The Jetty star addresses "repercussions" of Ember’s lie in finale
The detective makes a big call.
*Warning: Spoilers for The Jetty ahead*
In the finale of The Jetty, a BBC crime thriller about the link between a fire, the abuse of underage girls and a missing-person cold case in a Northern lakeside town, Ember Manning learns a horrifying truth.
It wasn't her late husband Malachy who murdered Amy Knightley, despite being one of the last people to see her alive 17 years ago, nor was it Malachy's best friend Arj, who had always believed that he was responsible for her death.
No, it was the detective herself who killed Amy after she struck her with a car while driving under the influence of drugs given to her by Malachy on her birthday.
The memory of that fateful night comes flooding back to her during a confrontation with Arj in which he admits to killing Riz the podcaster and setting fire to the boat hut to destroy any evidence that Amy had been buried there.
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But just when it looks like Ember is going to confess to the police, she makes an executive decision to let Arj, who dies after setting himself alight, take the blame.
"Do you think truth and justice are always the same thing?" asks Caitlin, seemingly helping to deter Ember from taking that path.
While Ember was driving the car, Malachy's influence on her cannot be denied.
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When asked if Ember would be able to carry that secret with her for the rest of her life, Archie Renaux, who plays her junior colleague Hitch, told RadioTimes.com, "I don't know. It's one of those things that if you're in that situation, what would you do? You don't really know what you would do.
"I guess maybe her mum, she might say something to her. But because it is just her and Caitlin who have this secret... there won't be any repercussions. If she tells someone else then it's out there, and you have no real control over where that goes."
Ruby Stokes, who plays Ember's daughter Hannah, went on to say that people "like to imagine" what they'd do in a given situation, but "you never really know until you're put into it".
"It's an individual's game," she added. "I'm not really sure anyone can tell someone else how they'd end up dealing with something like that."
Stokes said that she had "absolutely no idea" about the direction the narrative would take when she first started reading the scripts.
"I love that, though, that it was the person you're rooting for who ultimately did the bad thing," she said. "It's interesting that Arj is presented as the nice guy... when ultimately he did the bad thing. I liked that and the way it went."
Renaux, who also had "no idea", added that it wasn't only Arj's close relationship with both Ember and Mack that made the big reveal "even more heartbreaking", but Ember's desperation to solve the mystery also.
"Ember herself was putting all this time and effort and emotion into finding out what happened, only to be led down the path of going straight back to herself," he said.
"It does make it more heartbreaking."
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All four episodes of The Jetty are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer. Episodes 3 and 4 will also air on Sunday 21st and Monday 22nd August at 9pm on BBC One.
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