Why Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise’s heartbreaking arrest was the greatest in the show’s history
It sure was intense.
Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise‘s penultimate episode of the season just wrapped up the case of Dorna Bray (Judith Jacob), proving detective inspector Mervin Wilson (Don Gilet) right. His estranged mother was, in fact, killed.
On the surface, there was nothing particularly exceptional about the arrest. The denouement took place as it always did with Mervin and the team breaking down the particulars of the victim’s Dᴇᴀᴛʜ , leaving no room for her murderer, Roy Palmer (Gerard Horan), to wriggle out of his conviction.
Yet, despite the routine, the journey to the truth is what makes it Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise‘s most impactful reveal ever.
The shrewd detective Mervin had been plagued by his mother’s Dᴇᴀᴛʜ since learning that she’d passed during the Christmas special.
The feeling that something was amiss about Dorna’s actions leading up to her final moments is what led the detective to consider that there might have been foul play.
The idea that Dorna still went to scatter her dad’s ashes at sea, despite knowing that a storm was due to hit the island, quite rightly made no sense to him – especially after discovering that she grew up around boats.
It was a disconcerting feeling that viewers watched grow and and grow over the course of the season, as Mervin tentatively felt closer to the mother that had given him up for adoption, learning about her through the community on the island she grew up on.
All season, Gilet has delivered an exceptional performance. His skill at being able to draw fans closer to the severely blunt and closed off Mervin has been extraordinary, allowing viewers to see how his trauma and issues with abandonment have created fragility and vulnerability.
At the same time, the show tracked his excitement at getting closer to the truth behind Dorna’s suspicious Dᴇᴀᴛʜ . But it then delivered crushing blow after blow, when things didn’t pan out as he had expected, leaving him to return to that unsettled feeling.
No blow was felt harder than the one new boss Sterling Fox (Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge) delivered when he announced that he was closing the case effective immediately, one week before Mervin was due to leave the island for good.
However, with a little encouragement from Catherine (Élizabeth Bourgine), Selwyn (Don Warrington) unofficially resumed his Commissioner status and arrested Sterling for criminal damage (remember when he scraped Sewlyn’s car?). The orchestration of Sterling’s arrest placed him out of action, and allowed Mervin and the team to temporarily continue the investigation.
As events continued to unfold, Mervin learned about the summer romance between Dorna and his father Charlie, when they fell in love and conceived Mervin.
Letters that Dorna had written to his father –which had been returned, unread – found their way into Mervin’s possession. It was an especially raw moment when Mervin faced opening those letters, discovering that it was his father’s parents who had insisted that he be put up for adoption and that his mother loved him dearly.
Dorna’s words revealed that she would carry her love for Mervin throughout her life and would honour that love by always wearing the emerald green ring Charlie had given her. It was a promise she had kept, proven by the several pictures Mervin had found over the years of her still wearing the ring. And yet it was not recovered with her body the day she died.
It was this ring that became the cause of her Dᴇᴀᴛʜ .
We came to learn that the ring Dorna wore was worth a fortune, and that Roy, in debt up to his eyeballs, had concocted an elaborate plan to steal it from her. However, he wasn’t working alone. Roy had tempted Dorna’s neighbour Brianna Clemetson (Joy Richardson) with the promise of a new life using that newfound wealth, and so had persuaded her to help him commit murder.
Knowing that Dorna had intended to scatter her dad’s ashes on the morning before the storm hit, Roy paid her a visit and drugged her drink, and once she was unconscious he stole the ring.
We know what you’re thinking: why didn’t Roy just leave it there? He had the ring, why not save himself the hassle of murder – especially given that Dorna had become unconscious much later, once Roy had left?
Honestly, it wouldn’t be Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise if the evil plan weren’t audaciously kooky. And so, while he nabbed the ring, Brianna stole Dorna’s clothes from the house and dressed as her. Later, in plain sight of some locals, the fake Dorna headed off in her late father’s boat.
Things got even more elaborate when Roy swam out from a remote section of the beach, with a limp Dorna in his boat, and abandoned her out at sea while escaping in a dinghy. Brianna arrived not long after, dressed Dorna up in the clothes she had been wearing, plopped her in the correct boat and escaped in Roy’s, leaving Dorna to drown.
Admittedly the whole thing was long-winded and a little too far-fetched, but what really brought the scene together was Gilet’s Mervin.
The emotion he brought to that scene was not something created or built in the moment, it was a whole season’s worth of feeling coming to a head – making the stakes feel higher and more gutting.
Dealing with the emotional turmoil of his mother being left to drown in a category four storm, whilst still doing his job and delivering justice, was a clash for Mervin. We saw the cool, sleuthing detective share feelings he was not used to exploring privately, let alone publicly.
When he looked his mother’s killer in the eye and delivered the line: “Dorna Bray [insert tear-jerking pregnant pause] my mother, didn’t come back alive,” we got chills.
The gravity in this scene could only have been achieved through Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise’s decision to step away from its case of the week format, to offer a storyline with more tenderness.
That’s not to say that the BBC drama hasn’t successfully produced long-lead stories before. Neville being set up for murder by the woman he was dating was also a crushing blow, and a fantastic storyline that lasted the same duration as Mervin’s – however the latter just pips it in terms of overall impact.
Neville’s journey towards the truth was shocking and devastating, however the betrayal was happening behind the scenes, unbeknownst to him, which meant the real crux of the action only took place in the final episodes. Meanwhile, Mervin endured a lifetime of pain, which was dialled up incrementally across the season and therefore culminated in the most explosive way.
The murder mystery drama has been intricate and purposeful from the beginning of Mervin’s run as DI. From the way he always wore something green, subtly linking him to his mother, to each emotional building block that was laid, the payoff was built upon as the season unfolded – leading to the greatest arrest in Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise history.
Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise and Beyond Paradise both air on BBC One and stream on BBC iPlayer.
