Harlots season 3 review: The series’ most shocking episode to date changes everything

The most shocking episode of Harlots to date will leave you reeling, and nothing on this show will ever be the same again.

Margaret Wells returns to London, and it’s not even close to the most shocking thing that occurs in the third episode of Harlots season 3, an installment full of tension and secrets with an ending that has likely changed the show forever.

Yes, just three episodes into the new season, Margaret Wells returns to Harlots, apparently having caught the quickest boat to America, worked as an indentured servant and managed to marry a well-off Irish-American man in record time. Her new husband Jonas seems kind, is genuinely fond of her and appears largely understanding of the life she led before she met him – for all its flaws. But, he also doesn’t exactly know about the existence of Will or her almost-marriage from her life before, so it’s not clear entirely what she told him beyond the fact that she’s got two daughters and is apparently a wanted woman in London who has to hide her face around town.

Charlotte, Lucy and the rest of the family are, naturally, both happy and relieved to see Margaret again. And their happy reunions are sweet to watch. Yet, there’s an uncomfortable tension amongst all the Wellses, which makes a certain amount of sense when you consider that Charlotte, Lucy, Will and even Nancy had all rearranged their lives to work without Margaret in them, and accustomed themselves to the idea that they would likely never see her again. Sure, they missed her. But life went on.

While their mother was gone, Charlotte and Lucy discovered a certain amount of freedom and power in living their own lives on their own terms. They both seem reluctant to give that up now, even for the promise of a new life of family togetherness in America. Will, for his part, is put out that Margaret broke her long-held vow never to marry, and that she’s encouraging him and Jacob to tag along to a country where they’ll have to pretend to be servants in the best possible scenario, or could get taken up into slavery in the worst.

Margaret, of course, is Margaret, and thinks of few perspectives other than her own. (Of course the idea that her family might have other desires than coming back with her to America never occurred to her, not really. She is who she is, in the end.) Though how she planned to balance both her old family and her new one is anyone’s guess. And something to which will sadly never find out the answer.

Because in this episode’s final moments, Charlotte is killed, shoved over a balcony railing by Hal Pincher during an argument with his brother. Her death is a horrible accident; yet also an event that connects her mother, her poorly chosen fling Isaac, his enraged brother, and Margaret’s new husband in a web of horror that will likely drive the rest of the season.

Jonas, you see, was preparing to sell some land in America to Isaac and Hal. The Pincher brothers, at Emily Lacey’s urging, are looking to diversify their financial portfolio, if you will, and engage in some land speculation. Unfortunately, Margaret knows this, and once she discovers Isaac Pincher set the fire that burned down the house on Greek Street, she tells her husband not to sell to them because they’re terrible people. (That part, at least, does appear to be true!) Hal blames the loss of the deal on Isaac, insisting that he told his new bedmate about the deal, and that Charlotte subsequently ruined it in revenge for the fire.

In short: Everything in the world of Harlots is a huge mess right now, and that’s before we get to the part where Charlotte Wells is dead.

It seems almost impossible to imagine Harlots without Charlotte. (And without star Jessica Brown Findlay.) From the very beginning, she’s been one of the cogs around which every story has turned – struggling to find her own identity in the cracks of the feud between Margaret and Lydia, the two women that made her. She has been London’s premier harlot; a capable businesswoman in her own right; a prisoner; a schemer; a lover and a friend. Charlotte contains multitudes, and has often served as the glue that holds much of the rest of the series together. And her rise as the new proprietress of Greek Street offered a forward-looking future for Harlots – one focused on its younger generation, rather than the years-long feuds between the Wells and Quigley houses.

Not so much anymore. Now, Charlotte is gone, and everything feels lost. Stories seem fractured, characters are suddenly cut adrift from the main narrative. Will the rest of season 3 be focused on Margaret’s attempts at revenge? On Lucy’s inevitable grief? On…whatever will become of Lady Fitz now? (Does she even have a true place in this show without Charlotte?) On the obvious rift that will sprout between the Pincher brothers?

(On some level, I do hate that Charlotte’s death will doubtless drive so much story for the men that are responsible for it, but I trust the folks behind Harlots to handle this twist sensitively, in the end. They’ve earned the benefit of the doubt on that score.)

And then there’s Lydia and Kate. It seems likely that the parallels the series has been drawing between Charlotte and Lydia’s new protégé were not an accident, particularly if the final moments between the two are any indication. Charlotte’s last breaths on Earth are spent staring meaningfully into the eyes of this girl she just met, who seems so much like Charlotte was so long ago – young, trusting and emotionally bound up in Lydia. Will Kate make different choices? Will she inherit Charlotte’s legacy somehow? Or will Lucy Wells become the character that fills her sister’s place in Harlots’ larger story?

New episodes of Harlots stream Wednesdays on Hulu.