Unforgotten, series 4 episode 6 recap: Major character killed off in devastating season finale

This article contains spoilers for Unforgotten

We’ve been glued to our TV sets for the past five weeks, watching DCI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and DI Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) try to solve the murder of Matthew Walsh in ITV’s hit crime drama Unforgotten.

Finally, all the answers we had craved have been given to us in an explosive final episode. So who was the killer? Was it Fiona Grayson, Liz Baildon, Ram Sidhu or Dean Barton?

Find out in our recap, below.

First, a refresher on the first five episodes...

• Episode one
• Episode two
• Episode three
• Episode four
• Episode five

What happened in episode six?

It was a sombre start to the final episode, with Cassie left recovering from a car crash just as the team were about to solve the case.

Frantic with worry, Sunny ran to the hospital to see Cassie. There was bad news: his work partner was not in a good way. She had a bleed on her brain and went into surgery.

Andy Nyman as Dean in Unforgotten (ITV)

Dr Leanne Balcombe (Georgia Mackenzie) arrived at the hospital and told Sunny that nobody witnessed the accident, and the vehicle that had ploughed into Cassie had fled the scene.

Sunny pondered whether Cassie could have caused the crash herself, and on purpose. He had been worried about her state of mind. But Leanne reassured him that Cassie had seemed fine when she left the mortuary just before the accident.

A nurse told Cassie’s family that surgery went really well and she was being taken back to ICU, where she remained in a coma.

Liz (Susan Lynch) said she would tell her fiancée Janet (Amanda Douge) the truth about her past, that she had made the mistake of her life right at the end of police training. She credited Janet with helping her forget about it and live again, but added: “Except now I have to tell you who I really am.”

(ITV)

Ram (Phaldut Sharma) was convinced the police were going to come for him. He was sure he would be framed for the murder because the other suspects would say he was the killer. Maybe they even believed he did it? Either way, he was going to fight them.

There was a little light relief when Sunny asked his partner Sal to marry him as they sat in the hospital waiting room, and she agreed.

Sunny wanted to check where all the suspects were at the time of Cassie’s crash. Cassie was still in a coma.

Following Cassie’s earlier hunch about a line of inquiry, the team discovered Dean’s (Andy Nyman) older brother Steven had died in 1989 from a fatal knife wound in his eye.

Nobody was ever arrested and there were no witnesses, although original reports suggested Dean’s family, the Quinns, had a good idea who did it.

DS Murray Boulting (Jordan Long) digged into Dean’s bank accounts.  He found nothing of interest – except that one account was listed with the name George Graves. Dean had set it up and was the authorised signatory. The account identifier was “godson”.  Dean made regular payments of £40 a month into the account, until a lump sum payment of £10,000 was deposited in cash at a branch in Rochester. The money was then transferred immediately into an account in the name of Grace Williams, who it turned out was Ram’s first wife.

Sunny asked Murray to investigate further and, before long, police turned up to arrest Ram on suspicion of murder. During the interview with Sunny, Ram denied any involvement in a fight with Walsh in the pub three weeks before Walsh died. He said he never chased Walsh, despite good evidence to the contrary. He kept changing his story.

Phaldut Sharma as Ram Sidhu in Unforgotten (ITV)

Sunny told Ram that phone mast data linked Ram and Dean to the same spot in Surrey at the same time. It was clearly more than a coincidence, but Ram denied meeting Dean. His alibi that he went for a walk to clear his head was ludicrous.

Ram couldn’t get out of hot water when Sunny confronted him about Dean transferring £10,000 to his ex-wife Grace’s account. Grace had no idea this online bank account they set up still existed. Nor that from 2001 to 2008, lump sums of £5,000 were paid into that account three or four times a year, from the account run by Dean. It was clear Dean had been paying Ram for help for some time.

Ram’s landline calls were traced to a customs officer, Andy Renfold, at a UK port the day the money appeared in the account. Sunny said it was not “a massive leap” to guess it had something to do with drug importation and bribery. What power did Dean hold over Ram to corrupt him?

Ram insisted he didn’t kill Walsh. He said he had found him bleeding from the head and had tried to save him, giving him CPR. Sunny then passed him a fountain pen they found in Ram’s desk. How long had he been using one? Could Ram be the killer because Walsh was murdered with a similar one?

Police took Dean to be interviewed at the station by Sunny with DC Fran Lingley (Carolina Main) by his side. Dean was told his version of events differed “significantly” to those of Ram and Fiona (Liz White).

(ITV)

Dean said he went back over the night in question after Cassie had last talked to him. Although he had initially said the car hadn’t stopped before they got pulled over for Rob’s drink-driving, he admitted it may well have done, but he wouldn’t know as he was asleep for the most of the journey. He denied Fiona and Ram’s accounts that he had chased Walsh and help put his body in the car.

Sunny went in for the kill when he asked Dean how he had convinced Ram – an ambitious young police officer – to become part of his cocaine smuggling operation. They handed him the bank statements that linked payments to Ram and said they had arrested customs officer Renfold who was cooperating with police. Dean clammed up, saying “no comment” to all further questions.

While looking at the evidence board, Sunny had a light bulb moment. The Quinns and the Walsh family both lived in London’s N9. Were they two rival crime families? Dean’s brother Steven was found stabbed in the middle of the two addresses, after all. Sunny guessed that Walsh might have killed Steven and Dean then murdered Walsh as payback.

There was another big breakthrough when the lab found the serial number on the fountain pen that was found in the victim’s skull. It had been bought by Dean’s brother Steven.  “You think Steven killed Walsh?” asked Dean. “Unlikely,” said Fran. “He had been dead eight months by then.” Records showed that “DB” had been engraved on the lid. With the weapon linked to Dean, he was charged with murder.  He gave a tearful confession, admitting he had found Walsh unconscious after he had tripped over. “I did what he done to Steven,” said Dean. “I stabbed him.”

He had seen Ram looking for him, so left and then returned ten minutes later when Ram was giving him CPR and the others had caught up. Dean was inconsolable as he was led to the cells.

Liz (Susan Lynch) visited her superior at the police station and said she had always thought Walsh’s death was an accident – but that it was no excuse for covering it up. She was led out by police officers.

It turned out that the Range Rover involved in the traffic accident with Cassie was driven by a car thief, not one of the suspects.

Ram was charged with accepting money for the importation of a controlled substance and abuse of public trust as a serving police officer.

Fiona told her partner Geoff (Daniel Flynn) that the police had accepted that none of them knew what Dean had done – but they were going to charge her, Liz and Ram with preventing a lawful burial. She told police about the licence forgery and her lawyer thought she would get a custodial sentence for that. Geoff was “beyond stunned” by everything, but said he didn’t love Fiona any less.

Sunny and Cassie in Unforgotten (ITV)

Fran asked Sunny why he was waiting to tell Cassie about solving the case. “Go and tell her we did it – or she did it…again,” she said.

Sunny got to the hospital and, to his devastation, learned Cassie was unlikely to ever recover brain function. He sat at her bedside in shock.

The next thing we knew, it was Cassie’s funeral. The co-lead had been killed off. Sunny gave a heartfelt tribute to his colleague and friend, who he loved. “I can say without a scintilla of doubt that she was the best that I have ever met… her job was not to judge but to pursue the truth and she did that,” he said.

Nobody could have seen that plot twist coming. Even though Cassie was in a coma throughout the finale, we thought the beloved detective would surely pull through. The question now is, what does this mean for the future of Unforgotten? Will there be a fifth series or is the drama over forever?