Good heavens. That was a pretty long and convoluted show, but worry not, I won’t beat around the bush, let’s get straight to the point. [Spoiler Alert] So Merritt Lingard, who went missing from a ferry some four years ago, was kidnapped by Lyle and his mother, Ailsa, as the Jennings held Merritt responsible for the death of Harry, Ailsa’s eldest son and Lyle’s beloved brother. Before becoming a prolific criminal lawyer, Merritt and her younger brother, William, lived on Mhor island with their alcoholic father, Jamie. In her teenage years, she was in love with Harry Jennings and wanted to run away from the doomed island to start a new life somewhere else. After Merritt’s mother, Lila, died at a young age, Merritt felt suffocated on the island. Her depressed father found his escape in booze, leaving the children to fend for themselves. However, to start anew Harry and Merritt needed money, which was when Merritt suggested Harry steal her mother’s diamond ring when no one was at home. Well, the robbery went wrong, and Harry’s psychopathic brother ended up beating Merritt’s brother to a pulp. On that fateful night, William suffered severe head injuries from which he never really recovered. Harry knew things would never be the same between him and Merritt again, which was why he tried to flee the island, but met his ultimate demise while trying to avoid arrest. Well, that’s what the official records say: Harry jumped off the ferry and died. But we are not sure how much of it is true, because the officer who wrote this report can’t be trusted.
Was Lyle Jennings A Psychopath?
The thing is, Lyle lacked empathy from a very young age. At eight years old, he was caught killing a neighbor’s dog who barked at him during a holiday parade. He was suspected in several more animal killings, which suggested that he was born bent the wrong way. Dept. Q hinted that Lyle’s neuropsychiatric disorder might be a result of the severe punishment they suffered at their mother’s hands, as she often locked the boys in a hyperbaric chamber for long periods of time, sometimes for days. It was a part of the inventory purchased by the kids’ father, Clive Jennings, for his shipping company. Well, that’s just a theory I have. I think Clive knew that his wife had been locking the kids in a hyperbaric chamber for punishment, and maybe he tried to put a stop to her cruelty, which resulted in his death. Harry told Merritt the same thing. He said it wasn’t Lyle who burned the house down and killed their father. It was their mother. So, based on this theory, it could be assumed that Ailsa was the real culprit here, whose unchecked psychotic behavior didn’t destroy just one life, but four (Harry, Lyle, William, and Merritt).
Following her husband’s death, Ailsa was even placed in involuntary psychiatric care for 19 months, suggesting that maybe the authorities themselves suspected some foul play but eventually let Ailsa go, seeing as her boys had no one to look after them. If you ask me, it would have been better for Harry and Lyle if Ailsa had never returned to the household. Ailsa was the reason why Harry wanted to leave the island with Lyle so he could save his brother from their mother’s dark shadow, but unfortunately his sudden death brought with it the end of any hope that Lyle could escape. The young lad was left at the mercy of his mother, who left no stone unturned to drive the lad to psychopathy. While being locked inside the hyperbar, Lyle would often imagine Harry by his side, which indicated that Lyle’s mental condition worsened beyond repair.
Why Did Lyle Kill Sam Haig?
During his childhood, Lyle was sent to Godhaven HMYOI numerous times, and during one such visit, he met a 17-year-old Samuel “Sam” Hag, who was admitted to youth detention center in 2013. If you take a look at young Sam’s recorded sessions with his correction counselor, Terry Dundee, then you might notice that Harry and Sam looked quite similar, and maybe that was the reason why Lyle got obsessed with young Sam. He thought Sam was Harry and started stalking him in the facility, which was why Sam lost his cool and ended up punching Lyle in the eye. So, it was because of this brief but violent exchange between the two that Sam remembered Lyle and decided to pay him a visit years later, after he had some kind of psychological breakthrough. He was writing a book about his time in Godhaven and wanted to interview Lyle for the same.
When Lyle met Sam again, he was quite intrigued by the line of work he was in. Sam, being a reporter, used fake identities and burner phones to get information from potential witnesses and suspects. At this point, Lyle was watching Merritt’s rise to success and wanted to make her pay for the supposed crimes she had committed in the past. I guess, when Sam shared the secrets of his trade with Lyle, he quickly came up with the idea of meeting Merritt face-to-face as Sam Haig. She had previously lost a high profile case involving Graham Finch, who was accused of killing his wife. Sam pretended to be a reporter investigating the corruption in the department, and Merritt took the bait, as she herself suspected her supervisor, Stephen Burns, to be working for Finch. Additionally, Sam was the perfect cover for Lyle. The former was a celebrated journalist, yet was almost like a phantom. He had no bio, no social media account, and no recent photos. So no one, not even Merritt could have possibly figured out who real Sam Haig was.
Well, days later, Merritt started a secret affair with Lyle, who was pretending to be Sam, while the real Sam Haig was spending time in Godhaven picking up information for his book and struggling with his own complicated issues. It was during one such secret meeting that Lyle found out that Merritt was going back to Mhor, and therefore he came up with an impromptu plan to abduct her from the ferry so he and his mother could finally exact their revenge. However, Lyle likely suspected that police would finally connect the dots through his and Merritt’s secret meetings in Prince’s Garden Hotel, and might end up interrogating the real Sam Haig. So, in order to tie up the loose end, Lyle showed up at Benny Beg, a climbing school where Sam was a regular, and threw him off the cliff, making his death look like an accident. The police didn’t bother to investigate, as his injuries were consistent with a traumatic fall from a great height. However, if they had investigated the case, then they might have found the cracks in the story. Lyle had put Sam’s bag in his car, and accidentally took his car keys, which were later found to be missing from the crime scene.
How Did Lyle and Ailsa Die?
In Dept. Q’s ending, DCI Carl Morck, his new assistant Akram Salim and DC Rose Dickson were finally able to establish a link between Lyle Jennings and Sam Haig, which indicated that it was the real Sam Haig never actually met Merritt, and it could possibly have been Harry’s psychopath brother, Lyle, who catfished Merritt and kidnapped her. In order to dig deeper, Morck and Akram arrived at the island, where they located the hyperbar, however, while trying to rescue Merritt from the chamber, they were attacked by Lyle, who fired a shotgun at Morck. Akram, whose past had been hazy the whole time, seemed like a trained combat specialist, who used his expertise and killed Lyle before the lad could do any more damage. Meanwhile, Ailsa tried to flee from the island, but took her own life at the police check post so she doesn’t have to serve a sentence for the crimes she had committed.
