Harlots season 3 finale review: Lines are drawn as a new day dawns

Harlots ties up loose ends in its season 3 finale, setting the series on a whole new path as it gives us the power couple we never really knew we needed.

Harlots Season 3 covered a lot of ground. We said goodbye to multiple fan favorite characters – including two who served as the emotional center of the show for the series’ first two seasons. We said hello to new faces, as the world of sex work in nineteenth-century London expanded to include pimps, molly houses, and even the royal court itself. It’s included violence and death, sacrifice and forgiveness, and the constant struggle to earn a living in a world that doesn’t want to see women succeed.

Season 3 will likely go down as the series’ most controversial to date. And to be fair, it’s easy to understand why some fans are frustrated with this season. Change is always hard. But Harlots has thoroughly dedicated itself to telling the story of this time period and these women with realism and honesty, and that’s not always going to necessarily look the way we’d like. It’s a journey and not always a pleasant one. But, despite that fact, there’s still been something truly gutsy and fearless at the heart of season 3, and that’s the reason this show is so incredibly compelling and watchable.

At the moment, we don’t know if Harlots will return for a fourth season. I surely – obviously – hope it does, because there are absolutely more stories to tell about these characters and the rich world that this show has created. But, that said, this episode feels like the sort of installment that’s hedging its bets a bit, offering a hint at how the story might continue (if it does) while still giving existing viewers a satisfying conclusion to several ongoing plots.

The final shot of season 3 is ridiculously perfect, and an image that brings the series full circle in a way that feels both poetic and inevitable. Lydia Quigley and Lucy Wells, drinking in companionable if occasionally uneasy understanding – complete with matching bawd outfits! – is an image that should stick with fans for a long time, particularly as it feels like a moment this whole series has been building toward all along.

Lydia, who loves Kate enough to let her go, and Lucy, who sees enough of herself in the older woman to stay, are a perfect pair, and likely what both women have been looking for all along. For all her (many, often horrifying) flaws, Lydia has always wanted a daughter to mold in her own image. Charlotte and Kate were perhaps always too kind-hearted and tender to be the heir that Lydia needed, but Lucy…well, Lucy’s the survivor of the Wells family, and she’s grown into a woman willing to make – and live with – her own choices.

Remember, she turned down the opportunity to follow her mother to America and has been busy remaking herself all season long as she figures out what sort of woman she wants to be.

Lydia, who uses Lucy as bait but then murders a man to save her life, contains many of the same innate contradictory qualities as the younger Wells daughter. Lucy has committed plenty of crimes of her own (see: All of Season 2) and Lydia is still self-aware enough to do the right thing, even when she doesn’t necessarily want to.

A big chunk of Season 3 has been about unpacking the monster we’ve always believed Lydia Quigley to be, and through her relationship with Kate, we’ve seen that she does have the capacity to put others before herself. But she also understands the costs – to herself and those she cares about – that come with both the life she’s lived and the person she’s become.

Which is not necessarily someone that people like Charlotte and Kate can keep in their lives.

"“You saved my life. You showed me how to survive. But I won’t live with you again,” Kate says.“I understand.” Lydia replies. “I scare you.”“You don’t scare me,” Lucy chimes in."

Lucy’s declaration that Lydia doesn’t frighten her anymore is actually the final line spoken in the season, a move that shows us just how far both women have come, given that the younger Wells daughter was busy telling anyone who would listen about how dangerous Quigley was just fifty-some minutes ago. Perhaps murdering a man together is enough to make any former enemies fast friends, but it’s hard not to believe that Lucy seems something familiar in Lydia, who appears to understand her more than her own mother ever has.

What a force the two of them will likely become.

Lydia and Lucy aren’t the only two women reclaiming their power this week. Emily Lacey finally realizes she needs to cut her boyfriend Isaac loose after she basically becomes a kidnapper and slave trader in the space of 24 hours, all while holding her hostage in her own home. This probably isn’t a surprising twist to most viewers – we’ve all known that Hal was bad news ever since Charlotte’s death. But it’s such a relief to finally see Emily take her life into her own hands once more – even though the decision to have him suddenly pressed into the Royal Navy feels like a convenient way out of a dangerously fraught plot.

That said, the heart of this twist isn’t the arrival of a half dozen strapping sailors to carry away Emily’s problems, it’s the part where she offers herself up to Hal to save Nancy and her friends, and keep more blood from being spilled. It’s atonement, in a way, and it feels like an important step forward for her, as a character.

Emily has had a lot of fresh starts over the years, from running her own “exotics” house to living large as Charles Quigley’s (fake) pregnant girlfriend. But this is perhaps the first time the shift in her circumstances feels entirely on her own terms, and as though her future is fully in her own hands. Can she become a better person as a result?

Lydia Quigley has. (Kind of.) Which sort of means anything’s possible.

All three seasons of Harlots are available to stream on Hulu.