Whitechapel: 4x05 and 4x06
Whoa. That has got to be one of the best season finales I’ve seen in a long time. It was gripping from start to finish (well, maybe not the obvious Fake Action Prologue of the team-building Zombie Apocalypse exercise) and I was pretty much terrified for most of it as well. This was one of those stories where everything slots into place perfectly, even though you never saw any of it coming, and now I’m seriously worried that there won’t be a series five in order to explore the ramifications of what happened in this two-part finale.
By the end Pandora’s Box is open, the line between reality and the paranormal has been well and truly crossed, and nothing is ever going to be the same again. I should probably watch the whole season a second time before commenting, as I’m sure that there’s plenty of stuff that I missed - but I really have to talk about it right now.
What’s foremost is that it’s pretty clear that a Genre Shift has taken place. For the first two seasons, we were dealing with a Crime Drama in which the police force used history to solve copy-cat killers who mimicked Jack the Ripper and the Kray Twins. This changed in season three, where what we saw very often veered into Crime Horror, with stories about killers who hide in the walls, that poison and disembody their victims, who take on the visage of the Bogeyman in all his frightening, shadowy glory. That the final episodes had a trace of unexplainable ghostly phenomena and featured the horror films of Lon Chaney paid homage to this slight tonal shift.
But the two subgenres are very similar, and a casual viewer probably would not have even noticed much of a change - until now. Season three introduces the subtle but unmistakable influence of the supernatural - demonic and destructive in nature - which throws the entire show firmly into the Gothic genre. Now we are dealing with a brand new set of themes, with the usual trend of using history as a precedent to solve contemporary crimes taking something of a back seat to the staple characteristics of the Gothic novel: loss of identity, unexplainable supernatural phenomena, the onset of madness and paranoia, the questioning of what’s real and what isn’t, and a shift away from police procedural to include an added emphasis on each individual in the team as they undergo their own personal hauntings.
What makes this change especially interesting is that it utilizes the storytelling device that TV Tropes calls Arc Welding. This is when a show retroactively tries to connect past (and unrelated) events by introducing a character or other device that takes responsibility for all that has already occurred. This was most clearly seen in season four of Angel, when the character of Jasmine tells the group that she has been responsible for a variety of hitherto unexplained events such as Angel’s re-souling, Cordelia’s ascension, Fred’s banishment to Pylea and so on - tracing her involvement in their lives all the way back to the snowfall that saved Angel’s life in season three of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
A similar thing happens in Whitechapel. For the first three seasons, Chandler and the team have been investigating a range of unrelated cases: Jack the Ripper, the Krays, and the serial killers in season three. Yet season four aspires to link all these crimes by inserting a supernatural element, claiming that Whitechapel is not only a breeding ground for grisly crimes (much like Sunnydale’s Hellmouth) but that all the murders have been engineered by a “provocateur”: a dark force that incites otherwise ordinary people to commit heinous acts against other men and women.
Now, if you were to ask me who the most dangerous villain in literary history is, I would probably say Iago from Othello. He doesn’t have magical powers or great strength or even a particularly cunning plan - his evil lies simply in his ability to coax, coerce and cajole others into committing crimes for him. His gift is finding the chinks in people’s armour, in preying on their own weakness and foibles, and by the end of the play, Othello and Desdemona are dead, neither one by Iago’s own hand. It is this power of persuasion that is shared by Whitechapel’s provocateur.
Just before his (apparent) suicide in the season premiere, the rouge MI5 agent Wingfield sent Chandler his files, having already told him about the presence of a dark power in Whitechapel and his belief that Chandler is its next intended victim. But it’s Buchan that discovers an unsettling truth: Wingfield had pin-pointed several of the crime scenes and residences of the perpetrators long before the crimes even took place. It suggests that whatever else may have been going on in the man’s mind, he was on to something.
So who is this provocateur? The audience is given the answer long before the team catches on, for we are privy to the recurring presence of a little old lady who flits in and out of background shots, who approaches each member of the team at Buchan’s book launch and tells them uncomfortable truths about themselves, and who then sneaks into the station in order to mess with their working conditions.
