How to Get to Heaven from Belfast Recap ‘Outlaws, Liars, and Fallen Angels’: The Erosion

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

When I look back at when I started falling in love with Booker’s character, murdering and attempted murdering aside, I think it was around the time she donned that yellow suit in Portugal. Even knowing very little about her at the time, the outfit just seemed her. It was also about that episode that I wrote,

‘Yet even with all this, Booker does not give off an overly sinister edge. I suppose that is in large part due to the overall tone of the show. I wonder, though, if that is also a hint to her larger character.’

And now here we are, one episode before the finale, and we find out that Booker is, indeed, not sinister. Yes, she locked three women inside a yacht with a bomb, clearly not the best decision, but she was also part of a secret organisation that was founded with the mission to help vulnerable women escape horrific circumstances. When Booker went ‘Nooooo’ after her boss Rossa asked her about the person who brought Greta’s case to her, I wanted to cry. There was so much righteous protectiveness in that single word. As I get older, I understand more and more how the world is filled with bullies, how the bullies from our childhood were small potatoes compared to the bullies out here in the real world –  those who engage in systemic injustice, those who enjoy power tripping, and those who use bullying as a tool to get what they want whether big or small. Seeing a character put herself between a powerful entity and a person who did not have the capacity to fight back in the dark alleys where this organisation operated was profoundly moving. Yes, I have become a Booker stan.

But, more than that, I am also quite excited about the reveal of this larger organisation at play, and the storytelling possibilities beyond this first season. When the still unnamed organisation started, it was an all women volunteer team. Now, it was a business. They would evaporate anyone as long as they had the money to pay, even the very same abusive men against whom they used to protect women. ‘The erosion’, Booker declared to Rossa’s face, with the inner circle members of their organisation present.

Greta escaped by syringe-ing Feeney and Midwife, a very serious breach for this very secret organisation. Feeney and Midwife found Booker (they drove up in Feeney’s pink car), and they spoke not just about Greta’s flight, but the disappearance of one of the delivery guys, Jackson, that caused a stir within their organisation.

Booker casually told them that she blew up Jackson because she didn’t trust him. They had a client, a young girl, who was trying to get away from an abusive older guy. Midwife well remembered this case because she was the one who killed the guy. Booker wondered how the guy found out where the girl was in the first place. As she looked into the case, everything pointed to Jackson having taken money in exchange for information. 

Booker declared this same thing during the meeting at the organisation headquarters hidden behind a salon called Metamorphosis, a fitting name for a group that specialised in changing people's lives, rather literally. Based on Rossa’s reaction, she already knew what Jackson was up to, and if I could read her, so could Booker. Booker also promised to get Greta back into line, but Rossa had other plans.

What Rossa wanted was to kill not just Greta but everyone who could identify Booker or who knew their organisation existed. That meant Margo (who helped Booker in the past and who was the one who called her for help), Owen and Greta. It did not look like young Maria knew about Booker, but since she now knew her mother was alive (Greta called her from the cell phone Feeney set up for her, before she tossed it, along with the passport and bank cards under her new name), she was very likely in the kill list too. Saoirse, Robyn, and Dara would have to be included as well. Would Booker’s loyalty to the organisation override her own sense of right and wrong? Would she be able to kill the daughter of the woman who helped her in the past?

Back in high school, Greta was rebuilding her life until Charles Sampson found her and brought a troubled and struggling Jodie along, leading to Charles’s death and Greta having to convince her friends to carry this massive, soul-crushing secret with her. In adulthood, Greta found peace once more. She had a husband who adored her, a daughter who loved her. Then, a vacation in Portugal changed it all, when she crossed paths with Jodie once more.

Three weeks previously, Greta still lived an idyllic life. She had her own darkroom, so photography was either a job for her or at least a serious hobby. That fateful day, as her daughter left for school and her husband was supposed to pick up her mother who was visiting, she took a photo of their house, then developed it inside. It was in that photo that she saw Jodie, already inside her home.

Greta had left Portugal in a hurry. She left a note, wanting Jodie to leave her be, as her husband and daughter did not know about her past. She also left a copy of the book The Doll Complex, a book that Saoirse, Robyn, and Dara later figured out was written by Margot about Greta. Clearly, it did not work, because Jodie tracked her down.

