[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the first two episodes of Bad Sisters Season 2.]
A shocking ending capped the dynamic two-episode premiere of this Irish dark comedy’s second season. The loving, squabbling, and now heartbroken Garvey sisters will have to carry on (forget “keep calm,” it’s not in their DNA) without sensitive, vulnerable Grace (Anne-Marie Duff). She died in a nighttime car accident while frantically fleeing the home she shared with her kind and dreamy second husband Ian (Owen McDonnell). Grace had recently confessed to him that she murdered his predecessor, the monstrous, controlling JP (Claes Bang). The revelation shocked her four siblings in the first season but since they’d all independently tried to kill “the Prick” anyway, they joyfully kept her secret.
Bad Sisters creator and executive producer Sharon Horgan, who plays pragmatic Eva Garvey, the eldest, told us why she chose to let the beloved and fragile Grace go (click on the video above for a full interview with her and the cast). “As much as I love the end of the first season, it was a fairytale kind of end jumping into the sea and everything’s going to be okay. And unfortunately, quite often it’s not. And it gives the sisters something to [do this season]; they’ve got to find out what happened to her. And for the audience, it’s finding out what really happened that night. We hold back so much, and we retain secrets and it’s as tricky a decision as it was, it was the right thing for the story.”
Grace is mourned not just by Eva and the other Garveys—nurse Ursula (Eva Birthistle) who’s fighting drug addiction this season; one-eyed Bibi (Sarah Greene) who’s trying to have a child with her wife; and youngest Becka (Eve Hewson)—but also by a friend/new character, the intrusive, pious, and self-important Angelica (Fiona Shaw). “I loved doing it. It’s very different to anything I’ve played,” Shaw told us.
Click on the video to hear more about how each Garvey copes with loss and digs into the new mystery.
Bad Sisters, Wednesdays, Apple TV+