Dept. Q episode 8 recap: Sam Haig's identity and a terrifying truth is revealed

Dept. Q is Netflix crime drama following detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) as he deals with the guilt of a shooting that left his partner paralysed and a younger officer dead.

As Carl returns to work, he's instructed to launch Department Q, a new arm of the police tasked with reopening cold cases. His first case, a missing prosecutor called Merritt Lingard, which threatens to throw his entire world into turmoil.

Here's a recap of everything that happened in Dept. Q episode 8.

The penultimate episode begins with Carl arriving at a car garage. He greets Caroline Kerr in the office and introduces himself. He says that he remembers her walking past that day in Leith Park. She says she didn’t see them and he says while she’s lying, he’s not there to talk about that. He wants to talk about PC Anderson. He asks Caroline if she knew him, considering they both grew up in Leith Park. She says she doesn’t know him and she doesn’t know of any crime.

Carl says the crime round that area is run by a man called Eugene Errington. He asks if she knows him and she says everyone does. But, Carl says, not everyone has a kid with him though. One of the mechanics is staring at Caroline and she says Carl is going to get her killed. He says they know about him, Charlie Bell, and he has plenty of warrants for his arrest. She then asks him if Eugene owned PC Anderson, since he owns everything else. She says she doesn’t know.

Carl says he knows Charlie isn’t the one who shot him, but he thinks he was in the car waiting outside for whoever did and that Caroline knows that, but she’s too scared to say anything. Carl says he’s about to step out of the office and in a few seconds, Caroline needs to get under the desk and stay there until someone comes to get her. Carl gets a gun out.

He heads towards Charlie Bell and holds out the gun towards him. Then, armed officers hold their guns up as well and DCI Bruce arrests Charlie. As Carl is walking away, Charlie calls after him and antagonises him about Hardy. Carl turns round and shoots Charlie in the head. Suddenly, Hardy appears in his hospital gown and says "now he’s done it". To this, Carl wakes up at home. He’d fallen asleep holding the case file on Caroline Kerr and Charlie Bell. He takes the notebook next to his bed and starts to write his dream down.

In the chamber, the man drags Merritt back inside. He then fixes the controls next to the hatch and checks the rest of the electrics as Merritt lays passed out. Before he goes, he kneels down and tells Merritt he’s sorry for kicking her, but he gave her a painkiller with her sedative. He holds her face and says he thinks about her all the time, about them and how things could’ve been different. The older woman’s voice blares in over the microphone telling him to do what he has to do and get out. He pulls his mask up and tells Merritt he loves her so much before kissing her neck. Then, he takes her mother's necklace from around her neck.

At Carl’s, Jasper and Martin are doing tai chi. Carl tells Jasper to get to school and he says Gemma is picking him up. To this, Carl tries to talk to him about safe sex and Jasper holds his ears and walks off to his room. In the chamber, the man is watching old videos of Merritt as she guesses names to solve the reason she’s in there, scribbling the names on the walls. The older woman comes over and says that as Merritt still hasn’t gotten it in four years, she’s never going to. The man suggests they let her go. The woman does not agree.

Merritt wakes up back inside the chamber. She immediately notices her mother’s necklace has gone and starts screaming. The older woman says it must’ve gone missing when she tried to escape. They play her the recording again about the pressure rising inside the chamber. The woman says she's decided she'll still get the peace she deserves if Merritt died, with or without knowing why.

Carl meets with Rachel at a restaurant. She wants to know how he knew she was there. He says he pinged her phone. She tells him to leave because she’s meeting someone. He realises she’s on a date, but he wants to tell her about his dream. He says he keeps shooting people from his past. She asks if he hears the gunshots and if he reloads. Carl asks what would any of those things mean and Rachel says she doesn’t care. Rachel’s date arrives and she says Carl is her brother and that he’s leaving. So, he goes.

Merritt recalls lying in bed with Harry when she was younger. She’s telling him she wants to run away. She tells him she needs enough money to last until she’s 18 and then her mum’s rich family will give her money. She tells him that William gets something too. He says he couldn’t leave his brother alone with their mum since she burned their house down. Merritt says she thought that was Lyle who was playing with matches. Harry says that his mum was flicking lit cigarettes at their sleeping dad.

Merritt says she could sell one of her mum’s diamond rings to get away. Harry asks why her dad doesn’t sell them and she says he has sold some of them to go to the pub. He asks about her necklace, but she’s adamant she’d never sell it. Harry says he’d come with her, if she wanted. She suggests she steals them from under her dad’s bed.

Harry asks about when William won't be home. Merritt replies, Monday evenings. Then, Harry asks if her dad will be at the pub. She realises what he’s suggesting and she tries to put him off the idea. She tells him not to do anything. Then, one evening, as Merritt arrives home Harry is leaving with his face bloodied. She goes inside and finds the house trashed and blood splattered on the door as William crawls through the house bloodied and beaten.

