How to Get to Heaven from Belfast Recap ‘Separate But Inseparable’: Greta
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
Warning: This recap contains SPOILERS for the sixth episode of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.
And we’re back. After a couple of episodes that seemed to meander over clues and away from its heart, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast found its pulsing centre again, this time, by focusing on Greta and what truly happened the night the childhood of her and her friends ended. By the time I Don’t Want to Go to You by Gary Lightbody and Iain Arche started playing, the show had fully reclaimed its dramatic spark whilst keeping its consistent humour.
I’m going to start with something that has bugged me ever since I found out that Jason Meadows aka Charles Sampson was a reporter – What on earth was he doing, following around a minor? The flashbacks showed Greta being very clearly uncomfortable with his presence, yet he stuck around, so much so that Greta invented a story about him being her ex-boyfriend because as she explained in her voiceover, she needed a story her friends would understand. So, I cheered for the headmistress Sister Patrick when she called out Charles’s behaviour when Andrew and Liam came to ask about Greta. According to Sister Patrick, Charles offered her money for Greta’s file, which she of course declined. Andrew may have built up this idealised image of his father as an uncompromising investigative journalist, but his behaviour toward Greta and Jodie was abusive and creepy, and I am glad at least one adult at the time saw through Charles.
Oh, right, I should probably have started with that. Liam is alive. Before Booker arrived and kidnapped the girls, Saoirse gave Liam Jodie’s box, which saved his life; Booker’s bullet hit the box and stopped it. Liam was still hurt by the impact, however, and it was at the hospital that Booker finally managed to steal Jodie’s box. But, Liam had already listened to enough of it to recognise the recorder belonged to Charles Sampson.
And so Liam teamed up with Andrew, and they were able to persuade the headmistress to show them Greta’s file. Only, it was empty, outside of a photograph of her birth mother, Nora O’Hara, along with the note ‘Strictly no contact’.
There was some kind of financial arrangement that led Nora to give Greta up. She was raised by the psychiatrist Margo, and though she clearly still remembered whatever horror she and Jodie experienced as children, she was able to move on. She made friends. She was considering going to university.
Jodie, however, was not so lucky. She was locked up after she and Greta were separated. She carried whatever happened to them as children heavily, and she wanted to talk. She wanted her story out there. But, Jodie’s story was also Greta’s story, which was why Charles has been bugging her into cooperating with his investigation.
Greta, Charles, and Jodie were at the caretaker’s cabin that fateful night. Jodie insisted she was ready to talk about Heaven’s Veil. It was creepy to watch a grown man like Charles watch two kids talk. Greta rightly called out how he was ‘a grown man intimidating two vulnerable girls’. Charles’s excuse was that people needed to know the horrific social experiment they went through. Not this way, Charles. Not at the expense of their safety and well-being.
Greta cleverly switched to Irish so Charles would not understand what she and Jodie were talking about. Greta promised Jodie help, and eventually, Jodie was persuaded to tell Charles to leave. Charles refused, and as Greta grabbed his coat to give it to him, she felt the tape recorder in the pocket. He had been secretly recording them the whole time.
Charles grabbed Greta as he tried to get his recorder back. This is violence against a minor. Greta was struggling against Charles when Jodie stabbed him from behind, killing him.
All of this happened mere minutes after Greta had promised Jodie she would help her. Greta gave Jodie the recorder and told her to destroy it. She was never at the cabin. They hugged before Jodie got out of there, leaving Greta to come up with a story for Saoirse, Dara, and Robyn, who arrived looking for her.
Dara and Robyn had wanted to go to the police, but Saoirse talked them out of it. Instead, they tried to burn the body by burning down the cabin. When it rained, dousing the fire, they decided to bury the body instead. Then, they went to the party as planned, to create an alibi, in case someone asked them where they were that night.
The party sequence, as they pretended to dance and have fun, with the mournful music playing in the background, was a beautifully shot depiction of the death of childhood. Greta, too, though she had clearly been through something horrible as a child, because for a time, she had a normal life with normal friends and a future she could look forward to. One reporter wanted a scoop, and these kids would have to carry the weight of death and secret with them for the rest of their lives.
Adult Greta managed to build a life with a husband and a child, until she and Jodie happened into each other again in Portugal. Now, she was Grainne Breslin Marsh, forced to accept that she would have to leave all trace of Greta behind, including her own daughter, at least for an unspecified time.
Greta has been having conversations in her head with her birth mother Nora whilst waiting for the Midwife who would birth her into her new life. ‘Nora’ told Greta it was easy to give her up because she was rotten inside, because Heaven’s Veil infected her. The vision – Greta’s own brain – managed to goad her into calling the number she had memorised and checking on the status of her mother. That was a mistake; now someone knew she was alive.
‘If I can’t run away from who I really am, maybe it’s time to run towards it’, adult Greta thought. She took two of Feeney’s injections and used them on the Midwife and Feeney herself, then took the car keys and ran.
Whilst Booker tried to (and later, successfully did) retrieve the recorder, she left Saoirse, Dara, and Robyn locked in a lighthouse and tied together. They were working together to try and get out of there when they noticed red envelopes coming out of Saoirse’s bag, the same red envelopes they received supposedly from Greta.
And so Saoirse had to confess that she sent the envelopes to convince Dara and Robyn to continue looking for Greta. Dara was particularly upset with Saoirse and told her they were just material to her. Saoirse was not done hurting Dara; she had called out Dara’s decision to take care of her mother whilst they were on the plane, and now she defended her deception by saying Dara’s life had been shaken. From Saoirse’s point of view, the last few days had taken Dara out of her small world. It was a full blown fight between these two old friends that left Robyn as the unlikely mediator. The fight ended only when Dara realised that in her anger, she had freed herself from the rope. She freed her friends, too, and gave Saoirse a stinging slap. I’d have to agree with Robyn, she did deserve that. Having a valid point was no excuse for deceiving her friends and putting their lives in danger.
They were no longer bound but they were still trapped in the lighthouse. As they looked around for whatever they could use to get out, they found the same notepad Greta had used to write down that number that she memorised. The imprint of Greta’s handwriting was still there, and along with the number, Saoirse was able to translate the text – Heaven’s Veil. These were the same words they saw next to the symbol that was painted in red in Jodie’s room.
With Greta now presumably headed back to Ireland, and the girls making their way out of the lighthouse via the small window that Dara was able to open just enough so they could slip out and slide down using the same rope that bound them, surely it was only a matter of time before these high school friends reunited. How much trust remained amongst them? How much affection was still there to sustain them? Only two more episodes left!
Rating: A
Strays
🚐Young Greta: “I’d like to get to Heaven.’
🚐Robyn entertained the possibility that Greta was not being held against her will and that she was the one in control.
🚐Margo told Greta she gave up her career to look after her. Why?
Episode Title: Separate But Inseparable
Episode Writer: Ava Pickett
Episode Director: George Kane
Original Air Date: February 12, 2026