Ludwig Ending Explained: the Sinclair Case, DI Neville, & Cracking James’ Code
Already binged all six episodes of BBC One’s Ludwig but have questions? Let’s unpack the twists. Finale spoilers ahead!
Warning: contains MAJOR finale spoilers for Ludwig.
Talk about perfect casting. If a whole laboratory of boffins had worked day and night to engineer the perfect role for David Mitchell (the UK’s official-Stephen-Fry-in-waiting), they couldn’t have trumped Ludwig. Sardonic, clever, verging on the misanthropic yet charmingly British, the part of puzzle-setter John Taylor in the BBC’s cosy crime series fits Mitchell like an extremely well-fitting glove.
In the series, John’s puzzle-solving skills also turn out to be a very good fit for solving crimes. Disguised as his identical twin police detective brother James, John quickly solves six murders without really trying, while actually trying to discover what led to James’ disappearance. With spoilers, let’s dig into what we know about that by the finale, from the Sinclair cover-up and police corruption, to how John finally cracked James’ code.
The Sinclair Case and Police Corruption
Before his disappearance, James was investigating a police cover-up into the murder of a conspiracy theory blogger named Roger Sinclair. James and his former partner DI Neville (played by Karl Pilkington in a role that will presumably grow if there’s a second series) were first on the scene in the Sinclair case and filed a report noting that the murder looked like a professional ‘hit’. Their original report vanished and a new, false one was signed off by Chief Constable Ziegler (Ralph Ineson) that described the murder as a burglary gone wrong, and incriminated a small-time thief who was sent to prison. That thief, whose mother insisted was innocent and had an alibi for the time of the murder, later died in prison, reportedly having taken his own life. John and Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) suspect that the thief was in fact murdered as part of the Sinclair cover-up.
Sinclair was a client of Holly Pinder (Sophie Willan), the Cambridge police HQ’s computer whizz, who had a side line in leaking police information to the press. He paid her for stories that he published on his blog, most of which were nonsense, but one of which was real and must have been extremely incriminating for somebody in the police service. The attempted cover-up of that one true story, whatever it was, got Sinclair and the thief killed, sent DI Neville into hiding with his family, and is the reason that James disappeared. What was the story? That’s for James, Lucy and Henry (Dylan Hughes) to find out.
James’ Storage Unit and Cracking the Code
James’ orange wallpaper-covered notebook contained his coded notes on the Sinclair investigation, but was the code was uncrackable without the source of the cipher James had used to encode it, even for puzzle-setter Ludwig. Fearing that his phone calls were being monitored, James left another coded message on John’s ancient mobile phone. He told him that he hadn’t disappeared due to the case but had simply followed in their father’s footsteps and walked out on his family. “I’m the bowerbird,” he repeated. John realised that was a hint towards the illustrated book about birds that the twins had owned as children, and which James had passed on to his son Henry. The entry for the bowerbird was the cipher James had used to encode the notebook. Once deciphered, it led James and co. to a storage unit.
There, they discovered hundreds of boxes of files, which had been taken from Sinclair’s (see above) house after his murder. The evidence had gone missing while being transported – as part of the cover-up, John initially assumed, but it turned out that James had intercepted them and was hiding them at his secret storage unit. Somewhere in Sinclair’s boxes was the incriminating story that this whole police cover-up is trying to keep quiet. Now, they just have to sift through it all and find out what it is.
Where is James?
Nearby. From a short distance away, he watched John, Lucy and Henry discover the storage unit, but didn’t approach them, presumably for their own safety. James and DI Neville fear for their lives due to their investigation into the Sinclair cover-up, and so have gone to ground. What doesn’t make sense is that whoever is the threat to James, didn’t target John the whole time that he was pretending to be James – unless they knew all along that it was an impersonation?
Who killed Holly Pinder?
It wasn’t Lucy. Holly was killed by the man pretending to be her boyfriend, who was actually her co-conspirator in the blackmail and extortion business they were running. In an extreme coincidence, he discovered that Holly had been ripping him off at the exact time that she’d invited Lucy over to blackmail her about the whole John-pretending-to-be-James business. He slit Holly’s throat, there was a switcheroo with the almost identical kitchen knife that (also in an extreme coincidence) Lucy had brought with her to Holly’s, and Lucy was seemingly left red-handed.
Holly was the one taking surveillance photographs of John at home at night, and had worked out that he was really James’ identical twin. She tested her theory by falsely telling John that she and James had kissed at the work Christmas party, just to see his reaction. When he went along with it, she knew that he couldn’t be James because they had never kissed. Holly was planning to add Lucy and James to her list of blackmail victims, which is why she invited Lucy to her flat on the night she was killed.
Who Can We Trust?
Good question. Nobody? It seems as though DS Finch (Izuka Hoyle) and DC Evans (Gerran Howell) are legit, and DCS Carol Shaw (Dorothy Atkinson) certainly gave a good impression of being a good guy in the finale, so let’s discount all of them for the moment.
DI Carter (Dipo Ola) also looks legit, but there’s still something fishy about his recruitment, and his backstory. He was drafted in by Chief Constable Ziegler to replace DI Neville, and says that he was once engaged to Ziegler’s dead daughter, which explains their cosy chats and his having been fast-tracked. Perhaps that’s true, but currently Ziegler looks guiltier than a Labrador Retriever standing greasy-mouthed over an empty turkey tin at Christmas. He was photographed outside the Sinclair house after the murder, and is definitely involved in this cover-up in some way.
Did Carter and Shaw put together that hasty consultant contract for John because they’re true blue and admire his work, or do they want to keep him close for more sinister reasons? Or could DI Carter be a plant from a Line of Duty-style anti-corruption unit, and on John and James’ side for that reason? Series two, if one is confirmed, will tell.
What Next for Series Two?
If there is a second series, expect more case-of-the-week puzzle solving for John, whose identity is now out in the open and who no longer has to wear contacts and drink tea with sugar. John didn’t have to go to prison for impersonating a police officer, and all the murders he solved didn’t have to be thrown out of court because Carter and Shaw helped to cover it up. They had John sign James’ resignation letter dated a few weeks after he left, so all the cases John solved were officially solved by James.
As a “lateral thinking consultant” for the Cambridgeshire police, John can now legitimately continue his “isn’t it obvious?” casework while continuing the search for his brother, unravelling the Sinclair cover-up, and living at home with Lucy and Henry.
All episodes of Ludwig are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer in the UK.
Written by
Louisa Mellor is the Den of Geek UK TV Editor. She has written about TV, film and books for Den of Geek since 2010, and for…