- Title: Luther – Series Three, Episode Three
- wiki: link
Luther (Idris Elba) and Ripley (Warren Brown) search for a vigilante (Elliot Cowan) still mourning his dead wife and using social media to get the public on his side as he hunts down and murders recently released convicts (rapists, gangbangers, and pedophiles) in the name of justice. Meanwhile, Gray (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and Stark (David O’Hara) try a different tack to get under Luther’s skin by scaring Mary (Sienna Guillory) and convincing Luther’s new girlfriend that the man she’s been seeing is responsible for his ex-wife‘s (Indira Varma) death. Before the end of the episode both storylines will converge in tragedy as Gray and Stark will be given all the ammunition they need to properly charge Luther and the detective will loose yet another person close to him to violence.
Although Luther cuts the man no slack, the episode does a good job at showing the detective’s mixed feelings about hunting down a man in the same kind of grief he himself struggled with after the murder of his ex-wife. When their murder targets a pedophile, Luther attempts to appeal to one of the man’s victims (Michelle Duncan) to publicly plead for the life of the man who molested her as a child. Not surprisingly, the entire matter blows up in their faces. Stark’s use of the facts to twist Mary’s understanding of her new lover also gives us a look at the similarities between Stark and Luther, and their differences, as both are willing to bend both the truth and the law to the breaking point to do what they believe is best.
The loss of both Ripley and Mary in the same episode leaves Luther in a dark place heading into the final episode of the season. Ripley’s murder is certainly shocking and leaves our protagonist alone in the cold once again. Thankfully, the final episode of the season will see return a familiar face (Ruth Wilson) to help Luther try and catch the killer and put things right once more.
