Last night one of the briefest, yet most trailed guest appearances in Line Of Duty appeared to come to an end when the character of Marcus Thurwell (played by James Nesbitt) appeared to be discovered dead in his Spanish villa, along with his wife. Two bodies were discovered by Spanish authorise, while AC-12 viewed the scene back in England, via a night vision livestream.
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This means we didn’t actually meet Thurwell IRL. We saw the image on his police file, a grainy CCTV shot of him in Spain, and then an unclear video feed of what appeared to be a decomposing body, which Spanish police appeared to say was in fact Thurwell, but he never actually appeared on screen.
SO what’s the truth behind it? Thurwell was shaping up to be a pivotal character in Line Of Duty folklore. He was the chief investigating officer in the Lawrence Christopher case, which murdered journalist Gail Vella had been investigating, and it’s heavily implied that he’s also the man who Jo Davidson was her father (it’s also revealed that her father was in fact her uncle, Tommy Hunter). And then there’s the fact that Thurwell is played by a well-known actor James Nesbitt - surely Mercurio wouldn’t have wasted such a casting on what amounts to a cameo? He may be known for bumping off his key protagonist as early as the first episode of the season (Danny Waldron, we barely knew ye), but this seems a bit much.
And now, Twitter is convinced that the Spanish special forces officer who was talking to AC-12 before the operation is in fact Thurwell. His face was covered with a scarf, but his eyes and eyebrows do bear an uncanny resemblance to James Nesbitt/Marcus Thurwell.
There’s every possibility that Thurwell’s rotting corpse is the literal dead cat Mercurio is using to throw us off the scent of the real villain of the piece (Patricia Carmichael? Philip Osborne? WAS IT TED ALL ALONG?) but as ever we’ll have to wait until the finale next Sunday to find out (or not, depending on whether season 7 of Line Of Duty is in fact in the works).