Sam's Shady Secrets Have Dangerous Consequences in the 'Grantchester' Season 9 Finale

Grantchester's ninth season ends much as it lived, with an hour that is...fine, if generally unremarkable. There is nothing shocking about this final hour, which makes a vague attempt at raising the stakes for several characters only to essentially reset things to the series' baseline status quo by the end. Larry and Leonard both get shot! (But they're fine.) Alphy's packing to say goodbye to the parish! (J/K, he's keeping his job.) Daniel entirely abandons his relationship with Leonard! (No worries, they're back together in the end.) Even Cathy Keating's off the mood stabilizers! Everyone wins.

To Grantchester's credit, the show does a fairly decent job of threading a larger mystery throughout the season. Sure, it's occasionally clunkily handled — the show forgot about the "strange letters showing up at the vicarage" subplot for literal weeks at a time — but in a landscape where paint-by-number episodic storytelling rules, the show deserves points for trying to do something different.

The penultimate episode revealed street preacher Sam isn't the man he's been pretending to be; however, this episode takes us full circle to Season 9's premiere. Rose Shirley, the young teacher who abandoned her baby in the parish church in Will Davenport's last episode, apparently is behind the letter. Instead of just telling Will/Alphy/the authorities Sam's a manipulative, dangerous creep, Rose thought it best to convey his real identity by... slipping random Bible passages through the vicarage mailslot.