The Woman in the Wall Ending, Explained: Does Lorna Find Her Daughter?

Showtime’s ‘The Woman in the Wall’ tells a riveting story that begins with murder but turns out to be much more layered in its secrets and lies than initially imagined. It focuses on the story of Lorna Brady, who is still grappling with the impact that her time in the Magdalene Laundry in Kilkinure had on her. When she ends up with a dead body in her house, the path to the truth leads her through many startling truths. In the end, Lorna must confront reality, no matter how hard or unlikable it might be. She must face her demons and accept the consequences of her actions. SPOILERS AHEAD

The Woman in the Wall Episode 6 Recap

‘The Woman in the Wall’ started with Lorna Brady finding a dead body inside her house. Failing to remember the events of the previous night, Lorna believed she had killed the woman in her house. To keep the cops from finding her, whose name she later discovered to be Aoife, Lorna put her inside a wall in her house. However, later, when she tore down the wall again, Aoife was nowhere to be found, and Lorna was forced to consider the possibility that Aoife had never been real.

In the final episode, all the missing links in Lorna’s story are tied up. We discover exactly what happened the day Father Percy died, and Lorna found Aoife Cassidy dead in her house. While Lorna follows the breadcrumbs to finally find Aoife and her daughter, Colman follows his own investigation into the man named Ignatius McCullen, the man his adoptive parents were in touch with during the process of adopting Colman.

The Woman in the Wall Episode 6 Ending: Did Lorna Kill Aoife Cassidy?

It is after a lot of back and forth that Lorna discovers from another woman from the Laundry that Aoife has a condition called catalepsy. Due to this, Aoife had seizures of such intensity that it made her look like she was dead. But after a while, her condition would get better, and she would come to by herself. An incident like this had happened previously in the convent, where everyone thought she was dead, but then she came back to life, and the nuns considered it a miracle.

Hearing about Aoife’s condition makes Lorna realize exactly what happened that night. Lorna didn’t know about her condition and thought she was dead. But in fact, Aoife was alive when Lorna put her on the wall. Once that was done, Lorna went out to find out about the strange woman she’d presumably killed, and in the meantime, Aoife woke up to find herself trapped inside the wall. She tried to find a way out and made it to the attic, but it was locked. Aoife didn’t have a phone, so she couldn’t call anyone for her help, and while Lorna was out there trying to get to the bottom of the truth, Aoife was in the attic, trapped, starving, and lost without help.

By the time Lorna figured out what had happened, Aoife was already dead. It was the crows that tipped off Lorna about Aoife’s location. She noticed that there were too many of them hanging around her roof. This led her to the attic as she followed Aoife’s trajectory through the walls and finally discovered her dead body. This time, Aoife was dead for real, and while Lorna didn’t kill her with her own hands, she did feel responsible for her death.

The last time, Lorna tried to hide the truth, and things got worse. But this time, she decides to come clean about it. Even though Colman tries to convince her to come up with a story so she won’t be apprehended, Lorna decides that she’d had enough. She surrendered to the cops, telling them everything that had happened, and accepted the punishment levied on her. She goes to prison with a clean conscience, and there, at least, she can sleep.

Who Killed Father Percy?

Apart from Aoife Cassidy, Father Percy’s murder was also central to the plot of ‘The Woman in the Wall.’ While Lorna was the clear culprit in Aoife’s death, the circumstances around Father Percy’s death were shadier. In the end, it turns out that both the cases were connected. Before Aoife Cassidy approached the women from the Kilkinure Laundry, to tell the truth about their children, she visited Father Percy, confronting him about his role in what happened to those women.

To try and convince her that their actions were well-intentioned, he showed her a box of things, photos, and other stuff he’d received from parents over the years who had adopted the children from the church. He wanted to show Aoife that the kids were better off with their new families rather than their birth mothers. The fact that he’d known about the kids and their whereabouts all these years while the women were desperately looking for their children made Aoife angry beyond measure. This led to a tussle between the two, and Father Percy fell down the stairs. Aoife used this window to steal the files and the stuff he had kept and ran away with his car.

Unbeknownst to Aoife, Father Percy was still alive. He called James Coyle, telling him about Aoife and how her actions threatened to bring the truth to light. He didn’t realize that Coyle would see him as a loose end, too, and he sent his secretary, Leslie, to finish things off. It was she who killed Father Percy to bury the truth about the laundries.

