Luther: The Fallen Sun writer explains change to series ending
Luther writer Neil Cross speaks exclusively with RadioTimes.com about how "the continuity and the lore" remains "consistent" despite a change to the season 5 cliffhanger.
*Warning - contains minor spoilers for Luther: The Fallen Sun*
Fans of the original Luther series may find themselves surprised at the start of new follow-up film Luther: The Fallen Sun, as it appears that a major plot point from the end of season 5 has been changed.
At the end of that season, Luther was arrested in conjunction with a number of crimes – primarily the death of Mr Palmer, an assassin who he had shot but not killed.
Palmer had in fact been killed by George Cornelius, played by Patrick Malahide, who then took a photo of Luther standing above Palmer's body holding a gun. Cornelius then showed this picture to DSU Schenk as a bargaining tool, and Schenk subsequently arrested Luther.
In the film however, we are led to believe that Luther is sent to prison because Andy Serkis's villain David Robey has released a dossier full of incriminating evidence surrounding Luther's illegal misdeeds.
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RadioTimes.com caught up exclusively with the drama's creator and writer of the new film Neil Cross, to discuss why this change to Luther's imprisonment was made.
Cross said one of the primary reasons was "complexity", before adding: "In the world, in fact, he does go to prison for Palmer. He goes to prison for a whole bunch of stuff that he's done. But Robey is still the mechanism behind which a lot of this stuff gets released."
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Cross explained: "There's a great gag that we gave to Patrick Malahide about 'having a photograph in the Cloud, whatever that is'. So we can assume that Robey has drawn down that photograph of a dead body, right? So the continuity and the lore, as it were, is still entirely logically and dramatically consistent.
"But the needle that we had to thread, and it’s a very unique needle, is that we had two audiences to address. Audience number one is the fans who are familiar with Luther and what he's done and why.
"But there's a second audience, which is people coming into the world entirely ignorant. And we had to construct the story such that it was equally satisfying for both audiences."
Even though The Fallen Sun has only just been released, it seems that the team behind the series and the film have the intention to turn Luther into a continuing movie franchise.
Luther star Idris Elba recently told The One Show: "We do have the ambition to take it into a franchise because now that you've got a film landscape, you've got bigger budgets, but also you've just got more stories we can tell."
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Luther: The Fallen Sun is available to watch on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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