Ludwig ending explained: What happened to James?

The series stars David Mitchell as John, a reclusive puzzle maker who crafts puzzle books under the name Ludwig.

But when John's identical twin brother, DCI James, ups and leaves his family to seemingly go into hiding, John decides to impersonate him to find out what happened, turning his attention from creating puzzles to cracking murder cases.

As he starts working with the Cambridge police department, John soon discovers there’s much more to his brother’s disappearance than meets the eye.

So, how did things play out in the finale? Did John get found out as an imposter, and did he uncover what happened to James? Read on for everything you need to know about the ending of Ludwig.

Ludwig ending explained: Did the police find out John's real identity?

Yes. In the season finale, Lucy found herself arrested for the murder of police IT technician Holly, who had texted her the night before, telling her to visit her house as she had information to share.

It seemed likely this was the news that Lucy's husband James had been having an affair with Holly, as we'd seemingly previously discovered.

After Holly's neighbours heard a fight, Lucy had been found in her flat with a knife, Holly lying lifeless on the ground.

All evidence pointed to Lucy, but the team couldn't establish a motive - that is, until Simon revealed that he had overheard Holly speaking with John (who she believed to be James) talking about their affair.

Russell confronted John in an official police interview, asking whether he had ever been sexually involved with Holly. As John struggled to answer, with the net closing in on him, he finally revealed the truth to Russell. He explained that he wasn't James, and therefore couldn't know for certain whether James and Holly had had an affair.

Russell and the rest of the team initially struggled to cope with the betrayal, and John was kept in a cell overnight.

However, they soon came to realise they couldn't solve the mystery of Holly's death without him, and allowed him one final chance to investigate and save Lucy.

He solved the mystery, and in order to save her own career and those of her team, Carol had John sign James's resignation forms, allowing everyone to go on believing he had worked there up to that point, and scrubbing out John's own crimes.

Who killed Holly Pinder in Ludwig?

In his investigations, John discovered that Lucy had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time - Holly had been killed by Adam, someone she had employed for her 'real job'.

This involved acquiring and selling information. During her time inside the police force, she had been keeping tabs on all of the officers, and leaking information to whoever paid the most for it.

She tipped off people under investigation and extorted money from officers whose emails she had access to, while also selling stories to the media.

Holly hadn't been having an affair with James - she had actually just realised the truth, that John was impersonating him, and wanted to test her theory. When she contacted Lucy, she was planning to blackmail her with this information.

However, Adam had killed her before she got the chance, after he realised Holly was swindling him, and taking far more than the 50/50 split of their profits that she had promised him.

What happened to James in Ludwig?

Carol explained to John that Holly had sold information to former journalist, blogger and conspiracy theorist Roger Sinclair. They didn't know what information she sold, and all of Sinclair's articles had been scrubbed from the internet.

When Sinclair died, James had been first on the scene. In spite of this, a specialist team was quickly brought in and James and his partner Matt were taken off the case.

The crime scene report was amended by the new team, but James found out and made clear that it was all lies. The crime scene he saw indicated Sinclair had been targeted in a professional hit.

The contents of Sinclair's house had also gone missing - they had been boxed up and sent to Scotland Yard, but the van they were transported in was empty by the time it arrived. Carol had told James to stop investigating, as she realised he was out of his depth.

It was after this that Matt left his job and went into hiding, and James disappeared, telling Lucy to hand in his resignation.

After leaving the police station, having signed James's resignation forms, John got a voicemail from James. In it, he explained that he had never anticipated John's decision to impersonate him, and that he had only thrown himself into investigating the Sinclair case so thoroughly because he had needed a distraction from his unhappy home life.

He told John he was like their father, who had abandoned them, and that his disappearance was nothing more than what it seemed - he had left Lucy and their son Henry.

John explained this to Lucy. However, he then realised - James wasn't telling the truth, he was in fact leaving them a message. He had used a metaphor - calling himself the bowerbird, something James would never do. He was leading them to a book of birds he had left to Henry, which he had used to write his cipher.

It led the three of them to a storage unit, where they found the contents of Sinclair's house, hidden away. John opined that one of the conspiracy theories Sinclair had been researching must have surprisingly been true, and important enough to kill him over. The trio set to work in finding it, while James watched on from the darkness.

That's all we learned about his disappearance to date. However, we're sure more will come to light if the series returns for a second season.

Where did we leave John?

At the end of the season, John decided to stay put in Cambridge, to help Lucy and Henry sift through Sinclair's research, in an effort to bring James home.

Meanwhile, he also took up an offer from Russell to become an official crime consultant with their team, and was last seen back with them, investigating a new murder. Here's hoping we can expect many more to come in future seasons.

Ludwig is available to stream in full now on BBC iPlayer.

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