#endeavour s9

[bryndeavour]

[notholaenas]

we meet again

(screenshot redraws from s9)

[goodassmotherliker]

Endeavour season 9 spoiler alert

Having finished the final episode, I cannot overstate the importance of this frame. I would argue that this is the most exposed we have ever seen Morse. Throughout the series, he is estranged from the period-appropriate clothing and technology. If you saw a picture of Morse in his house, you could easily attribute it to the fifties, even though the show is set in the late sixties/early seventies. Morse's taste in music is nothing close to modern as well. 

That is why this scene hits so hard. Morse in the party lights lost under the ridiculous disco ball with Rocket Man playing in the background. Morse's alienation from the music of his era makes the music choice even more special and heartbreaking. Everything that Morse held dear to his heart is gone: the love of his life is happily married to another man, and his mentor is leaving for good. But, most importantly, Morse's integrity, often represented by classical music, is corrupted. Morse betrayed his principles and dropped the Blenheim Valey case for Fred Thursday and his family. He lied so that Thursday could get away with murder. 

Morse is lost in a world he neither recognizes nor fits in. The reality of 1972 has never been so tangible. Hence the disco ball. Hence the soundtrack. Immaculate and thought-through. 

[oc-character-development]

Endeavour finale memes because I’m laughing myself through the pain: spoilers ahead

[mywingsareonwheels]

I'm here thinking about the fact that in the end both of Morse's father figures give him guns.

But Cyril Morse gave him a gun to "make a man out of him", out of a distorted "make me proud" bullshit, to make him more violent, to alienate him from his best self and the memory of his mother.

Whereas Fred Thursday gives Morse a gun to surrender and abandon his own worst self, honouring and respecting Morse as a better because less violent protector of Oxford (and of Joan), and gives a speech to Morse at the same time expressing how proud he is of him. Morse may have lost faith in Fred; Fred does not in any way lose faith in Morse, and he makes damn sure that Morse knows this and can carry that with him if he wishes to.

Morse doesn't need to become anything other than who he is to make Fred proud.

(The other great gift that Fred gives Morse in that moment - perhaps less than the pride and the abandoning of his own worst self, but certainly more than the gun itself - is refusing the lift all the way to Carshall. Fred yet again assists and validates Morse in his relationship with music, encouraging him to keep it as a high priority by explicitly ensuring he doesn't miss his choir rehearsal and concert. It harkens back to that speech in "Fugue", to making sure there's one thing the darkness can't take from him. And where do we need see Morse after Endeavour? Late for a choir rehearsal after some car trouble. ;-) )

[ladyaj-13]

Okay, I liked S9E3 because:

no one important died and that is GOOD

Sam is back on his feet

it was a decent explanation for why the Thursdays just disappear from Morse's life

the flashbacks of characters was a nice touch, hello Shirley and George

Peter canonically is not shown to have left, for all we know he's still kipping on Morse's sofa and will be there right through IM, and it was just clever camera angles that never caught him

But I was confused by that gunshot? What was the point? Did they really think they might have viewers - by season 9, watching the culmination of a plot that kicked off in season 2 - who don't know they're watching a prequel and therefore might genuinely think Morse offed himself? Who or what did he ACTUALLY shoot? I can't see him just taking a pot-shot at a squirrel for the hell of it.

I don't know I'm just a bit confused by everything post-Thursday goodbye, tbh.

[thursdaysbagman]

while I would have been happy about the jakes return just because he is jakes - it's such a good full circle moment from when he couldn't face going back to blenheim vale to help morse and thursday to him having come to terms enough with his past that he would fly from america to help the old gang when he really didn't have to to help solve the case

[windsweptinred]

So, in a very poetic way. Morse never really dropped the Blenheim Valecase. By taking Robert Lewis under his wing all those years later. He took the very last remnents of it (the victims remaining family) into his care. And what greater justice is there for Big Pete, then to help train a Detective Sergeant/Detective Inspector that will be moral, kind and true. No matter the circumstance.

[morsesnotes]

So we've talked about how devastating the single tear is, but I also want to give a shout to that desperate little noise after Morse says, "I should've said something and now it's too late." Like he's barely containing his composure. His emotions are leaking out like a tap about to burst.

[bryndeavour]

[thekenobee]

Morse: marry me

Joan: I don'T wAnT yOuR pItY

Strange: marry me

Joan: why not

[oc-character-development]

Oh my….that was an episode!

Spoilery ramble ahead:

Lewis got a name drop! He was the nephew of Brenda Lewis! And he’s a young police cadet in Newcastle! LEWIS!!!!!!

JOAN IS MRS STRANGE!!!!!

