9 unanswered questions we have after The Loch's perplexing finale

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But ITV's whodunnit left us with plenty of unanswered questions. Here are the things that left us scratching our heads:

How does Jordan (real name Kieran) have the muscle strength to bludgeon Blake?

This is a kid who has been in bed for two years, first after a cerebral aneurysm and then – once he made an unexpected, belated (and medically unlikely) recovery – with the help of sedatives from his mum, who wanted to make sure her older son (now known as Kieran) could continue impersonating his younger brother and get a second chance in life.

After lying down for that long, surely he would have lost a great deal of muscle mass? Most likely he'd require intensive physiotherapy just to be able to walk again.

There's no way someone who had been unconscious for a couple of years would be able to just leap out of bed, walk around, creep up on an intruder and split his head open with a metal oxygen canister. He would also not be able to run from the police for miles, especially not in an unfamiliar town.

Has Kieran (real name Jordan) really died?

After DS Annie Redford admirably clobbered him over the head multiple times with her police baton, Kieran was left lying unconscious in the loch while Annie attended to her daughter Evie. He was pretty close to shore, but in the final scenes the police team casually mentions they haven't recovered Kieran's body yet.

How could they lose the body? Why are they not more concerned about this? Or does it mean the killer has escaped?

Why is Evie so chill about these horrific events?

Look at what's happened in Evie's life over the last couple of weeks. A bunch of people in her town are brutally murdered, including her best friend Jonjo and classmates Dessie and Baxter. Her dad is stabbed. Also, moments after sharing her first kiss with love interest Kieran and setting up a plan for them both to travel to Australia, he turns out to be a serial killer and then tries to drown her in the loch.

That's a seriously traumatic series of events, but she never seems particularly phased by it all. Jonjo is basically forgotten, and so is the attempted drowning: in the last scenes we see her merrily posing for pics with her mum by the water before jumping in a cab and heading to Australia.

Perhaps you can't blame her for getting the hell out of Lochanfoy.

Who tried to run Kieran and Evie off the road?

The episode where Jonjo is killed is the most perplexing. Kieran and Evie were driving to meet up with Jonjo, who said he has evidence against Dr Marr. But they abandoned their mission when an unknown vehicle started ramming them on the road and trying to run them off. Kieran was in the car with Evie – so who was after them?

Theoretically it could be Kieran's abusive father, but do the timelines match up? Supposedly, Kieran's string of murders starts after he has already killed his father and hidden him in the loch, so he should be dead by this point already.

Also: if Jonjo is murdered that night in that abandoned lorry and then later transported in Kieran's dead father's van back into town, what is Kieran playing at going to "meet" him? Perplexing.

Was Kieran going to kill Evie anyway?

The police suspect that he killed anyone who got too close to him: Niall (who gave him a couple of lifts) and Jonjo (a school friend) theoretically fit this theory. And then he killed Dessie and Baxter (and shot himself) so he could frame Dessie as the murderer, and thus end his streak and put his killing days behind him.

Now, this is all a bit ludicrous. But putting this aside, you have to wonder: was Kieran going to murder Evie anyway?

Before she mentioned his father's body had been pulled from the loch and he realised he was going to be found out, it looked like things were going pretty well. He'd just agreed to go to Australia with her (a handy escape) and they'd shared a nice kiss. Perhaps he was never intending to drown her in the loch – but given that she got closer to him than anyone else ever had, surely she'd be the ultimate target?

What happens to the rest of the Whitehead family?

You have one formerly ill 17-year-old who has just suffered a terrible fall but seemed to survive. Will he go back to being the real Kieran Whitehead?

And then you have his mother Bea, who has been through so much in her life with an abusive partner – but who also should surely be charged with a variety of crimes. After all, she knew her eldest son was a murderer, and kept her younger son sedated against his will.

What happens to Craig Petrie now?

The head of the local sixth form college has had his marriage wrecked by the revelation of his affair with Niall Swift. He was also named a suspect after Kieran framed him, and was relentlessly pursued by Blake who was convinced he was the killer.

Surely Petrie should hire a lawyer now all Blake's blogs are presumably libellous? Also if he had been charged and taken to court, Blake's online outpourings would go beyond being a bit unprofessional and veer into the territory of contempt of court.

Did Dr Marr and Bethan have their baby?

Last thing we saw, teenage babysitter Bethan and widower Dr Marr were at hospital together and about to have their baby. And then they dropped off the radar altogether. Come to think of it, so did Leighton Thomas. What happened to him after he was bundled into a police car?

How did the murder weapons get into Dessie's room?

Kieran must have planted the tools he'd used to kill Niall and Jonjo in Dessie's room before they left on that fateful school trip. But how did he do it? The two boys weren't super close friends and it's unlikely they were hanging out together in Dessie's room. So when was the opportunity?

We may never know...

This article was originally published on 17 July 2017