Bad Sisters – Season 1 Episode 10 Recap, Review & Ending Explained

Saving Grace

How was John Paul’s body found?

In episode 10 of Bad Sisters, the police inspect John Paul Williams’ dead body. He sits on his dirt bike, which seems to have crashed against a tree.

Grace says they had her birthday dinner. When she wanted to turn in early, he got angry with her and left to go to the pub to watch a football match.

Did Ben kill John Paul?

Later, the other Garvey sisters whisper among themselves. They wonder who actually killed John Paul. Then it dawns on Ursula that she left her drugs where Ben could have found them.

Ursula goes to see Ben to ask him where he went the night John Paul died. He laughs at her, disgusted at what she’s implying. It repulsed him that she wanted him to kill JP that night. That’s why he left. That’s why they haven’t spoken since.

How does Grace find out about the Claflin brothers’ investigation?

Matt is still on the case. He already knows the Garvey sisters lied about where they were that night. Next, he interviews Roger, who confesses what John Paul did to him, how he tore apart his life for his own amusement. He tells Matt he was at the cabin the night John Paul died. He went there so he could forgive him.

Matt then goes across the street to speak to Grace as she’s going inside. He tells her all the things he’s found out. “He wasn’t a proper man was he?” He asks of John Paul. Grace ignores him, nervously making her way inside.

She goes up to John Paul’s study and logs onto his laptop, discovering his history of pretending to be Oscar.

Meanwhile, Matt sneaks around to her shed and steals a trash bag, taking a page out of Tom’s book. He then breaks into the cabin. Going through the trash, he finds a newspaper about the football match John Paul supposedly went to watch at the pub. But the match was the night after his death. Matt comes to the conclusion that John Paul lied to Grace about where he was going. But why?

Grace gets a hold of the postmortem, and finds her signature is on it. She then realizes her sisters knew about the postmortem. Finally, they confess to her what the Claflin brothers have really been up to. They think John Paul was murdered–and that one of the sisters did it.

Who killed John Paul Williams?

Bibi confesses that they didn’t kill him, but that they tried. They all wanted him dead to save Grace. Grace then collapses and starts to cry. She apologizes. “It was my birthday,” she says.

Her memory takes us back to the cabin the night of JP’s death. That evening, Grace leads John Paul upstairs so they can have sex. When JP can’t perform, he’s curt with her and causes her to cry. He tells Grace that she’s nothing. “A fly. A shadow.”

He then tells her that he can’t have sex with her anymore because Eva trapped and seduced him while he was drunk ten years ago. He thought it was Grace, and he’s been living with that trauma ever since. Eva then had a miscarriage, but he blames her for having been so drunk.

Grace sees through his story and slaps him. He punches her in the stomach, and she starts screaming that everything they have is a lie. She calls him a monster.

While his back is turned, Grace takes his pajama pants and strangles him with them. “You blamed me!” she cries.

When she finishes telling this story, Eva cries. She says she didn’t do what he said. She went to the bathroom and couldn’t lock the door, then passed out. When she looked up, he was there. She couldn’t stop him. She didn’t even know she was pregnant at the time.

How does Matt discover the truth of John Paul’s death?

Still at the cabin, Matt plays the disc that’s in the DVD player. He watches a clip from the movie that shows a woman being strangled. He then realizes that Grace used the film as inspiration. She used the yarn in the trash bag he stole as part of her murder plan.

Meanwhile, the sisters are comforting her. Grace says she was knitting and watching a movie that night, which helped her know what to do with JP’s body. She dressed him in a red scarf, then tucked the scarf into the wheel–just like in the movie. Later, she buried him in her murder weapon–his pajamas.

Matt calls Becka to tell her he’s been to the cabin and knows what happened to John Paul. Becka insists to her sisters on meeting Matt alone.

Does Becka try to drug Matt?

She meets Matt at her place, and insists to him that she is JP’s killer. But he knows she’s lying and won’t accept her confession.

Back at Eva’s place, Ursula is freaking out. She can’t find her drugs. The sisters realize Becka must have taken them, so they rush to the car.

Sure enough, Becka excuses herself to the kitchen, where she fixes two drinks. In one, she spoons white powder. She then returns to the table, giving one drink to Matt.

Becka tells Matt she loves him, then watches as he drinks from his glass. She asks him to leave, then looks down at her own fizzing cup. She didn’t give him the drugged beverage.

When Eva bursts inside Becka’s place, Becka is crying over her own glass. Eva knocks it out of her hands and draws her into her arms. Becka says she couldn’t do it. She then cries over her guilt for killing Minna.

“Whatever happens next,” Eva says, “you have to forgive yourself. You have to.”

When Bibi and Ursula come in, Becka tells them Matt knows Grace killed him, and he thinks that they covered it up.

Does Matt decide to turn in the Garvey sisters to the police?

Matt then returns, just as Bibi exclaims that all they did was try to kill JP a few times. He doesn’t look surprised. The sisters wait, wondering what Matt will do.

Later, Matt is alone at the beach. He throws all the evidence against Grace into a fire: the dvd, the yarn, documents.

He then finds his brother, now a father, at the hospital. Teresa and the baby are okay. Matt then shares with him the good news that they don’t have to pay out. Grace withdrew the claim. Matt tells Tom it has to remain a secret how he accomplished this, and Tom accepts this.

How does ‘Bad Sisters’ end?

Grace and Blánaid move out of their house to go live with Eva. But first, Grace talks to Roger. She thanks him for what he did. That night, he helped her move John Paul’s body. She tells him he did a good thing, and he asks her not to forget about him.

Bad Sisters ends with the sisters enjoying a beach day together–like they used to before John Paul started interfering.

They all jump in the water–Grace last of all.

The Episode Review

Isn’t it funny that all the effort the Garvey sisters put into saving Grace, only ended up implicating her in a murder she herself committed? I think if the other sisters had never done anything, Grace could have covered her own tracks well. A clumsy trail of murder attempts wouldn’t have led to her. Luckily for her, however, sometimes the law doesn’t need to win. Sometimes compassion can.

Bad Sisters concludes its threads with a believable ending that ties all its pieces together. Pointing back to some of Grace’s actions in the first episode was a nice touch–such as how she buried John Paul in pajamas, and how she lied about being with her sisters. It would have been easy to read Grace’s nervous actions throughout the series as a timid personality–but the finale reframes everything.

All in all, Bad Sisters is a compelling crime drama about how abusive and toxic people can ruin everything they touch. It’s a story of resilience, family, and compassion that can be incredibly moving–that is, if you can put aside any ethical qualms about murder (which the show makes surprisingly easy to do).