The Holiday ending explained: Jill Halfpenny unpacks dramatic finale

The Holiday stars Jill Halfpenny (The Drowning, Dark Money, Humans) as Kate, a police officer whose holiday with family and friends quickly takes a sinister turn when she discovers that her husband is having an affair.

When one of the group is found lying dead at the bottom of a cliff, the plot only thickens.

After plenty of twists and turns, The Holiday wraps up in explosive style, with the grisly truth exposed for all to see.

Read on for everything you need to know about the Holiday’s ending. Though be warned: there are spoilers for the final episode from this point on.

The Holiday ending explained

Izzy wasn't having an affair with Sean, as Kate had suspected – that "glow" that everyone kept mentioning was courtesy of a woman outside of their friendship group that Izzy had fallen in love with. On the contrary, it was Jenny who had been communicating with Sean under the pseudonym 'Coral Girl', but their secret conversations weren't rooted in lust, but tragedy.

Sean had witnessed Jenny's son Jake intentionally drive into a teenage boy back home. She begged him not to report the incident to the police or to tell Kate, who is a detective. And to make matters more complicated, Sean and Kate's daughter Lucy was also in the car with Jake, but he hadn't clocked that at the time.

Lucy had been romantically involved with the deceased, but their relationship crumbled when he filmed them without her knowledge during an intimate moment. When she discovered what he'd done, Lucy was inconsolable and begged Jake to take action.

"Please! You've got to help me," she said. "I want him dead... You go round there and you f**king kill him."

And that's exactly what happened.

Izzy, who knew the truth after Lucy had confided in her, found herself in an altercation with Jenny in which she implored Jake's mum to report what had happened. But Jenny refused, clawing at her as she pleaded with Izzy to keep shtum. A few seconds later, Izzy plummeted to her death.

What has Jill Halfpenny said about the ending of The Holiday?

Speaking to RadioTimes.com about Kate's emotional state when she realised that Izzy was totally innocent, Jill Halfpenny said: "I think there's so many things [running through her mind]. One is pure guilt. She can't believe that she would have thought that about her friend.

"But the other is that she's so angry. This could have all been explained if Sean had been honest with her from the beginning, before they even left for the holiday. She finds that very, very difficult to come to terms with.

"At the heart of any good thriller there is bad communication. And if the writing is good enough, then everyone will have really good reasons. You can understand why Sean didn't want to give Kate that piece of information. He didn't know that that was going happen. He wasn't going to share it until the time was right, or hopefully never. Obviously, with hindsight, he's going to think every day of his life, 'I wish I'd just told her'.

"But as human beings, we protect ourselves, I think, at all costs. And I think with Kate, a lot of her faults throughout the four hours are that she doesn't come forward with what she knows and how she's feeling. If she had cut to the chase earlier, she would have been able to avoid all of this, but she doesn't. She keeps pursuing because she doesn't trust people."

Halfpenny went on to explain why Lucy felt unable to confide in her mother before the situation escalated: "Kate is very prideful. What she didn't realise was that because she's a very highly principled person, very ethical, and has a very binary sense of right and wrong, it can be very scary to come forward.

"I think she [Lucy] just thought, 'Where can I go with this?'"

As the final credits rolled, there were a handful of strands left dangling. Would Kate feel able to continue working for the police given what she now knows?

"There's a little visual at the end when she pulls off her badge," said Halfpenny. "But we'll never know.

"If I had to call it now, then I think she probably wouldn't because in order to do the job, and in the way that she did it, she had to believe in what she was doing. And she had to live in the way that she was asking other people to live. And I think the type of person she is, she probably just thinks, 'I can no longer pursue that path because I'm not that person. I'm a hypocrite.' And I think that would kill her inside."

It's also uncertain if the remaining friendships – if they can even be described as such following the harrowing events – will survive. "It's hard to come back from things like that," said Halfpenny. "I'm not sure whether they would stay friends. Being bonded by something like that, I think it's too uncomfortable for everyone. I think they'd just separate."

And Kate's marriage is also in tatters following Sean's betrayal.

"I would hope [they'd stay together]," said Halfpenny. "When you read those types of scenarios in real life and you see the destruction, and then the very last thing is that couple ends up splitting up, it always breaks my heart slightly. You've lost everything, and now you're losing your best friend.

"They both made mistakes, and maybe if they're sensible enough they can admit their mistakes and just keep moving forwards with each other because they do love each other. I would love to think that they do [last] because there's so much loss there. There’s so much loss there."

Read More:

• The Holiday’s Jill Halfpenny is 'very realistic' about viewer reaction

The Holiday is available to watch on Netflix. Find out what else is on with our TV Guide, or visit our Drama Hub for all the latest news.

The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now and get the next 12 issues for only £1. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey.