Spoilers ahead!
Millions came to a halt on Sunday night for roughly 70 minutes as they sat down for the finale of Happy Valley.After three seasons spread over eight years, fans of the series said a fond farewell to Sarah Lancashire's Catherine Cawood, James Norton's fantastically vile Tommy Lee Royce and, of course, our Ryan.
The closing episode saw everything come to a head for Catherine, as she discovered that her grandson Ryan had been visiting his biological father Tommy in prison. He had been behind bars for countless evil acts, but the plot point running through all three of the series has been that he raped Ryan's mother, who then killed herself just weeks after Ryan's birth.
When Tommy managed to escape from prison two episodes ago, everything was set up for a final showdown between him and Catherine, and that's exactly what fans got.It was a quite simply jaw-dropping episode that has gone straight into the list of all-time great finales. The kitchen scene between Lancashire and Norton's characters, which culminated in a grisly end for the monstrous Tommy, is probably already one of the greatest TV moments we will get in 2023.