Oh my god Morse imagining confessing to Joan broke my heart!!!!

Bright leaving was the first time I cried this evening.

Thursday…. THURSDAY!!!! I burst out into tears when they had the last drink, Morse explained everything, started crying and when Thursday left. He’s in hiding to protect Sam and Morse never mentions him because he can’t.

One of Morse’s last words to Thursday was ‘goodbye sir’ that broke my f*cking heart because THAT IS LEWIS’ LAST WORDS IN INSPECTOR MORSE!!!

Morse’s last words asking ‘is that it?’.

Morse was crying, I cried, everything is wrapped up.

The LAST SHOT WITH THE TWO CARS! THE PASSING OF THE TORCH!!!! YOUNG MORSE TO OLD MORSE!!!

I’m going to cry again.

Goodbye Morse.

You’re forever going to be my favourite detective. Goodbye Endeavour.

My favourite detective series.

Thank you for everything. I’ll always love you, you’ll always be my comfort detective show.

Forever.

[mywingsareonwheels]

Ugh, that thing Russell Lewis does...

... of dropping in devastating or revealing character information in off-hand bits of dialogue or the info on a tombstone you see for one second or this this that and the other. Right up until the final episode.

Some of the things that are really blink-and-you’ll-miss-it the first time around if you’re not careful:-

Bright lost his daughter. While way posher than most of the characters he’s still not from quite as upper class a background as his wife (who cheated on him at least once, though they weathered it). Her nickname for him means “tiger”. He doesn’t seem to have fit in comfortably at any point with anyone, perhaps indeed until he starts to bond more closely with Fred and Morse in the last 2-3 series.

Win was stalwartly in London for at least part of the Blitz. She once met a guy with a foot fetish who flirted with her and she’s still tolerantly amused decades later.

Constance was less than 20 when she had Morse. (AAAAAAAH.) (Everything about her marriage to Cyril sounds horrifying frankly.)

Max is gay and has a lost love (“and one was fond of me” / ”the one that got away”)

Fred grew up without indoor plumbing and generally in fairly intense poverty, he and Charlie at least (presumably Billy and I suspect their mother too) were physically abused by their father (who was an alcoholic).

Also on Fred: he was already an anti-fascist in the 1930s including when it meant joining with one of his colleagues (Sgt Vimes, who Sam was probably named after) against the rest. (Frankly Fred is the king of the “devastating info that is easily missed”, and that last point regards some moderately obscure knowledge to decode but it’s solid once you have that.)

Jakes’s non-Blenheim Vale background was very poor too, given his familiarity with the “Never-Neverland” of the kind of housing estate that replaced the kind of slum that Fred grew up in.

Dorothea has had a fricking epic past doing war correspondence etc..

Sam was bullied at school and didn’t tell his father because he was worried about how he would react.

Jim was brought up by his apparently rather obnoxious and judgemental grandmother, which might explain the desperate need to fit in and get on at all costs, as well as the extremely skilled peacemaking at times. He might have been in the navy before the police, though that’s a bit more uncertain.

Trewlove went to a posh enough school to have serious chess-playing as a thing. (She’s definitely the only person at the station with a comparable class background to Bright’s.)

And so on; I know I’ve missed out plenty of things here and especially I know there’s some info about Win that’s on the tip of my brain and I can’t quite remember. (I think she’s from Blackpool originally, e.g. and misses the sea? And did some war work outside London?) I weirdly couldn’t think of anything significant that’s not already foregrounded about Joan, Box, Fancy, or Monica; help me out here lovelies. :-) 

This is on top of eveeeeerything about Morse, which is far more foregrounded but even he has things dropped in very casually sometimes.

Goodness they’re all so messy and I love them all so very very much. <3 (Though also: I so very much wish that Lewis gave just *more* to his women characters. I have the obvious reservations about Joan’s arc (I *like* Strange, but... hmmmmmmmmmm), and the obvious wishing that Monica and Trewlove especially had had far far more to do.)

[ladyaj-13]

Thursday: "it was your door he showed up at".

Point 1: This implies Jakes was aware of events but not explicitly invited, otherwise obviously he'd show up at the door of the person who invited him, that's not something to remark on.

Point 2: Jakes already knew Morse's address.

Conclusion: THEY ACTUALLY WERE PENPALS.

[thursdaysbagman]

morse not evening trying to hide his tears infront of thursday in the pub just god

[notholaenas]

okay so hear me out // there's the ugly brown sofa in the living room right..... but there's absolutely 0 indicator of jakes sleeping there like,, no pillows or blankets or anything... so where did he sl[sniper takes me out from the roof]