The Control Room ending explained: Series writer on "magic trick" reveal

If you're struggling to keep up with just what happens in the show's ending don't worry – we've got you covered, with exclusive comment from Leather on his intentions behind the series and what it all means.

Read on for everything you need to know about the ending to The Control Room.

*WARNING - Contains full spoilers for all three episodes of The Control Room*

The Control Room ending explained

What was Gabe wrapped up in?

From the start of the series, emergency call worker Gabe's life is turned upside down by what he believes is a coincidence – he receives a call at work from Sam, a childhood friend who now appears to have murdered her abusive partner.

He agrees to move the van containing the body, but his co-worker Anthony discovers his secret. Anthony then blackmails him into delivering a package in order to keep him quiet, with one thing continually leading to another.

However, in the end it turns out there was never a body and Sam hadn't killed her partner. Instead, Gabe has been duped by Anthony into a dodgy deal, delivering stolen data regarding calls taken at the call centre – names, addresses, injury details and more.

Creator Nick Leather revealed that this concept of data harvesting from control rooms was a part of the show's concept "right at the beginning".

He explained: "I was reading up everything about control rooms and in a local newspaper or something there was about three paragraphs about someone who had been sentenced, a call handler, for having been found guilty of selling data. She said no one else was involved in the centre, it was only her, which straight away I was a bit like, 'yeah, right'.

"And she said unfortunately she couldn't tell them who it was for, they had known data was going missing, the police checked and she'd had thousands of pounds appear in her account which she couldn't explain. But she said, 'I wish I could tell you who it was. But it was just a mysterious person who approached me on the street when I was waiting for a bus outside the control room'.

"I just thought it was extraordinary. What I loved about it was one, it was left field, and two, it wouldn't be featured on a documentary. And I thought, at a certain point I'm really gonna wrong foot everyone."

Leather explained that he wanted the series to be like the classic magic trick involving one call and three cups, with the cups being moved around the ball appearing to disappear and reappear.

He said: "I really wanted it to be like that. I mean literally like that – you park a van in a garage, you open the garage door, it's gone. There's a body in a van, you open the van door, it's gone, you put a bag in a locker, it's gone. And then you go back to it, you open it, and it's back again."

Leather said that in wrong-footing viewers with the final reveal he's hoping that "some people will love it, some people will scream at the telly. I really like that idea."

What was Anthony's plan and how was Sam involved?

Mid-way through the third episode of the series, Gabe comes to realise that Sam has been in on a plan to dupe him all along.

She has actually been in a relationship with Anthony, which we are told has become abusive. He had got himself into debt, and when approached by someone outside the control room and offered money to smuggle data, he had taken the opportunity.

When meeting him outside the control centre one day, Sam had then recognised Gabe, and the plan was put in place. She called up multiple times in order to get through to Gabe specifically, and once she had she made up the story about murdering an abusive partner, in order to get to a position where Gabe could be blackmailed into delivering the data for Anthony.

On Anthony's villainous turn, Leather said he was worried that he may come across as an "obvious baddie" but was heartened that that doesn't seem to be the case.

He said: "I'm trying to play him as almost an archetype of the comedy one in the office, he’s quite cocky."

He also said that it was an early decision that no one in the control room would be "the uber baddie" and that he "was obsessed with that idea of who else might have been involved around" the person in the news story he had read.

He explained: "At one point I was going 'I need to calm down here' because I was tempted to have everyone involved. So I stripped it back so it’s just a couple of people, and actually, when we get halfway through the last ep, if you look back at ep one you'd see there were glances between them where something else was going on right from the beginning.

"And Anthony, obviously a lot is going on with him during that initial call, which I think he does really well because I can obviously see it from the first time. So I was so pleased that no one sees that."

What happened to Sam and Anthony?

In the end, after a chase through the Christmas tree farm, Sam, Anthony and the man running the data stealing operation that they're caught up in are all arrested by armed police, after Sam had contacted them and given them their location.

Leather explained that he "would have loved" Gabe and Sam to end up together but in writing it realised "their journey is to be able to now move on as a result of each other. I think they wouldn't move on if they stayed together."

He said: "I don't think ultimately that they would be a good couple. I don't think that that is the show. I think when you get to the end, the love story is Gabe and his dad. You realise, 'oh, it is a love story, but it's not the one I thought it was'."

What happened between Gabe and Sam when they were kids?

Through flashbacks shown throughout the series, we learn that Gabe and Sam were close childhood friends after his mother died.

One day Sam lit a match which started a devastating fire across the Christmas tree farm. A man died in the fire and Gabe took the rap in place of Sam, making him a pariah.

Leather explained that the flashbacks were devised based on he "knew as a kid", who he "didn't even know that well, but it was a close relationship".

He continued: "I thought it would be really interesting to put it into that, and what if we go through it and can suggest that Gabe did something bad. And ultimately say no, he did something honourable. They were two broken kids who, in that moment in their lives, understood each other."

How does the series end?

The series ends with Gabe finally reconciling with his father, after the pair had been closed off from one another for so long. Gabe exits the Christmas tree farm, knocks on his dad's door and, without speaking, the pair embrace each other in a hug.

Leather explained why this element was so fundamental to the overall story, saying: "I'm always fascinated with dad stories. I lost my dad a few years ago and so I really invest in that. And I like having scenes where it's two men struggling to articulate themselves, and you just almost want to scream and go 'just tell each other what you feel!'.

"I think they would have found it hard anyway, but then they went through something that was traumatic, and they could never articulate it. They’re stuck because of it, they almost needed an intervention, someone to bring them together like a therapist to go talk about what you feel in this safe space, but they didn’t have any of that.

"And actually, this massive story happens, and it seems like it's a terrible thing for Gabe, but when we get to the end it has facilitated that."

The Control Room is available in full on BBC iPlayer now. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our TV Guide or visit our dedicated Drama hub for the latest news.

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