Fiona Fox had come to Ireland at the beginning of Irish Blood season 1 to find out more about her father, who had abandoned her and her mother when she was a young girl. But she realized that her father had died under mysterious circumstances, and before she knew it, she got entangled in a murder investigation, something she hadn’t imagined in her wildest dreams. She believed from day one that her father’s death was not an accident, but that somebody had killed him. While investigating his murder, Fiona unraveled chilling secrets lurking beneath the seemingly peaceful life of Wicklow, exposing a series of crimes that the influential faces of the town desperately tried to hide. In the previous episode, we saw that Fiona found the hard drive where her father had stored important bank documents that were enough to prove the guilt of some really powerful people. Also, the criminal, Johnny McIntyre, was able to escape prison, and he told Finn Murphy, Fiona’s uncle, who was a police officer, that if Fiona didn’t stop investigating the matter, then he would come after the entire family. So let’s see if Fiona was able to find out who murdered her father and on whose orders McIntyre was acting.
Spoiler Alert
What did Fiona find out about the Smythe family?
On Fiona’s 10th birthday, her father, Declan, had gifted her a toy (a convertible action figure known as Turbo Clash). Fiona had started to have dreams where she saw her father telling her certain things. Every morning, she woke up feeling a weird connection with him. She felt as if he was trying to tell her something, to give her some clue that could lead her to solving the mystery behind his murder. She knew that everything in Declan’s briefcase was important evidence, and so she speculated that even that action figure had to be hiding some secret. She was looking at it when she realized that it could be transformed into a car. The number 42 was marked on that car, and Fiona knew that her father was trying to tell her something through it. Fiona went to Sergeant Claude, who told her that, back in the day, during the Wicklow car rally in 2017, car number 42 skidded off the road. The driver of that car was a man named Stephen Mulligan, who died in the accident. Apart from him, a young girl named Betsy Smythe, who was standing on the sidelines, succumbed to her injuries as the car hit her. It came to be known that later, the little girl’s father, Phillip, killed his wife, Gloria, and then took his own life too. The family also went bankrupt after the accident, and Fiona knew that something just wasn’t adding up. She felt that everything couldn’t fall so conveniently into place. She knew there were some other people involved in the entire controversy. Fiona asked Tess to look into the documents on the hard drive and also find out if any major transactions had happened around the period when Phillip Smythe had taken his life and killed his wife, Gloria. It came to be known that a shell company by the name of Smythe and Jones Limited had made a payment to a man named Seamus Kane, who was currently behind bars serving a life sentence for another crime. Fiona knew that Seamus Kane hadn’t acted independently, and there was somebody else who had asked him to murder the Smythe family. Fiona believed that Leo Taverns, who won the race after car number 42 skidded from its path, could have had something to do with the accident as well as her father’s death. But she was wrong. Johnny McIntyre, Leo Travers, and everybody else were merely pawns in a much bigger game. Yes, they might have profited from the accident of car number 42, but they were not the ones who were pulling the strings.
Who killed Declan?
The biggest revelation made in Irish Blood’s finale was that Una Murphy and Johnny McIntyre were dating back in the day, and they were still in contact after he went to the prison and then escaped with the help of Wylie Moles. Fiona got to know about that because, in the toy car, she found yet another piece of evidence that led her to understand how Una was involved. There was a photograph of Una in front of a big house that she had bought. Fiona asked Isidora about it, and she told her that the photograph was from supposedly the happiest day of Una’s life: she had bought an expensive house for herself. Fiona didn’t understand how a professor had bought such an expensive house. In the 6th episode, McIntyre started chasing Fiona’s car when she was traveling together with Una. In an altercation that happened after that, Una killed McIntrye, though, not intentionally. Fiona at first thought that her aunt had saved her life, but she noticed a very weird look on her face that made her very suspicious of her. Fiona knew that Una was disheartened by his death, and later she figured out why she felt like that. Una had told McIntyre about Fiona’s whereabouts, and apparently, she didn’t know that he would try to kill her. Una knew the kind of man McIntyre was and what he was wanting to do. But she just fooled herself, harboured the illusion, as she didn’t want to believe that she was the co-conspirator with a man who was trying to kill her niece.