Greta looked very uncomfortable around Jodie, but either Jodie did not notice in her fervour, or she chose not to. She gave Greta the friendship bracelet that matched her own and spoke of how God brought her back to her. She also said that she saw Charles Sampson not just in her dreams but in the faces of strangers. For Charles to be at peace, they needed to seek redemption, which according to Jodie meant telling Charles’s son Andrew what happened. Only, Jodie did not know what happened to Charles’s body.

Greta told Jodie to leave, and Jodie refused. Jodie said that she has already called Andrew and told him to come to Knockdara. Greta declared she would deny Jodie’s story, but then Jodie dropped the bomb – she kept the tape Greta gave her to destroy.

To protect Jodie – and yes, her new life as well, because any investigation involving Jodie would have meant digging up the past she wanted to escape – Greta lied about Charles’s death to her friends. Greta handed Jodie the recorder trusting that Jodie would destroy it to protect the both of them, just as Greta’s lie about Charles protected them both too. Why did Jodie keep that recording of Charles’s final moments all these years? Did she hold on to the one thing that could drag Greta back to her orbit? Was that her way of making sure Greta would never be free, just as she remained shackled to the trauma of their shared past?

Greta slowly walked backwards up the stairs as Jodie kept coming, her mind consumed with the conviction of her choices. When she reached out to hold Greta’s face in her hands, Greta pushed her, and she fell down the stairs to her death.

How did Greta’s old school friends get dragged into this? It was young Maria who reached out to them. She knew that her father and grandmother were lying to her about her mother’s ‘death’. She admitted to Owen that she thought he had done something to Greta, which was a reasonable suspicion given how creepy Owen acted at the beginning. Also, as the post-CSI generation knew, it’s always the husband. Owen putting his arm around Maria after Maria confessed this, and that she knew Greta was alive, was a nice small touch. 

With Owen distracted by his family worries, he probably has not yet noticed that Liam had gone to a Belfast police station and pretended to be him, so he could get an order signed to dig up around Greta’s old high school and look for Charles’s body. Saoirse’s habit of putting incidents in her personal life into the scripts of her show has now come back to bite her. When Liam asked for a copy of the scripts – and he was presumably given them because Seb and the others at production thought he was a consultant – he found what he was looking for. A yet to be shot scene (which meant it was written fairly recently) involved a group of students burying a body on school grounds. 

We will get to the repercussions of Saoirse’s decision-making here later, but first, their reunion. Saoirse, Robyn, and Dara headed to the police station after escaping the lighthouse because they wanted to report Liam’s death. Only, Liam was very much alive, and was there with Andrew. The group ended up in an interrogation room, where Saoirse honestly told Liam about the tape, where they found it, and that they were simply desperate to find out what happened to Greta. Liam asked them if they knew Greta was adopted (no) and whether they had seen her birth mother before (also no). Robyn resented being interrogated and was just about to tell Liam Greta was alive when Saoirse cut her off. 

Alone together outside, after having given Saoirse his jacket, Liam mentioned how she would put bits and pieces of real life into her scripts. He gently told her that if there was something she has not told him yet, she ought to tell him now. He was already trying to tell Saoirse that he knew, he figured out their secret from her own show’s script, but Saoirse did not get it, not until she walked back inside and realised that the policeman at the reception thought Liam was Inspector Owen O’Neill, and that Liam had proposed to excavate the school grounds.

Saoirse got Robyn and Dara out of there, but she could not quite stop herself from lying. She made no mention of her script and said that perhaps Liam got the idea from one of Charles’s notebooks that Andrew had. Robyn wanted to tell Liam that Greta was dead, but Saoirse insisted they needed to prove that, else, they would not be believed. Maybe. Or maybe, Saoirse was just not quite ready to let this story go.

Saoirse hurriedly left in a cab after telling her friends to meet in an hour. She headed to the studio, where she interrupted a writer’s room meeting, ripped out the page about the girls burying a body at school, told Seb to come up with a new idea, then left again. Meanwhile, Robyn and Dara headed to Robyn’s house, where Dara’s mother and sister were already waiting. No one had been able to reach the three of them for days, and everyone, including Saoirse’s parents (who would arrive later) was worried.

Robyn was still in investigation mode. She asked Dara for the phone number they found at the lighthouse and called it. It was how they found out it was a nursing home where Nora O’Hara lived, and that Greta was on her way there. 

