A Very Royal Scandal Finale Recap: Consequences

A Very Royal Scandal
Episode 3
Season 1 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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It’s the morning after, and Prince Andrew goes to church. Perhaps it’s to think about the alleged sins that came to light overnight. Maybe it’s because he feels as though a church is just the place you go to in crisis. Whatever the case, a cleaner enters, interrupting his train of thought. And he just can’t help himself. “You didn’t happen to catch an interview I did last night on television, did you?” he asks. She didn’t, she says. She chuckles to herself as she awkwardly departs — probably because she was in the presence of a royal and it’ll be a fun story to tell the family when she gets home. But maybe she did see the interview. And that’s the prospect that Andrew now has to contend with. Judgment, far and wide, quiet and loud; the scrutiny of an entire nation that, rightly or wrongly, made up their mind on his character just after 9 p.m. the night prior. As he leaves, he turns to look at the cross that hangs above the pews. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” he says. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The third and final episode of A Very Royal Scandal centers on the ramifications of the interview for Andrew, Emily Maitlis, the royal family, the BBC, and everyone else who was involved. Prominently, there is the curious examination of Maitlis’s own part in Andrew’s downfall. The episode takes in her sense of guilt, if not for playing a role in the destruction of a royal reputation, then for how the interview affected his loved ones.

In one scene, Maitlis sees Eugenie and Beatrice while she’s out for a run, and they exchange a glance. I’m not sure whether this was an invention for the show or it actually happened, but it’s fine dramatic shorthand for complex questions around journalistic ethics. It’s the job to hold powerful people to account, absolutely — but what is often forgotten is the personal impact behind the scenes, if not to the person being scrutinized, then to the people they love and are surrounded by. The people that rely on them. It’s an interesting touch to reflect on Maitlis’s inner conflict. Not that she outwardly feels much of that on the morning after the interview; she’s much too excited, and understandably so, about all the global headlines. As her husband puts it: “You’re big in Japan! Fuck me, that’s famous!” 

The mood is much more glum at Andrew’s house (well, mansion), where he tells Fergie that the queen has instructed him to keep a low profile. “You watched it, I assume,” he says. She says that she thought he was wonderful, though it’s up to you how convinced you are that she means it. She also relays how the situation could get worse, as Beatrice saw a report online that Guiffre was upset that Andrew did not apologize during the interview. “They say she’s coming after you or something,” she says. It’s time to lawyer up. Andrew changes the subject, such is his way once it gets tough. “Yeah, the shoot was good. I bagged 100 birds. Best shot of the day.” In Maitlis world, the celebrations continue, with a roar of applause at the BBC offices. 

In the next scene, the axe comes down on poor Amanda Thirsk, who is given the dressing down of all dressing downs by the queen’s private secretary. Alex Jennings is no longer quietly terrifying so much as an attack dog taken off his leash, and his is one of the best performances in the series. “I told you explicitly to work with myself and the other private secretaries, but you ignored me, and now, lo and behold, we find ourselves in a clusterfuck worthy of the Kardashians,” he says. It’s acidic, cold, and brilliant. Thirsk is relieved of her duties by the queen. Meanwhile, during an interview with ABC, Maitlis is asked: “Tell us, Emily, how does it feel to take down a member of the monarchy?” It is, essentially, the question that weighs on her throughout the episode. At a fraught dinner, Andrew and his family struggle to come to terms with the scrutiny brought on them by the interview, driving home its broader impact. 

The theme of guilt echoes throughout and, appropriately, some of it is more outwardly shown by Andrew, such as when he discovers that Guiffre has been taken off the board. “She was very good to me,” he tells Fergie. Next, it’s all about PR management — not just for Andrew, but the royal institution at large. The Qqueen’s private secretary is in full cleanup mode, announcing that Andrew will step back from royal duties. (He has to be “taken off the map,” he says, at least for the moment. Not to keep heaping disproportionate praise on Jennings, but he’s so good in these scenes: clinical, exacting, calculating, like a cold-blooded hitman going about his work.) Maitlis wins a British TV award. As she returns to her table at the ceremony, a voice in the crowd heckles: “Well done! Don’t mention the victims.”

