‘Bodies’ Ending, Explained: Did the Detectives Save London? - Netflix Tudum
Ingrid Ostby
Find out how the British sci-fi crime series starring Unorthodox's Shira Haas ends.
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At the start of the genre-defying crime series Bodies, Detective Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor) finds a dead body in Longharvest Lane in present-day London. The corpse is an unidentified naked man with a hole through his eye. Detective Alfred Hillinghead (Kyle Soller) finds the same body in the same spot in 1890, as does Detective Charles Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) in 1941, and Detective Iris Maplewood (Shira Haas) in 2053. As they each get closer to the truth, they become part of a decades-long conspiracy that could decimate London. Do they save the city before it’s too late? Read on to find out.

Who’s in the cast of Bodies?

To read more about the series’ cast and characters, check out this guide.

Who is Sir Julian Harker?

The first Julian Harker, a member of London’s elite who lived with his mother, died at war in Burma in the 1880s. To carry out his plot to attack London, authoritarian leader Commander Elias Mannix (Stephen Graham) from 2053 travels back in time to 1889 to steal Harker’s identity. Harker’s mom finds out who her replacement son really is but decides to go along with the ruse — considering a guy from the future has major insights on stocks and can make them crazy rich. Because of her intel on the future, she becomes a successful psychic medium, and Harker/Mannix starts a banking business called Harker & Co. But his real objective is to form a cult that’ll plan the 2023 London bombing that his future self, teenager Elias in 2023, executes, which kills half a million people. Over time, the bomb gets built in the basement of the Harker & Co. bank.

Whose body is in Longharvest Lane? Who killed him?

Gabriel Defoe (Tom Mothersdale) is the body in Bodies. In 2053, he runs a group called Chapel Perilous — whose mission is to thwart Mannix — with Hasan. Yep, she’s here in the future. Ever since her son died in the 2023 blast that Mannix put in motion across all timelines, Hasan’s been committed to figuring out how to stop the bomb from ever going off. Lucky for her, Defoe — a professor by day — dabbles in time travel.

At first, Defoe denies such quantum advancements to Maplewood, who’s investigating him on behalf of Mannix. But Maplewood, the only detective to find Defoe alive, already knows there’s a second Defoe in 2053. While she investigates him, Defoe sees another him on his deathbed. Upon seeing the other him flatlining, he realizes he only has a few days left to live… and a few days left to get Maplewood, Mannix’s devoted employee, on his side. After initially failing to do so, Defoe kidnaps Maplewood and takes her to Chapel Perilous’ HQ and to Hasan. The two show Maplewood Defoe’s time-travel device, called The Throat, and inform her that Mannix plans to use it to go back in time and start the sequence of events that leads to the bomb going off in 2023.

As preordained by Mannix himself, Mannix shows up. Maplewood, who still thinks she’s on the side of justice, allows him to step inside The Throat to head to 1890. Defoe jumps in after him, and Maplewood shoots Defoe. Because she shoots him as he’s splitting into a different timeline, his body ends up in four different years. So Maplewood is the killer after all — not Mannix, as Hillinghead was led to believe.

Luckily, Defoe planned ahead: He figured out that if the bullet goes in a certain way, he may live. Not just that, but he could come back to 2053 in time to help Maplewood and Hasan stop Mannix. Like clockwork, he shows up four days later. By then, Maplewood’s hired her half-brother, Alby (Edwin Thomas), to develop headgear that saves Defoe’s life. They retrieve the wounded Defoe from Longharvest Lane once again, and this time he survives.

How does Bodies end?

After Maplewood gets on board with Hasan and Defoe’s plan to stop Mannix once and for all, she heads to 1890. When she gets there, she can no longer walk. The futuristic device that made it possible for her to use her legs? It doesn’t exist in the past. After showing up in Longharvest Lane naked, confused officers throw her in a jail cell next to Hillinghead, who’s confessed to Defoe’s murder and, as we know from seeing this timeline before, is about to be killed by Sir Julian Harker’s men. (Harker is the identity Mannix takes in 1890.) Maplewood realizes she might be too late — his murder is only hours away — so she tells him everything she can about the future, including that Harker/Mannix marries Hillinghead’s beloved daughter, Polly (Synnøve Karlsen).

Right before his death, Hillinghead tells Harker/Mannix what he’s been told — of his plans, that he knows Harker’s real identity is Mannix, all of it. This gives Harker/Mannix pause. He doesn’t know why Hillinghead knows all this — but more than that, it plants a seed of doubt in his head. Is his plan really going to purify future London? Will it really make people “know they are loved” like he and his cult have been saying for years?

Though he still has Hillinghead killed, Harker/Mannix goes home a changed man. He tells Polly the truth — about what he’s done to her father, about the future — and she forever resents him for it. Though they still marry and have a child (the police chief, Hayden, played by Michael Shaeffer, who’s Whiteman’s boss in 1941), Polly — unlike in the last loop this timeline happened — is no longer devoted to him, no longer in love. Living with doubt and feeling unloved, Harker/Mannix is deeply unhappy for years.

Still, Polly, out of resentment, encourages him to keep up his plan, and he seems to — up until he’s old and close to death. After he records a message to his future self about how to bomb London, he secretly rerecords the message. This time, he tries to make things right. So when Whiteman comes to kill him and Polly (for the second loop of this timeline), Harker/Mannix begs him to get the recording to Hasan in 2023. Whiteman agrees, then shoots him. A marked man, Whiteman heads to his local pub, where he’s shot to death by Hayden and his men.

In 2053, while Defoe and Hasan wait for Maplewood’s return to Longharvest Lane, they look once again at the brick wall where Hillinghead carved his name. This time, Maplewood’s name is there, too — and so is Whiteman’s, with a clue for Hasan. He’s left something for her at the police hangout bar nearby… that was blown to bits in the 2023 blast. So Hasan has The Throat take her to 2023 to find it — and when she shows up, it’s the day of the bombing. She finds Harker/Mannix’s record at the bar hidden behind a picture of Whiteman and his colleagues. The record tells young Elias not to go through with his evil plot.

As in the previous loop, Hasan rushes over to Sarah Mannix’s (Natalie Gavin) house (who gave up Elias as a baby) so that the tortured Elias can reconnect with his mom after initially deciding not to detonate the bomb — and right before he’s supposed to use a second detonator to set it off. Hasan 2053 calls Hasan 2023 from inside Sarah’s house and plays the record for Elias. In the recording, Elias learns he has to sacrifice himself in order to save everyone from the destruction Mannix put in motion. It’s a horrible fate, but soon enough, Elias decides against detonating the bomb. Soon, he disappears, too. His fate was to die young in order to save others, so he has — and ceases to exist in 2023.

Do the detectives survive?

Elias’ decision to not detonate the bomb changes the lives of each detective: All of them end up alive. As the series closes, we see the loop begin again. In 1890, Hillinghead catches the gaze of his future lover, Henry (George Parker), in the street for the first time. In 1941, Whiteman bumps into a child, Esther (who Polly killed in a previous loop), as she runs past him. In present day, Hasan begins the day the same way she did in Episode 1 — saying goodbye to her son, then posting up at a far-right rally next to her colleague Rick (Anton Cross), who was also killed in another loop. This time, there’s no more body on Longharvest Lane. Hasan grabs a cab and chats up the driver, who she’s never seen before… at least, not in this timeline. It’s Maplewood, and she knows Hasan’s name.

Will there be a Bodies Season 2?

So far, no plans have been announced for a second season of the limited series.