'Grantchester' Season 9's Penultimate Episode Finally Begins to Tie Its Stories Together

Much like most of the episodes that preceded it, the penultimate installment of Grantchester Season 9 is a mixed bag. An hour that finally sees several of the season's seemingly disparate story threads come together in a way that indicates its most annoying subplots were meant to be irritating on purpose, it certainly sets the table for a finale with unusually high personal stakes for several characters.

To the likely surprise of no one, the mysterious girl who called herself "Petra" that Alphy slept with last week plays a big part here. As the episode opens, she's gone missing, which is slightly concerning for many reasons, not the least of which is that Alphy is probably the last person who saw her before she vanished. Her real name is Caroline Stansham, and she's the daughter of a wealthy plastics manufacturer who spends her time slumming in dive bars and writing for a mean-spirited satirical college paper called The Honest Duck.

The twist here, of course, is that there's nothing at all wrong with Petra/Caroline. She's fine and has spent the last two weeks on a romantic bender with her boy toy, ignoring her father's frantic attempts to find her and paying zero attention to the hubbub surrounding her disappearance. It's all very typical bougie rich girl problems, save for the fact that her boyfriend is someone we're reasonably familiar with: The infamous street preacher Sam White. (Unfortunately, he's not the dead body in the episode's second act. We should be so lucky.)