In his investigation, Colman figures out that Father Percy had made a call before he died. Because his phone was gone, there was no way to know whom he might have called, but by now, Colman had an inkling. He made an educated guess and stole Coyle’s phone. He found his call records from the day of Father Percy’s death and found an unknown number that had called him that day. It was around the time Father Percy would have made the call, and when Colman called the number, it turned out to be Leslie’s, and he knew right away that it was she who showed up at Father Percy’s house and finished him off for Coyle.

Does Lorna Get to Meet Agnes?

For all the chaos and mayhem that ensues following the two murders, the only thing that Lorna wanted in all this was to find her daughter, Agnes. She had a ray of hope when she discovered that Aoife knew what happened to Agnes, but her death made the path very difficult for Lorna. She found the death certificates that Aoife had hidden and found Agnes’ too. But when she tried to find her daughter’s grave, she discovered an entirely different layer of crime that was perpetrated by the church and the laundries.

Following the investigation, it became clear that the church had forged the death certificates to make it look like the children were dead, while in truth, they’d given up the kids for adoption. The reason behind this was money. The people who adopted the kids would send money to church in the form of donations, but they didn’t realize they were effectively paying for the kids. The church sold many kids this way, and for each kid, they kept a record of the money that was paid by the adoptive parents.

For Agnes, the amount was around ten thousand pounds, but it was not a rounded-off number, which struck as odd to Colman. It was later that he discovered that the odd number was because the payment was made in dollars and converted to pounds. This confirmed that some of the children, including Agnes, were given up to parents in America.

But before Lorna could know about this, she was arrested for the murder of Aoife Cassidy. By now, she’d also made peace with the fact that her daughter had grown up in a happy family, and that was enough for her. Even if she didn’t get to meet her daughter, she’d be happy knowing that Agnes was safe and had a good life. She goes to prison with no expectations of ever seeing her daughter again, but Colman tracks down Agnes and discovers that she is in Boston.

Colman tells Lorna that when Agnes found out she was adopted, she tried to find her birth mother. She is just as excited to meet Lorna as she had been to find her daughter all this while. Even if she is in prison and Agnes is in Boston, there is a way for them to connect with each other. In the end, Colman sets up a video call between Lorna and Agnes, and finally, Lorna gets to meet her daughter and know her. Hopefully, they get to meet in person too someday, but for now, it is enough for Lorna to know that her daughter doesn’t hate her and that she also wants to know her and have a relationship with her, as opposed to what the church people kept telling Lorna all this while.

Does Colman Find His Mother?

While Colman reunites Lorna with her daughter, the question of his own mother remains. He found out that he was one of the kids who had been sold by the church after being torn apart from his mother in the mother-and-baby home. His adoptive parents had no idea what the church did, so they can’t be held responsible for everything. However, it still doesn’t change the fact that Colman was forcefully taken away from his mother, whose name he discovers is Catherine.

While he has a name and enough information to get started on the journey to find his birth mother, Colman knows that the prospects of him finding her are not so good. It has been around three decades, and any number of things could have happened to her in this time. It is also possible that he might not have the correct information or that he turns up to dead ends with no way forward. But even in that, Colman is now content that at least he knows the truth. At least he knows that his mother didn’t abandon him.

In a previous conversation with Lorna, Colman says that even if he doesn’t find his birth mother, he would still love her just as much as he would love her if he got to meet her. He says this to assuage her fears about Agnes and whether she would hate Lorna for giving her up as a baby. But his words are not hollow. He means them because after seeing all that has happened, especially to the women in the laundries, he has some idea of what his mother might have been through, and that’s enough to tell him that she wouldn’t have parted with him if she could help it. Even if he doesn’t meet her, he knows his birth mother loved her, and for now, it would have to do.

What Happens to James Coyle?

While the murders build the mystery of the plot, the main culprit remains the people who forced women like Lorna into the laundries, taking their children away from them and lying to them for all these years. James Coyle was complicit in these crimes, but he was smart enough to not only distance himself from it but to restructure things in a way that he not only started to get rid of the evidence but also covered his tracks by making deals that would prevent the victims from following up on inquiries that would stir trouble for Coyle and his associates.

In the end, Coyle’s secretary, Leslie, is arrested for the murder of Father Percy, but Colman knows that Coyle is the one who told her to murder the priest. Still, there is no way he can prove it, and this legal bind allows Coyle to walk free. However, Colman hasn’t given up just yet. He is still following leads, trying to find someone, anyone who can speak out against Coyle and his associates and bring the truth to light. Considering the long process of justice, it is unlikely that he will find success anytime soon, but perhaps, in trying to expose this truth, he might end up bringing other secrets to light. What matters is that Colman is not giving up, no matter how long it takes.

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