At Dept. Q, Akram talks about how Sam was in court every day for Merritt, but that he also gave Robert information that could hurt her case against Finch. They don’t know if he was helping or hurting her. In the chamber, Merritt can hear arguing. She hallucinates that Sam is sitting in there with her. She remembers a time when they were laying in bed together. He asks her what she thought of him when they first met and she calls him obnoxious. He holds her necklace and says he likes it. She says she never takes it off, but she thinks it might be cursed.

It then cuts to when Merritt told Sam she was leaving for Mhor again. She tells him that she'll ring him when she gets back. He’s angry at her as she pretends their relationship was nothing. This time, before she leaves, she turns around and says they’re catching the 10am ferry and that he should come with them.

When he questions who "us" is, she says her brother that she’d like Sam to meet. When he doesn’t answer, she leaves. Upstairs, the man watches the cameras as the older woman does a crossword. He picks up a key and heads downstairs. The older woman watches on the camera as the man opens the hatch. Merritt goes to the hatch and pulls out her necklace.

At Dept. Q, Carl recalls his conversation with Paul Evans at the climbing centre. Paul says that if Sam had a relationship with Merritt, he didn’t mention it and if it was professional, he definitely wouldn’t have. He then remembers the conversation with Dennis Piper in the pub, when Dennis told him that they should be investigating Sam’s death.

In the chamber, the older woman says that the man felt sorry for her, but that they’ve come to the end of their time together. Before she goes, though, the woman asks Merritt to settle an argument they’ve been having. One of them thinks she needs some help to figure out why she’s there and the other thinks she’s just selfish. The man grabs the microphone and begs Merritt to answer the question they keep asking her, “Why are you here?”

Back at Dept. Q, Akram asks again if Sam Haig was helping or hurting Merritt. Carl thinks maybe it was both. He recalls how Dennis told him that Sam was spending time at Godhaven before he died. Carl asks Rose and Akram why he’d be doing that in the middle of the Graham Finch trial. At the chamber, the man pleads with Merritt to guess and he says the last time they saw each other, it was at a funeral. To this, the older woman starts beating him away from the microphone.

At Dept. Q, Carl continues to say that Sam was with Merritt at the hotel on September 21st, two days before he died. Rose says he couldn’t have been though, because he was at the other hotel with Paul Evans’s wife. Rose says how could he be with both at the same time? She realises what Carl is suggesting – that it's two different people. Carl says they should assume that the Sam Haig that Paul and Chloe knew was the real one. So, who was the other one with Merritt?

In the chamber, Merritt guesses that the man is talking about Harry’s funeral. She names Harry Jennings. The woman pushes her as to why Harry died and she says because he fell off the back of a ferry running away from what he did. She says Merritt killed him, the same way she killed Sam Haig and her own brother.

She begs to know if William is actually dead, but the woman says "in a way". The woman then says that Merritt is the real reason her beautiful boy was taken from her. Then, Merritt suddenly realises that the woman is Harry Jennings’s mother, Ailsa. The other person, Harry’s brother, Lyle.

He says that Merritt doesn’t remember him and she says she does and that Harry said he wasn’t right in the head. She says she's sorry, but, she also says she’s not going to apologise to the mother after what her son did to her brother. She says he only did it because he was doing Merritt’s dirty work.

Merritt says that no one asked him to. Merritt then says that Harry deserved to die for what he did to William. She waits to get killed for what she said, but instead Lyle comes down and starts hammering into one of the windows. She looks through and sees Sam’s face. Only it’s not Sam. It’s Lyle.

It cuts to a group of boys and a man doing knitting at Godhaven. Carl and Akram arrive to meet with Terry. He tells them that two kinds of people come to Godhaven; ones you can help and ones that are beyond help. For Terry, he gets the ones you can't redeem. He says he’s one of them, that’s why he can help them. Carl asks about Sam Haig. Terry tells him he was a sociopath more than a psychopath, but he’d come there because he’d had a relationship with one of his teachers. He stole from her and did it to many others.

Carl asks why Sam had returned to Godhaven and Terry said because he was writing a book about his time there and one of the other lads. Carl mentions that it must be the lad he almost beat to death and Terry asks him how he knows about that. Carl explains that Dennis, the reporter, found the interview on Sam’s laptop and Terry asks if he was asking about Rocket. When Carl asks who Rocket is, Terry says that was the name of the guy Sam beat up.

Terry explains that Sam met his match with Rocket and that Rocket had a dead eye, completely black, after Sam Haig kicked the colour out of it. Rocket’s name is Lyle Jennings. Akram suddenly makes the connection with Harry Jennings and Terry asks if they know about Lyle. Carl says they don’t, but they’d like to. It cuts to an interview with a younger Lyle with his beaten eye at Godhaven.

All episodes of Dept. Q are available to stream on Netflix.