Cardinal Wolsey Casts a Long Shadow Over 'Wolf Hall's' Return

One of the most impressive things about Wolf Hall: The Mirror & the Light is how ponderous it is. (That's a compliment, by the way.) Everything about this show is both deliberate and incredibly slow-moving, all the better to underscore just how volatile and ever-changing this particular sliver of history truly was. As is fitting for any follow-up, a good portion of this sequel is also about reckoning with the past, and even as we see a Thomas Cromwell who's as powerful as he will ever be, he still must confront the choices, both good and ill, that he made to get where he is.

Where last week's premiere touched on Cromwell's involvement in Anne's fall, The Mirror & the Light's second episode revisits his relationship with Cardinal Wolsey from the pair's first meeting —that bit about Wolsey being excited to finally outrank someone in terms of birth is apparently true!— to their final farewell before the Archbishop's death. Scenes from the previous series are edited together to give us a sort of Cliff's Notes reminder of their story. However, this time around, the show at least sort of implies that Cromwell's decision to stay at Henry's court was as much about pursuing his own advancement as it was about returning Wolsey to the king's favor.

Interspersing Cromwell's oath to the Privy Council with Wolsey's dying breaths as he receives last rites and waits, fruitlessly, for his "entirely beloved" friend to return....it's brutal stuff. It's certainly not shocking that some, and perhaps even Wolsey himself, likely assumed that Cromwell was simply hitching his wagon to a brighter star rather than going down with a man who was clearly being brought back to London to die.