At the end of the 6th episode, Una went to the same cliff from which Declan had apparently fallen. Fiona confronted her aunt and figured out that Phillip Smythe had set Johnny McIntyre’s house on fire, possibly because he had gotten to know that the man had a role to play in that accident of car 42 that had caused her daughter’s death. Una saw him in the act and then later blackmailed him. That was how the Smythe family had gone bankrupt. They gave Una everything they had, because of which she was able to buy her dream house, and then eventually they were killed by somebody. Una told Fiona that neither she nor Johnny had anything to do with the murder of the Smythe family, but obviously, they did take advantage of them.
So, on the day Declan fell from the cliff, he met Una and asked her to help him build a case against the mastermind who had orchestrated the crash of car number 42. Apparently, they were involved in all sorts of illegal activities. Declan had had enough, and he wanted to report everything to the authorities, but Una didn’t want to do that. She started loving and didn’t want to throw it all away. Una still felt that deep down, she was a good human being, but Declan started to think otherwise. Una and Declan had an argument, and in the heat of the moment, the former pushed the latter, not knowing that he would fall from the cliff. So Una was responsible for Declan’s death, but she had not done it intentionally. From the very first episode, it was evident that Una was hiding something, and she was a bit uncomfortable with Fiona’s presence. Also, together with the Donovans, she was the one who really wanted Fiona to go back to the US with her mother, which made it evident that she didn’t want her investigating the case. In Irish Blood’s ending, Una confessed to having killed Declan, and she was taken into custody by the police. But she didn’t say anything about who was responsible for the death of the Smythe family, despite the possibility of a reduced sentence, something that Fiona will definitely start looking into in season 2.
Will the Donovans be exposed in season 2?
So, as expected, the Donovans, i.e., Bran and Siobhan, were the masterminds responsible for murdering the Smythe family and orchestrating the crash. Apart from those two crimes, I believe they were involved in all sorts of illegitimate business happening in that area, which was how they had built their own empire. The biggest mistake that Fiona committed was that she went and told everything to the Donovans, not once thinking that they could have been the ones responsible for everything that had happened. After Fiona left, Siobhan told her father that it was his mess, and by her tone, it felt like she was ready to let him take the fall if it came to that. I believe that Bran wanted his man, i.e., Leo Travers, to win, and so somehow he made sure that Stephen Mulligan’s car met with an accident. I don’t know if he wanted Stephen dead or not, but surely he wouldn’t have imagined that the car would hit a small girl standing on the sidelines and that she would also lose her life. I believe Phillip burnt down McIntyre’s house, believing that he was the only one responsible for the crash. Maybe Phillip figured out certain things that would have led him to Bran Donovan. What he didn’t know was that Bran was a dangerous man who would go to any extent to save his own reputation. Bran got Phillip and his wife, Gloria, who was pregnant at that time, killed. The entire story that Phillip took his own life and killed his wife was not believable to Fiona, because she knew he had a baby coming, and a lot to look forward to in his life.
By Irish Blood’s ending, Fiona had not yet been able to figure out that the Donovans were the real masterminds. I believe that Bran will try his very best to make sure his name is not dragged into whatever is happening. It was the same reason Leo Travers paid Musa a visit in the 6th episode and, in a very subtle manner, threatened him. As stated in the recap of episode 5, Bran approached Musa and showed an interest in investing in his gym because he wanted to have some leverage over him, too. I don’t think Fiona is going to give up just because she has gotten to know how her father had died. Her father wanted her to find the truth and expose the perpetrators, and she would do that in season 2. I think Bran and his men will try their level best to deter Fiona from her path, but it won’t be so easy for them to scare a lawyer from the US. There were people who were on Donovan’s payroll, like Officer Scott Henderson, about whom Fiona didn’t have any clue.
The road ahead does not look very easy for Fiona, as we saw that Father Al aka Callum Deasy, paid a visit to Mary in the US. So he is clearly not done with them and I believe he wants something out of them. I think Father Al knew that if he didn’t stop Fiona, then his life would be at risk. We will get to know what exactly he wants in season 2, but clearly Fiona would have to tread very carefully and I don’t think she has the liberty to act her will out. But still, I believe that she will uncover the truth and take down the Donovan family, no matter how hard they try. I believe that there are many other things that we will get to know about the Donovan family in season 2. One thing is for sure: Bran Donovan, the kind of influential man that he was, will not go down without a fight. I believe that he has a lot of cards up his sleeve that we don’t know about, and he wouldn’t hesitate to use them against Fiona in Irish Blood season 2.
