With the future of several main Harlots characters in jeopardy, is it time to focus on the secondary girls a bit more?
As we head into the season 2 finale of Harlots, there are a lot of outstanding questions that need to be answered. The biggest is obviously what will happen to Margaret. Will she truly be transported to a new life in America? Will anyone from her family find out she’s still alive? And what will Harlots look like if it does send one of its primary leads for an extended — or even permanent hiatus?
The easiest answer is to assume that some miracle will occur, and Margaret will find herself freed. After all, we’ve already seen an extremely aggressive Puritan justice abandon his core beliefs in order to save her from the hangman. It’s more than possible. But… what if that’s not what happens?
Samantha Morton has been one of Harlots primary stars since the series started. And most of Harlots premise is built around her character in one way or another. Her relationships with Charlotte and Lucy still drive much of both girls’ actions today, and her age-old feud with rival bawd Lydia Quigley provides the backbone of the series’ existence. What does this show look like if Margaret’s not around?
On some level, Emily Lacey’s bawd house of exotics and misfits gives us a preview of what Harlots might become: A vehicle for telling the stories of very different types of women who all find themselves turning to sex work to survive. As the series tells us in its opening moments, one in five women in Georgian England sold herself for money. But the thing is, season 2 has been so focused on Margaret’s quest to finally bring down Lydia — and all the means she might use to do so — that it’s kind of forgotten to tell many of those secondary stories.
After Kitty’s death, most of Margaret’s girls who didn’t have the Wells surname became secondary characters at best, and basically wallpaper at worse. Other than Fanny, most viewers would likely be hard-pressed to remember any of their names, and the same pretty much goes for all of Lydia’s girls, except Anne Pettifer. And Harlots, particularly a Harlots that may lose Margaret for some time or possibly forever, needs some drama that isn’t Wells-related. So, it’s time for the show to let us get to know these other girls a bit better, give them real personalities and relationships with one another.
Of course, the main plots will likely remain driven by Charlotte and Lucy, as the elder Wells girl once again targets Lydia as the person responsible for what she believes is her mother’s death, and the younger continues to risk her heart with a psychopath. But while wondering whether Lucy will double down on dating a murderer, we need some other stories to care about, and they all can’t have such overt life or death stakes.
So let us get to know Harriet as more than someone Margaret suspects of chasing her husband.
Show us what drives Margaret’s latest three girls to live in her house.
And maybe give us a look at what motivates someone like Anne Pettifer or any of Lydia’s other still-nameless dolls to choose a luxurious prison over freedom.
The world of Harlots goes beyond Margaret and her family, and it should represent that fact in its storytelling. (Just in case, at least.)
New episodes of Harlots stream Wednesdays on Hulu.