The first 5-6 Episodes of the Season were actually OK, but the ending, and especially Episode 8 were a hot mess. Honestly, it is some of the worst writing I have ever seen in this series.
I can buy Lucas having a dark past, and even having done bad things which he was ashamed of and wanted to keep under wraps. That's credible, considering what has been established of his character in Seasons 7-8. I mean in the first couple of episodes of Season 7 it was seriously believed he could be a Russian double agent.
What we got instead was a hatchet job. Lucas character, arc, personality, experiences, everything about him was turned on his head, and he had no motivation for any of it.
So he wanted to be with Maya. OK, yet why not be with her as Lucas? He was proud of his stellar career in "5" and that would have provided a logical basis for his no longer using his birth name, and even his spell in prison. Just tell her from the start. She's have respected it and understood.
Instead he just came over as a slightly obsessed stalker who lied to his supposed soulmate for no reason.
There were plot holes one could drive a land rover through, and numerous inconsistencies. Just for example, in Episode 2 Lucas finds that MI-5 have a file on Vaughan which.is so senstiive that only the peopel at the top can access it.
That's should be a neon sign that this guy is not some random unknown conman. He's either considered to be dangerous.... or he's some high level "asset", or informatant.
Yet this detail is developed or mentioned again when it should have been key to the story. Surely if Vaughan was as thick as theives with the "Service", they'd have got suspicious about his sudden disappearance shortly after a bombing at at a British Embassy 15 years earlier, and then mysterious reapparance offering intel on said bombing? I'd have called him a liability that they'd rather be shot of, especially once they learned he was trying to blackmail one of their own, but maybe I'm overthinking this.
Even form a narrative standpoint, we have to reason to accept what Vaughan says at the end of Episode 7. He's not a trustworthy narrator or a reliable source. What he said could easily have just been one more lie. A final revenge before his demise.
The way that Lucas changed at the flick of a switch after Vaughan's death was the ridiculous "plot twist" ever. I mean again, I understand having something to hide, but people living a lie don't transform into an entirely different person in the space of a few minutes.
Unless Lucas was some kind of patholgical pyschopath and the whole Lucas North thing was soem kind of act, in which case poeple would have noticed, or he's got some form of schitzophrenia there's no explanation for him going from the flawed but brave, loyal and compassionate person we came to know and love in the first two Seasons, to a selfish and violent coward who would sell out his country at the drop of a hat.
In fact, Lucas was the last person you would expect. The idea that a person who didn't crack even after years of torture just going off like that because of - what? Someone manipulated him? Threatened his girlfriend? Nope not buying it.
His actions after Maya's death are even more inexplicable. Why even go on with the handover? How come Harry doesn't suffer some penalty for treason if handing over the file was such a henious act? Why do none of the team question his decision to exchange the file for Ruth, and how on earth are they so gullible on the "genetic weapon" thing.
PTSD and truama don't make people do that. This is the man who would place himself in front of armed terrorists to protect teenage girls. Who once singlehandedly faced off against a group of 6 armed Russian operatives just to buy Ros and Connie a little extra time to diffuse a bomb, and tried to run back into a building that was about to explode to save his boss.
Nor does "being bad" provide an adequate explanation for the total change in his character. I mean Harry, who is meant to be the moral compass of the whole series, is hardly the most squeaky clean. He gets away with outright murder several times in fact. Killing that Russian Ambassador wasn't for "Queen and Country", it was revenge.
Lucas final death is arguably the most ignomious in the entire series. Snivelling on top of a building because his girlfriend died and he didn't want to go back to prison? Had they literally forgotten the "survived 8 years of torture and solitary confinement in a Russian prison camp" bit?
Didn't get that memo? C'mon. Our Lucas came through that. Not unscatched, I grant you, but the idea that he'd be terrified of a cushy British prison was beyond absurd. The scene also makes Harry look like a hypocrite and a King size asshole. He presumes to lecture a despairing Lucas on why he allowed his girlfriend to be killed in tha name of duty to Queen and Country, when he'd handed over state secrets to save his lover. Nor was it the first time he'd compromised for personal reasons.
Nope. Lucas deserved either to go out in his epic, badass, "devil may care" way saving the day (and with a cheeky quip or two), or for there to be some ambiguity over what happened to him. To allow for the possibility of a later return, which Richard Armitage seemed to be keen on.
Even Connie James, who betrayed her country for years, and brutally murdered a fellow spy to avoid discovery was given a dignified exit with a chance to redeem herself. There was no reason whatsoever Lucas or John or whatever his name was could not have had the same.
What makes it worse is that the programme makers treated Lucas as shabbily after death as they do before. In Season 10 there's no memorial for him, Harry has no clue why we wanted him on top pf a building and they act as if he never existed. As if all the good he did was entirely meaningless and worthless.
Its kind of no wonder the show submarined with Series 10. That and the lackluster plots, repetitive storylines and the almost total lack of developed characters one could care about. Ruth was really the only one left, and look what they did to her.
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