It was a long drive to the nursing home, and the girls ended up stopping at a gas station to ask for a hotel. The guy was not particularly nice to them, and he noticed not only that Saoirse wore a policeman’s jacket, but that when she tried to pay with a card, she accidentally brought out Liam’s ID. He later called a local police station, which was how Liam found Saoirse again.

Before all that, however, the girls checked in to a motel run by a guy named Norman. They asked about Heaven’s Veil, and he confirmed it was still a long way out. He also said that no one has lived there for decades, since a group of kids died in a church fire. 

The girls gathered in Saoirse’s room and made good progress in their investigation. They figured out what since Caille Neamh meant Heaven’s Veil, the name of the author of the book The Doll Complex, Greta Ganchaille, meant Greta Unveilled, their confirmation that the book was about Greta. It was likely written by Margo, a psychiatrist, who later adopted Greta. Why Margo did this, we have no answer yet. The ‘big bad’ event referred to in the book was likely the church fire Norman mentioned. Jodie had burn marks on her body, which meant that she, and possibly Greta, were both survivors of the fire.

It was whilst they worked that Robyn picked up the torn script sheet and read Saoirse’s latest betrayal. Robyn immediately figured out Liam had seen the script and it was why he wanted to dig up the school grounds. Two decades of carrying that enormous secret, and Saoirse wrote about it in a script for her show. Of course both Robyn and Dara felt betrayed. Robyn’s words were harsh, but just like Dara’s slap when she realised Saoirse manipulated them by sending those red envelopes purportedly from Greta, Saoirse deserved this level of fury. Robyn walked out of the room, and Dara followed her.

Robyn continued to rant in the car with Dara, and in her anger she drove much faster than she should have, until she hit someone. It was so dark that neither she nor Dara even saw who or what it was. When they got out to check, it was the worst news. Lying on the road unmoving was Greta herself.   

Meanwhile Saoirse’s night picked up a little when Liam arrived. Sure, he was mad at her too, and he did not quite buy her story that put most of the blame on Greta (Charles Sampson’s death, the tattoo), especially when he thought Greta was already dead and could not defend herself. Saoirse finally told him what she stopped Robyn from telling him earlier, that Greta was alive, that it was Jodie Pryor’s body that was cremated. Liam could not quite decide what to do with all this information, so they ended up kissing and sleeping together. Yes, I am choosing this time to remind you all that Saoirse is engaged to Seb. 

The penultimate episode of a season is usually the episode with the answers, and we got plenty of answers here – about what happened on the day Jodie died, about the secret organisation Booker belonged to, about the traumatic event that hovered over Greta. Yet, the episode flew by quickly without feeling hobbled by all the reveals. The one false note for me was Robyn hitting Greta on a dark road, but I’ll reserve further comment on that in the finale. For now, what we have is a strong, packed episode that laid the groundwork for some things that could be explored in a future season. I hope they get it.  

Rating: A-

Strays

🚐I’m sorry for the gaps in between posting these recaps. I’ve been struggling more than usual with my health. Thank you for your patience!

🚐Whilst we saw what happened the day Jodie died, I feel like the question of Greta remained. Was it an accident? Did at least a part of her wanted Jodie dead, to finally be free of her? Let’s see if we get more information in the finale. 

🚐Feeney’s pink car is awesome and I hope Booker lets her keep it. 

🚐Booker scolded Feeney for leaving a landline connected, and Feeney said she didn’t know what it was. Hahahaha. 

🚐Feeney also objected to Rossa's decree about killing Greta, which I thought was notable because Feeney was young and could not have been a member of this organisation for very long, but she spoke out anyway.

🚐Since Booker mentioned Margo helped her in a professional capacity, does this mean Booker used to be Margo's patient?

🚐Andrew asked Liam what made him move to Knockdara, and if something happened whilst he was working in Dublin. Liam simply said that he would make an excellent journalist. Owen had similarly alluded to something that made Liam move outside of helping his uncle. Something to explore in a second season, perhaps?

🚐According to Saoirse, Margo’s book about Greta was about making the big bad seem distant and dreamlike, and to disassociate from it. 

Episode Title: Outlaws, Liars, and Fallen Angels

Episode Writer: Lisa McGee

Episode Director: Rachna Suri

Original Air Date: February 12, 2026

You can view Recap Lab’s full coverage of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast via this link.

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