Fleabag series 2, BBC review, episode 6 ★★★★★

‘I can’t believe you just did that.’ In the first moments of the last episode, ever, of Fleabag, this is what she says. Throughout this transcendental second series, Phoebe Waller-Bridge has made her audience think that, too. With every speech, twist, flinch, glance, shrug, shiver – we can’t believe so much of what’s been created, in a world so specifically hers, but that’s touched so much of ours. The answer to her admission? ‘I know.’ This is the beginning of the end, nobody can deny it.

Goodbye hurts the most when you know the people saying it have every right to move on, because they’re finally ready. Fleabag was in a completely different place when we first met. We were sold a witty, cynical portrait of a 21st-century woman, who’d been through the wars and offered all her ugly feelings for us to quote, repackage and hashtag into oblivion.

Where series two has been gently teasing a maturation – no fewer jokes, but so many more earnest confessions – the finale offers everyone absolute forgiveness. Those who are bad, selfish, hurting and longing all get to break fully to reach the end of their respective stories. The idea of a 'happy ending' seems reductive, too superficial to be satisfactory – but the time for violent and ‘you weren’t expecting that!’ twists is long gone. This goodbye is so affecting because it is dripping with love.

In films, books, songs and TV series – everything gravitates towards love. It builds an overflowing reservoir of quotable speeches and universalised feelings, convincing and reassuring us that love, always, is all around us.

The Priest adds his own entry to the canon of searing speeches about love. His is sad, fearful and so aware of its painful implications. Martin knows about love, too, even if he’s still not, and never will be, a person who is fully able to give or receive it. Dad finally finds his own words as well, and brings the importance of Fleabag’s mother back into focus at the same time.

From the very beginning, Claire masterfully captured the strain of it all: the war between a need to protect oneself from irreparable emotional pain and the desire to let that feeling soar – the feeling of fantastical butterflies and the starry-eyed adrenaline of chasing someone through an airport to taste that high, while you can.

Fleabag isn’t weaker for giving herself to love. Tackling the impossibly slippery sensation in such a thorough, sensitive and nonjudgemental way, while still capturing its incandescence, is a success that very few storytellers achieve. Phoebe Waller-Bridge has shown strength and bravery. She’s never lost the unapologetic imperfectness we fell for, but she’s forgiven the parts that might have wanted to dismiss or laugh off those feelings before.

As she walks away, she checks we’re still there a couple of times. Is it to make sure we’re still looking out for her? Or to let us know she really can, and will, carry on without us? Maybe we just want to check she’ll get home safe. Or perhaps we all still need the confidence in her knowing, glowing glare, to accept that we can live with the pain of feeling love, too.

Catch up with our reviews of every episode of Fleabag series 2 here