While rewatching season seven of Spooks recently, this scene from episode 7.8 involving Lucas North following the explosion that killed Connie Jones, gave me pause for thought. Given what we NOW know about Lucas North (should you choose to accept that it wasn’t just all a very, VERY bad dream!), I couldn’t help but interpret this moment in a slightly different light. When Lucas becomes emotional here, we assume it is due to having just been told that Connie was responsible for selling him out to the Russians, leading to his eight year long incarceration.

For those of us who adored Lucas and are holding out (in vain) for some kind of redemption for John, an additional interpretation could be this – while Connie’s revelation no doubt contributed to him momentarily coming undone, I wonder whether being so close to the explosion in the underground had an affect as well. With the strong force of its blast and all that dust raining down on him, surely it must have reminded him about the bomb that he was responsible for and witnessed in Dakar. Was the emotion he displayed also a sign of regret? Of trauma related to the senseless destruction of his own creation? (obviously I’m not speaking literally here in the sense that Richard Armitage or the writers knew that Lucas would become John, but strictly from the point of view of the fictitious world of Spooks).

Just as Mulubinba searched for the good in Guy of Gisborne of Robin Hood, by virtue of my affection for Lucas North, I am condemned to seek the good in his true self, John Bateman. Why he saw it fit to take innocent lives in Dakar we will never know, but thanks to an ability for reading too much into things, I hope that this moment can now be reinterpreted as a meager expression of John’s remorse. Perhaps when he said to Harry that he had endured being tortured by the Russians because he thought he deserved it, he wasn’t lying. A deluded fan girl can only hope!