Sherwood season 2 episode 3 marks surprise return of season 1 villain

Well, after last week's premiere episodes brought masses of tension and surprise deaths, the second season continued tonight (Sunday 1st September) and saw the fallout from the deaths of Pam (Sharlene Whyte), Denis (David Harewood) and Kyre Branson (Conor Deane).

The episode saw Stephie (Bethany Asher) pay her brother Ryan (Oliver Huntingdon) a visit in prison, accompanied by Ian St Clair (David Morrissey) and social worker Sandy Waters (Aisling Loftus), to break the news of his mother and uncle's deaths.

But it was when the siblings were left alone that Stephie confessed to murdering Kyre, a fact that both surprises and pleases Ryan.

After chatting together, Ryan tells Sandy and Ian that he wants Stephie to move back into their family home and that, as her next of kin, he wants a say in what happens to his sister.

He tells Sandy and Ian that he wants to work in the new library at the prison and try to get better in order to ensure he can be let out to look after Stephie eventually. He explains that he has cousins who can stay with Stephie whilst he's inside.

In among the drama of the episode that involves the Sparrows and their decision as to whether to work with the police or not, the episode also ends on quite the surprising note - as Ryan pays a visit to a fellow prisoner in his wing.

We see him walk quickly to a cell nearby and see a man in there doing press-ups. When he eventually gets up and turns around, we see that it's none other than Scott Rowley (Adam Hugill), who Ryan looks pleased to see.

Of course, Scott was at the centre of the drama in season 1, as he was uncovered to be the perpetrator of Gary Jackson's (Alun Armstrong) murder.

While he didn't have the criminal motivations that St Clair and co thought he would, Scott was unveiled to be quite the loner type. He fixated on the "picture perfect" Jackson family in the face of growing disillusioned with his life, prospects and his own broken family.

Scott was also the person who hid the £15,000 in Sherwood Forest, the very glut of money that Denis was intrigued to find himself.

But the unveiling of Scott as the season 1 villain only uncovered deep-rooted tensions in the community – everyone thought the murder was done as retaliation for the miners' strikes decades prior, or that he did it for a political reason.

Really, Scott's killing of Gary just tore the former mining community apart even more.

So, what exactly could Ryan want from Scott? As Ryan has his eyes set on making sure Stephie is alright, could he potentially want to work with Scott to ensure her life on the outside is as good as possible?

If there's anything we know from Ryan so far, it's that his behaviour can be quite unpredictable, so we'll just have to wait and see how his newfound relationship with Scott pans out.

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Just from the offset, the characters of Ryan and Scott aren't all that different, given the fact they're both male characters who have been brought up in Ashfield, and seem to be let down by the systems around them.

Speaking about whether "the disparity and abandonment of young men" was something he wanted to highlight in season 2, series creator and writer James Graham told the BBC: "Yeah, definitely. We're not repeating that story, but I think we certainly wanted to advance the themes of it forward in terms of understanding the character of Scott in series one.

"He wasn't part of a gang, he grew up in a village and environment like mine, which was built on the embers of mining which gave a lot of men their identity.

"Scott lived in a quiet street in a quiet town, and yet was completely disenfranchised and existed outside the normal bounds of society and commits unforgivable acts of violence."

He continued: "Ryan in series two is very different. He goes through his teens embroiled in gang culture on an estate and he’s fallen through the cracks. I don’t want to look at individuals who go off the rails as isolated incidences, I don’t think anyone should, I think everything's connected.

"Hopefully, the joy of Sherwood is that you're allowed space to not forgive but to understand all the factors that lead to young men, in particular, responding to trauma or to trigger moments with violence and rage and getting all of their validation from that kind of gang culture, finding community there.

"To me, that isn't separate from a lot of things we explored in series one, and I think that is entirely connected with the legacy of deindustrialisation, the closing of the mines and industry and the hole that it can create within the soul of a place.

"There is such a thing as collective memory. A place remembers and [it] affects the people who are born into it, and we see those problems every day in communities all over the UK."

Sherwood continues on Monday 9th September at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.

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