FINAL DUTY
Line of Duty writer Jed Mercurio clears up the confusion around H – here’s season five’s finale explained
LINE of Duty has finished it's fifth season - but who is H?
With Ted Hastings officially cleared from being a suspect, we reveal what Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio said about one of the most revealing episodes of the series.
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Who is H in Line of Duty?
It was all a misunderstanding on the behalf of AC-12, failing to perceive DI "Dot" Cottan’s dying declaration.
Hand signals given by Cottan as he lay dying showed him indicating four "dots" to signify that he was one of four corrupt senior figures in the police.
Three - Gill Biggeloe, Cottan and ACC Hilton - have been neutralised, but the fourth person remains unknown.
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Regarding the revelation of H, Line of Duty writer Jed Mercurio told : "You have to consider what the origin of that term is, which I think is something that I think has been lost in a lot of the discussion about it.
"It isn't a codename, it's something that comes from Dot.”
He added: "The police started using this term because they believed that Dot was giving a specific clue that the person's name began with H – so the police used that.
"And Corbett, because he was aware of that, passed that information on and it became something that was part of the conversation within the OCG.
"But they were all barking up the wrong tree, as is revealed at the end."
This meant that AC-12 had been chasing after H, not realising that he did not exist.
The myth had become so widespread that organised crime groups also believed of his existence.
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How did the search for H start?
At the end of series three of Line of Duty, corrupt cop DI Dot Cottan lay dying as DI Kate Fleming took his declaration.
She told Cottan to blink and the full focus was on that - rather than on his hand.
Jed said about Kate's failure to understand what Cottan had tried to communicate: "He's trying to say something and when she reaches the letter H, he blinks. Because he wants the letter H to be in their minds.”
H in Morse code is four dots indicating there are four "Dots" out there - four corrupt cops.
Cottan emphasises this with his hand.
Jed says that Kate is searching for a name and therefore doesn't see the significance of H and the four dots.
In the series five finale it's revealed that Corbett – who got his throat slit earlier on the series – had been told that Ted was H because of Gill’s information.
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What has Jed Mercurio said about the Line of Duty finale?
In the last episode Ted is accused of giving up John Corbett to the OCG.
And Jed reveals that he did!
that Hastings' trip to see Lee Banks in prison suggests that he identified Corbett as an informant.
But he says that Hastings' motive was not to get Corbett killed - and he didn't inform OCG's Lisa McQueen.
She found out John was a "rat" after police arrived at a scene that only she and John knew about - therefore she knew it was John informing.
It's revealed at the end that Lisa turns her life around and goes into schools to tell children of her experience and NOT to get involved in crime.
Jed said: ""She still fears the OCG reaching out to her. If she's just visiting schools and youth clubs, saying, 'Don't get involved with crime', then that's no real threat to the OCG."
She knows the OCG can still get her and execute her, so she tells the cops that all of the OCG members are dead.
However viewers know this is a lie as Ryan Pilkington is still alive and kicking.
Another connnection between Ted and Lisa was implied in the first episode of series five, where we see Lisa ignoring a phone call, before switching to Ted hanging up.
Jed explains that Ted was calling his wife and that this was a "misdirection".
Another big question came at the end when Ted approached Corbett's wife with a package.
Inside, was the £50k that was never recovered by the police - the other half of the £100k Mark Moffatt gave Ted in the attempt to frame him.
It’s explained by Jed that Ted “used multiple hiding places” for a large amount of cash.
Ted tried to return it but he also knew he wasn’t being all that smart leaving money in a hotel room.
He said: "So we didn't see where he put the other £50k, but he must've put it somewhere else – another hiding place – and that money was then something he could use for his personal gain, but he chose to use it as a form of atonement."
Regarding whether Ted could actually be John Corbett’s father, Jed rules that one out quite clearly.
The show's creator laughed off the claims, explaining that if that had been the case, Ted would have had John long before he met his mother Anne-Marie, which wouldn’t make sense at all.
What does this mean for Line of Duty season 6?
When asked about Ted potentially being the fourth "dot", Mercurio said that nothing should be ruled out - leaving it open for season six.
Ted’s suspicious behaviour such as when he misspelled the word “definately” still make him a suspect.
Ted's argument that he had studied messages between the mysterious employer and the OCG, and mimicked the spelling is a “plausible” defence, Mercurio argues.
"Because we haven't witnessed that, it's something where we're relying on the audience to make up their own mind on."
Ted's actions haven't been entirely honest throughout the season, so could the upstanding AC-12 boss be corrupt - and do we believe he was watching pornography on his discarded laptop?
We’ve already established that nobody can escape this organised crime gang.
Tommy Hunter died in the first episode of season two after being put under witness protection and Jimmy Lakewell opted for prison time instead of helping a police inquiry.
So, it will be interesting to see if Gill Biggeloe and Lisa McQueen remain safe.
And we have the enthralling prospect of seeing what happens to Ryan Pilkington - as he joins the police force.
Viewers can see there’s a new generation rising through the ranks, which quite possibly means there are more bent coppers that are going to be introduced to viewers in season six.
Ryan was also in series one of the hit TV series so there's bound to be developments in that area - go back to series one to check him out!
How did Line of Duty fans react to the series five finale?
Viewers had a mixed reaction to the ending of season five.
Some were left "disappointed" with the revelation of H, others felt their questions went unanswered.
Others, on the other hand, felt happy with the way it unfolded.
“Probably one of the best ways to end a series. I knew all along that there wasn’t a ‘H’, but I wasn’t expecting Ted to still come across so shady,” one fan wrote on Twitter after having caught the episode.
Another continued by saying: “When I woke up.. I knew I was going to find out who H is.. well I was wrong and I’m mad about it.”
One fan was so confused by the end of the episode, he wrote: “I have absolutely no idea what just happened. I’m starting to think I might be H."
MORE ON LINE OF DUTY
When is season six airing?
Currently, there has been no date set for the sixth series.
While BBC has already commissioned another season, it's believed that Jed Mercurio is balancing time between writing this show with Bodyguard, which is another BBC programme that's done tremendously well on the channel.
Line of Duty is not expected to return until 2020 IF Jed finds the time to write the series, otherwise fans will be back to waiting two years for another season.
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