when the phone rings in the other room, her fears are confirmed. We turn our attention to Blackrock, Dublin, where DS Colman Akande is called to investigate a crime scene. Although he doesn’t recognize the house, Akande recalls the victim: Father Percy Sheehan.

It looks like he died due to a blow to the head. But the police aren’t sure at this point. We learn that Sheehan looked after Akande when he was a kid, even hanging a photo of his confirmation in the room. Akande notices Sheehan’s green car – the same one that Lorna was taken in the convent all those years ago – is missing. In the very next scene, we learn that the car is near Kilkinure, stuck away from the road. Lorna goes to the meeting against her original plan.

Anything to get out of the house, probably. She sees Niamh talking to the others about a charity group, Eadrom, who wants to lobby on behalf of the survivors to classify the Kilkinure convent as a Magdelene Laundry. The others in the group include Amy, Clemence, Peggy, and Deirdre. The man leading this crusade is James Coyle. Lorna suddenly walks into the meeting but isn’t interested in sitting down. She asks if anyone else got a card like her…but no one else did.

Lorna spots a wound on her forehead, which she doesn’t recall getting, and rushes out. Akande is sent to Kilkinure to investigate the missing car. Sergeant Aidan Massey, whom we saw earlier with the car, greets Akande. He will be assisting the city detective with the investigation. Garda Conor Skelly, who has been waiting in the fields with the car since morning, finally gets off the hook when Akande and Aidan arrive at the scene.

The car is instructed to be towed away to the Garda’s secure facility. Akande insists on a “door-to-door” to gather more information about anything out of order the past two nights. And the first one they talk to is Amy. That is when Akande learns that there was a laundry in Kilkinure as well and that Sheehan was responsible for holding up local girls there. She gloats how happy she is when they tell him Sheehan is dead. When they leave the shop, Aidan reveals to Akande that the State carried out an investigation a few years back and didn’t find any evidence of a laundry in the town.

That is what makes the women so agitated, to see their claims denied and injustices swept under the rug like it never happened. Lorna learns from Siobhan, who works at the pub, that the old lady took her home the previous night. Lorna is distracted when she sees the green car being towed away and runs back to her house in a panic. When interviewing Peggy and Deidre, Akande learns about Lorna and what she did last year. Lorna broke into the convent grounds and desecrated the shrine of the Virgin Mary with an axe. Aidan quickly shoots down his suspicions and claims that she was sleepwalking.

He also implies that Lorna isn’t “right in the head.” Akande visits her that night but Lorna doesn’t answer. She falls asleep waiting for him to leave and suddenly wakes up. But it is an instance of her sleepwalking. Lorna heads straight to the facility where the car is locked up. She breaks in and lights it on fire, only recognizing what she has done as she is leaving. It is also shown that Amy saw Lorna heading toward the car.

Aidan and Akande visit the shop the next morning to question Lorna. She pretends to draw a blank and Aidan prevents his counterpart from pressing her for answers. While giving the finishing touches to a wedding dress, Lorna is reminded of the time when her newborn was taken from her arms. The fabric triggers the memory and she ends up destroying the dress. Lorna also realizes that the woman in her house – who is now dead – was one of the nurses at the convent. But she cannot recall her name. To get rid of the body, Lorna makes a hole in one of the walls and buries the body there. 

The Episode Review

Episode 1 of The Woman in the Wall firmly establishes the serious-minded tone of the show. Do not expect too many moments of reprieve going forward. The intensity is dialled up right from the first scene. Ruth Wilson’s task is cut out as playing Lorna will challenge the actress to appreciate her portrait on a granular level. The show’s psychological elements draw inspiration from familiar tropes about past trauma and unresolved grief.

The scene where she butchers the wedding dress is a stark representation of this. But expect her to rise and conquer on those occasions. Kilkinure’s atmospheric small-town setting also adds another layer to peel back to the narrative. Most certainly, the main characters and events are interconnected and it will be interesting to see how they unfold.

The Woman in the Wall also touches gravely upon the Magdalene Laundry issue. One of the most recent depictions was found in Hulu’s Black Cake, where the protagonist Eleanor had to go through something similar. It is already painful to see Lorna struggle with the horrors of the tragedy but perhaps its representation will not go in vain.