It all seems impossibly simple. By sabotaging the old water pipes she not only prevents the flow of clean water that Chandler so desperately needs to keep himself clean (and his OCD under control) but also plays havoc with the mould in the basement (threatening Buchan’s precious files) and the lighting in the precinct (irritating the rest of the team). Her carefully selected private words with each of them at the book launch are planted in their minds, take root, and begin to grow over the course of the series.
To Miles she targets his authority, pointing out that it must be so difficult to keep up with the youngsters and command respect at his age - and along with his increasing inability to keep the likes of Mansell and Kent under control, he is the one most spooked by what’s going on, haunted regularly by the sound of high-heeled shoes in the precinct’s corridors. To Chandler it’s his on-going inability to bring any of his caught perpetrators in alive, having to deal with a string of killers who escape justice by committing suicide before he can apprehend them. It’s a grim burden for any control-freak to bear, especially one as morally righteous as Chandler, and every single little thing around him is reminding him of his failures, right down to the fortune cookie that cheerfully admonishes him to “try better next time!” As such, his OCD is almost through the roof, making it increasingly impossible for him to perform simple tasks.
Riley has her role as a wife and mother attacked, with the old woman asking her how it must feel to do her job each day and not be sure whether or not she’ll return home to her family at the end of it. Thoroughly disturbed by this sentiment, especially after a near-death experience, Riley lets a cut on her finger swell into an infected blister so that she might avoid field work.
Though we don’t actually see the old lady speaking to Kent or Mansell, there’s certainly something up with the two of them. When the latter starts dating the former’s twin sister, it’s understandable that Kent would want to protect her given Mansell’s track record, but it soon becomes clear that his motivation is also rooted in resentment and jealousy - of Mansell’s happiness and his own unrequited love. As such, he’s haunted by distorted images of himself whenever he looks into a reflective surface, revealing the true nature of the man trying to destroy another’s happiness. For Mansell, his issues are rooted in self-esteem. As he confesses to Riley, this is the first time that he’s ever truly loved a woman and done everything in his power to make himself worthy of her. Not helped along by phone calls which are initially inaudible but eventually revealed to be spewing a stream of abuse at him, Mansell reaches the end of his rope when Erica dumps him.
Between their personal issues and their uncomfortable environment, it’s no wonder that the gang’s stress levels are through the roof. Not only that, but their moods are contagious. They’re setting each other off at the slightest provocation, their friendly ribbing becomes cruel and nasty, and there is the definite sense that something is brewing both inside and outside the station. What we’re left with is Buchan and Riley scared of their own shadows, Kent becoming increasingly (and irrationally) angry, Mansell getting suicidal, Miles feeling his age and Chandler barely keeping it together.
But is all this the work of genuine demonic powers?
It would seem so. This little old lady is identified as a woman called Louise Iver, a name that is an anagram of “I rouse evil” as well as one that bears a similarity to “Lucifer.” Miles uncovers pictures of her in Buchan’s files, images that not only depict her amongst the likes of the witch-hunts and the Ripper killings in the distant past, but also with the Krays in a photograph from the 1960s. And (though only the audience is privy to this) she pops up everywhere, and clearly has preternatural knowledge of the events that are about to occur.
It’s not just Louise Iver, but other little hints strewn here and there that provide evidence that the paranormal is at work around Whitechapel: Miles getting a flash of the dead woman sitting beside him in the first episode, the fact that the psychic they contacted was correct in her information on where the dead girl was located, and Chandler’s devastating final message from his deceased father (but more on that in a bit).
But this isn’t just the supernatural in a broad sense that we’re dealing with, it’s the type of supernatural that is rooted in Christian belief. Its imagery and symbolism is everywhere, and as such there is a real sense of religion and its power woven throughout this season. All of the felons this season were working out of a misguided sense of justice, each one convinced that they were carrying out God’s plan to wreck his vengeance on innocent people.
They are clearly the type of person a demonic figure would want to manipulate into doing evil, for it must be a true affront to God to have people committing such heinous acts in His name. This isn’t just evil; this is goodness that has been twisted and deformed and mutilated into something disgusting.
