*Major spoilers for the whole of Bodyguard, episodes 1-6*
Last night’s edge-of-the-seat finale to hit BBC thriller Bodyguard confirmed some popular theories, tore down others, and answered an awful lot of burning questions.
That said, it was so packed full of twists, turns and surprise revelations that it has led to some baffled and amusing reactions on social media – as viewers work hard to make sense of it all.
If you were confused in any way, never fear. Here’s a breakdown of all the major Bodyguard finale plot-points to explain exactly what the devil was going on.
It was powerful criminals who killed Julia
Eventually, the conspiracy was unwrapped.And as some had theorised, it was actually figures from the world of organised crime that conspired to murder Julia Montague with the stage-bomb, while she was delivering her speech.
Their motivation was that Julia’s new ‘snooper’s charter’ would have been “bad for business”, as it would put their operations at risk of disruption or shut-down, and make it harder to pay-off those investigating them.
Underworld chief Luke Aitkens had been using Chanel Dyson, Montague’s former assistant, to spy on her, and also supplied traumatised war veteran Andy Apsted with the rifle he used in his attempt to assassinate Julia.
When that didn’t work, Aitkens resorted to the bomb attack.
It was also his men who replaced the bullets in David’s gun with blanks. They didn’t want to arouse suspicion by stealing it altogether, but they didn’t want him armed with live rounds in case he became a threat to them.
Aitkens had help from a treacherous insider
There was indeed a mole inside the police. But it wasn’t David’s colleague Tom, or Louise, or Anne Sampson as Deepak briefly suspected.
Instead, it was David’s own boss Lorraine Craddock who had been supplying Aitkens with information from the start, having been recruited by his organisation years earlier.
The corrupt copper told Aitkens about Julia’s travel schedule, and her security itinerary for the speech, and helped him circumvent the Home Secretary’s protective detail. She was also instrumental in the plan to frame David.
But, she insisted, it was not her who gave terrorists information about the school David’s children attended. That honour belonged to another culprit we didn’t see coming.
Nadia was actually the master bomb-maker – and another accomplice of Aitkens
The very first scene’s suicide bomber fooled both David, and most of us watching at home, into the belief that she was a ‘victim’ of coercion by her husband and his Jihadi superiors. But in actual fact, in a subversion of dramatic tropes, she was the real terrorist mastermind all along.
David finally deduced that it was her who had put his children in danger, from prison, after he showed her a picture of his kids and gave her their names and ages. A gloating Nadia ultimately explained that she was the bomb-maker all along, being a trained engineer and devoted Jihadi, but she was happy to play along after David assumed she was just a meek, manipulated woman.
Explaining how Aitkens was able to secure sophisticated bombs, it was Nadia who supplied the criminal “non-believers” with the bomb that killed Julia, and the suicide vest David was forced to wear, as it earned her organisation valuable money, and achieved similar aims.
She also lied to David about recognising Richard Longcross in order to sew further disruption and throw him off the scent. Longcross may be a slippery so-and-so, but he and the security services had nothing to do with the attempted train bombing.
The security services were indeed planning a ‘coup’
That said, Longcross’s boss Stephen Hunter-Dunn was up to something, as police chief Anne Sampson managed to deduce.
The security services supplied Julia with the secret ‘dirt’ on the Prime Minister, involving sexual assault, drugs, scandals and cover-ups, hoping to oust him from office so that she could take the reigns, and give them greater powers over investigations currently run by the police.
When Julia was killed however, and they did not know where the device with the secret files was, they resorted to desperate measures in order to retrieve it and cover their own political conspiracy – believing David may well have it in his possession.
One interesting aside to this that’s still not clear, however, is whether new Home Secretary Mike Travis was also involved in this plan, and how far he and Hunter-Dunn are aligned.
Anne Sampson noted them cosily closing ranks at a security briefing. And though the MI5 chief and Prime Minister are both likely to be stepping down, Travis remains very much in authority as far as the government side is concerned. Was he more shadily involved with all this than he claimed? He certainly seemed keen for David to take the fall for everything.
Speaking of which…
David Budd was being set up as a fall-guy from the beginning
Episode five had us worried that David’s relationship with sniper Andy Apsted would come out, putting him back under police suspicion. But what we didn’t realise is that this was the plan all along.
David’s connection to everything and everyone has been a source of some derision from many of the show’s critics. But in Bodyguard, the criminal conspiracy always intended for him to be the ‘patsy’ in their sinister machinations.
Aitkens recruited Apsted, and Craddock gave David the job as Julia’s protection officer; ensuring that both traumatised ex-soldiers would seem inevitably part of the same assassination plot.
This almost worked too, but David managed to talk (and nail-bitingly disarm) his way out of that nerve-wracking suicide vest situation, meaning that he lived to expose Aitkens. It’s worth noting that Craddock’s dismissive discussions with him during their ‘negotiation’ become even colder with hindsight. She knew he wasn’t a traitor – but was prepared to see him shot or blown up to protect herself.
It seems that Vicky’s mysterious boyfriend was just a red herring in the drama. But as we have yet to meet him, it’s impossible to know for sure.
Julia really is dead (or is she?)
With no last-minute reveal of Julia Montague alive and well after all, those many fan theories about her not being dead (including some ingenious allusions to Romeo and Juliet) appear to have been wide of the mark.
And yet, we still haven’t seen a body. The funeral was private.
Could she, might she, return in season two? For some, the hope is still there…
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More Bodyguard articles and explainers:
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Clunky dialogue, zero chemistry – but we loved the Bodyguard finale
Bodyguard finale obliterates the ‘weak’ female Muslim trope
Questions we need answered in the finale – character by character
Bodyguard episode 5: every revelation and red herring explored
Bodyguard is ridiculous – but I can’t help but love it
Bodyguard cast in full – and their other TV shows and films
Bodyguard filming locations: how to visit the settings of the drama
Effects team on Bodyguard reveal effects behind that bomb
Why Jed Mercurio was right to kill off Keeley Hawes’ character
Bodyguard creator shoots down fan theory – and hints at season 2