Some time after the interview, Newsnight editor Stewart Maclean (Éanna Hardwicke) and Thirsk meet in a pub. “What if you were wrong?” she asks. What if Andrew was just “clumsy,” and the accusations against him — amplified by the interview — were false? “Say what you like about how Emily conducted the interview; she put no words in his mouth,” Maclean says. “Yeah, right. Power without responsibility,” Thirsk says. Meanwhile, encouraged to do so by his family, Andrew meets with lawyers to defend him from any legal proceedings that may be brought to him by Guiffre. His eyebrows raise when the topic of extradition comes up. “There’s a slim chance Ms. Guiffre may try to force you to face trial in America,” one of the suits says. Andrew is incredulous: How can they do that to him, the second son of the queen? When you grow up with the power and protections afforded to the monarchy, it would be quite the rug pull.

Meanwhile, Panorama airs an interview with Guiffre, watched by Beatrice and her fiancé. “This is not our problem,” she tells him. She has no knowledge of what actually happened, after all; should she be assumed complicit, and punished as such, for merely being an accused man’s daughter? Familial consequences are felt in the Maitlis household too, when she catches her son sheepishly closing his laptop. It’s not porn, thankfully — he’s reading the abusive comments that have been made about her on Reddit.

Months later, COVID has struck, everyone is wearing protective masks, and Andrew is doing some of that reputational rehabilitation his team has instructed, which consists of packing food parcels for a hospice on-camera. You’d think it’s a pretty simple task, but Andrew’s having none of it; he soon storms out, followed by his team, still clad in their masks. (“Take them off,” Andrew instructs. “You sound like the Muppets.”) His legal case with Guiffre is ongoing. “How is it even possible that some girl I can’t even remember has this much fucking power,” he screams, and Sheen bellows to the back rafters. When he was re-creating Andrew from the interview, Sheen’s performance felt shackled; here, unrestrained, he makes you feel for the duke’s predicament, self-inflicted so it is. Still, sympathy for such a guy — that’s a helluva job. 

Late at night, after Maitlis returns home from a Newsnight taping, she finds herself listening to an interview about her stalker from some years prior. “I was listening because I wanted to remember how it felt to be interviewed about something that wasn’t my fault,” she tells her husband. “Like what happened to Epstein’s victims wasn’t their fault. They still had to parade their pain in the hope of the slightest justice.” The broader point that Maitlis makes is perhaps the big statement of the episode: that justice is so fleeting for victims of sexual abuse, assault, and harassment, not least women who survive those crimes. Like her. Like Guiffre. “Always uphill. Always against the tide. Always the battle against the unspoken. You know, the look in their eyes that says: Really? Did he really?”

The rest of the episode sets about detailing some of the final, and lasting, ramifications for Royal Scandal’s players. Andrew’s legal team continues to work on the Guiffre case, and when she brings a case against him in the U.K., the duke is — in quite a funny sequence, all told — whisked out of bed and into a car at the crack of dawn to avoid the delivery of legal documents that have to be physically handed to him. Maitlis continues to stew over the impact on Andrew’s daughters and struggles to find new interview subjects for Newsnight. Eventually, she decides to leave the BBC. And, in 2022, the queen’s private secretary informs the duke that the Guiffre case has been settled out of court. “After consulting with Her Majesty, I am instructed to inform you that this case is now closed,” he says. Finally, it seems, the queen has defied her favorite son’s wishes: He wanted to fight the case at trial, but that would simply be too much of a risk for the royal household. “If you don’t let me fight, I will forever look guilty,” Andrew says. But the time for fighting, his family has concluded, is over. Oh — and the duke is disinvited from the queen’s jubilee celebrations.

“Tell me,” the duke asks. “Where do I go? What do I do?” 

“You live with the consequences of your actions, sir,” the queen’s private secretary icily offers. 

Right to the very end, the show tactfully avoids casting definitive judgment. But perhaps the open question at the end of the episode, with its lingering final shot on the photograph of Virginia Guiffre, is whether real justice for Epstein’s victims will ever be met. As real-life Maitlis said of the finale in a recent interview for the BBC: “It is about reckoning. It is about fallout. But it isn’t some nice, neat ending with a comedy villain or a sort of swashbuckling hero.” It’s a good reminder of the horrors lingering on the periphery of this particular royal scandal, with its connection to Epstein and his many crimes — and the survivors who are still left to pick up the pieces.