But if there’s darkness, there must also be light, and amidst all the evil of despair and cruelty and fanaticism, there is friendship and forgiveness and understanding. The relationship between Miles and Chandler is as strong as it’s ever been - Miles can talk Chandler down out of panic-attacks and is (currently) the only person that Chandler has trusted with the truth about his father’s suicide. For the first time ever, Miles stands up for Buchan and tells the rest of the team to stop picking on him. Riley and Buchan get over the cruel joke that was played on them and restore their friendship. Riley is able to talk Mansell down from the ledge. Kent ceases to see himself as monstrous in reflections after he makes things right between Mansell and Erica. Riley confesses her fear to Miles and Caroline and derives comfort from them. Mansell regains his self-esteem once he’s back together with the woman he loves. Caroline’s pregnancy serves as a constant reminder that amidst all the death, there is also life. Even as the team tears itself apart, small acts of kindness are strewn throughout.
But most of all, Chandler emerges - at one point quite literally - as an angelic figure. Over the course of the season Chandler is imbued with strong angelic imagery to offset the demonic dimension, as seen in the picture below:
Despite his trouble with OCD, he manages to rise above it on several occasions in order to comfort bereaved family members by letting them into his personal space. Have we ever seen him hug or even hold hands with a person before? Because he manages to do both in the final episodes. More interestingly, he has bizarre visions (eventually revealed to be flash-forwards) of a surreal nature which seem to portray him in the process of metamorphosing into an angel. This is finally explained at the climax of the final episode in which he appears in a burst of light to a group of religious fanatics, saving a child’s life by making them believe that he’s an angel sent from the Lord.
As is revealed a couple of times, there is real power to be found in prayer and appeals to God. For instance, when Miles is trapped in a bathroom stall, being attacked by some unseen presence on the other side that seems intent on breaking down the door, his protective charm (which I assume is engraved with a Catholic saint) falls to the ground and the force disappears.
And finally, in the last moments of the show, Chandler reads the words that the psychic wrote down for him, claiming that they are from his father: Don’t put them all in the same van.
A final bridge has been crossed, Chandler knows that the supernatural is real… but it’s too late. Louise Iver has already caused a fatal car accident that has once again killed the guilty party and spared them from justice. The team is saving the occasional life, but they are not yet taking on the source of evil itself.
And yet, is this really a totally doom and gloom ending?
You all know the old saying: that if you look into the void long enough, it starts looking back at you. But that didn’t happen to Miles and Chandler and Buchan and the rest. They retained their humanity and got through the trials that were thrown at them. They’re all still good people. And more than that - from a certain perspective it’s clear that Louise Ivers wasn’t “simply” trying to mess with them. They weren’t “just” being used as playthings. In all the years she’s been rousing evil in Whitechapel, Chandler and his team have come closer than anyone else in stopping her. It’s pretty clear that she perceives them as a threat.
And despite trying to break them - she didn’t. Instead, she’s tipped them off as to her existence. Miles has caught her on camera and Chandler das accepted the reality of the supernatural. They are officially on to her, and that means that the possibilities for a potential series five (oh please, please, please) are endless.
A few final points…
Though I generally side with Buchan’s belief that good and evil only reside in human beings, I love the idea of frail and elderly little Louise Iver as a metaphor for evil. If there was an embodiment of a force working in the interests of evil, then this is what it would look like and how it would act: as the little voice that pushes you to do things you know you shouldn’t, the nagging sound that you can’t get out of your head, the accumulation of all those annoying little things that build up until you just snap. Evil is not some huge, monstrous, grandiose thing - it is a spiteful and vindictive little old lady.
I complained in the first episodes that they introduced the existence of a psychic only to do nothing with it - I take that back, as here we get an appearance from said psychic who provides a crucial plot-point.
There is however a few loose ends regarding Stella Knight, the MI5 agent that seemed to know more than she was letting on about Wingfield and whose strange neck scar has yet to be explained.
I think the most important thing to take away from this season is that in amongst all the acts of violence and the atmosphere of darkness and despair, it is the tiny acts of kindness that really matter. The team will need to fortify themselves with that as they head into the future…