How to Get to Heaven from Belfast Recap ‘The Wake’: Friends with a secret reunite

Warning: This recap contains SPOILERS for the first episode of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.

A few weeks ago, I came across this tweet that became rather popular on my timeline, that said based on the median life expectancy, middle age was actually 38, not 40s or 50s. I remembered that whilst watching this rousing opening to a new Netflix mystery about three friends – all 38 – who got together to head to Donegal following news that their old school friend whom they had lost touch with had died. ‘We’re dying now?’ two of them said at various times, and with a deft writing touch and confident performances, we have a show that felt fresh and was genuinely funny even as it touched on some uncomfortable truths about aging and coping, all wrapped in a mystery. 

‘Separate but inseparable’ was how the friendship between Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne), Robyn (Sinéad Keenan), Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher), and Greta (Natasha O'Keeffe) was described 20 years ago, until one night in a burning cabin changed things. Dara, Robyn, and Saoirse stayed in touch, but Greta moved away and was never heard from again, until the three friends received an email from one Gaye Hearten, purportedly Greta’s sister in law, who said Greta had died. 

Dara, the first amongst the friends introduced as an adult, had spent most of her life caring for her aging mother, who did not even look that frail and who did not appreciate her at all. Robyn was a housewife with a relatively successful husband, who struggled with raising their three young sons. Saoirse was a successful screenwriter and was engaged to be married; she had wanted to be a playwright until she realised she needed money to buy things. Greta was married to a policeman (called a guard because the national police service in Ireland was called Garda Síochána which translates to ‘Guardians of the Peace’) and lived in a large manor house in a town called Knockdara.

After a few scenes to set the small town vibe – a hot mechanic named Liam (Darragh Hand) who was actually a policeman, a hotel without a spa, a taxi driver who was the only taxi driver in town – the three girls headed to Greta’s house, where the vibe shifted to a gothic mystery. Greta’s family was creepy. There was her mother Mrs. Margo Heaney (Michelle Fairley – Catelyn Stark to Game of Thrones fans), her husband Owen, her brother, and her daughter. Greta supposedly fell down the stairs after she had been sleepwalking, but when Saoirse opened the closed casket to place a photograph of the four of them when they were young, she noticed that the body did not have a tattoo on her wrist, the same tattoo that all these friends have. Her daughter also told Dara that her father Owen did not have a sister. So who emailed the three of them?

Freaked out and struggling with a hangover from their ill-advised partying at the hotel the night before, the three girls hurriedly left the house. For still unknown reasons, Owen followed them in his car, until they got into an accident. Elsewhere, we saw a very much alive Greta wearing a white dress and running through the woods until she reached a lake. 

There was a scene about halfway through the episode, when the girls needed to spend the night at the hotel instead of heading straight to Greta’s wake because they needed to wait for the car to be fixed (Dara accidentally loaded petrol instead of diesel into Robyn’s new car). After seeing a large group of younger ones heading into the hotel to party, Robyn happily told this story about her and Greta partying when they were young, and her leg getting caught on fire. When she left the table, Saoirse told Dara that Robyn had told that story before, and that it was actually Saoirse’s story. Saoirse mused about how ‘we edit our memories’, how ‘we’re building these versions of events that suit us, that don’t challenge who we think we are’. More than a profound realisation about humanity and the things we almost unknowingly do to cope with life, it also felt like a guide on how we should follow this particular mystery. 

Based on the first episode alone, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast feels like it will develop into a pretty special show. I’m excited to watch the rest of it, and I hope you’ll join me. 

Rating: A

Strays

🚐Based on the flashback, Dara, Robyn, and Saoirse ran toward a cabin with the same symbol they had tattooed on their bodies; it was there that they found Greta. Later, that cabin burned.

🚐Saoirse was very stressed over the direction the star of her show, Marnie, wanted. Given how she almost immediately had her eye on hot Liam, it did not look like things were that solid with her fiance Seb.  

🚐Whilst at the hotel that first night, Robyn received a phone call with just a crackling sound.

Episode Title: The Wake

Episode Writer: Lisa McGee

Episode Director: Michael Lennox

Original Air Date: February 12, 2026