Line of Duty · Season 6 · Episode 7 · 2 May 2021
S6E7 Episode 7
THE MOMENT The interrogation room reveal of 'H' - the culmination of six years of fan theorising.
The series finale delivers the long-awaited identity of the fourth man and closes out AC-12's decade-long conspiracy investigation. Critics were split down the middle: those who found the resolution credibly mundane praised its realism; those who had followed the mythology for years felt the reveal deflated rather than paid off a ten-year investment.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
Line of Duty Series 6 Episode 7 aired May 2, 2021 on BBC One as the finale of the most-watched series in the show's history - Series 6's premiere drew 9.6 million viewers - and the most debated episode in its decade-long run. The Guardian's Lucy Mangan, in a three-star review, wrote: 'It was all fine. But, oh my, you should have seen it when it was good.' The New Statesman called it a series that 'ended with a whimper, not a bang.' The Times awarded four stars. The 86-percent Rotten Tomatoes score from 25 critics reflects the genuine critical division: the reveal of 'H' - the fourth corrupt officer whose identity the show had been building toward since Series 3 - was described by defenders as credibly mundane, a statement about institutional corruption's banality rather than its drama, and by disappointed viewers as an anti-climactic payoff to nine years of audience theorising. The interrogation room sequence that delivers the revelation operates at the show's procedural standard. The bollymeter of 6.5 reflects an episode that performed its function adequately while failing to satisfy the emotional investment the preceding decade had accumulated.