Rivals is the best it’s ever been – but I’m disappointed by one decision. Warning: spoilers ahead for Rivals season 2 episode 6. The latest episode of Rivals left me shell-shocked. Reactions came in thick and fast on social media as soon as it came out on Friday morning, with fans hailing it as a ‘masterpiece’ and saying it was one of the best instalments so far. I agreed wholeheartedly. However, despite being bowled over by Claire Rushbrook’s heartbreakingly stunning performance as Monica – the long-suffering and gracious wife of David Tennant’s Lord Tony Baddingham – I couldn’t ignore how disheartened the plot made me feel.
A Devastating Confrontation
The sixth episode of season two saw Monica finally confront Tony over his devious ways, after discovering that he’s sleeping with Maud O’Hara (Victoria Smurfit). Revenge was on the verge of tasting oh so sweet… until Monica’s doomed fate shattered our hopes. It wasn’t just Tony’s cheating that made Monica feel betrayed, as his years of infidelity had been no secret. This treachery cut even deeper because Monica regarded Maud as a friend, and Tony used Maud as a ploy to get revenge on his nemesis, Declan (Aidan Turner). Not only that, but she’d been the one to suggest that Tony should hire Maud to play the lead of Corinium’s hugely popular and raunchy TV show, Four Men Went To Mow, after they watched her perform in a play in London. She had no idea that they would go behind her back and start sleeping together, as, despite Tony’s devious ways, even she didn’t consider that he’d go that far. But the nude photos revealing their brazen affair shook her to her core.
A Painful Revelation
She initially tears the photos up and throws them in the fire, suggesting to her son Archie (Louis Landau) and Maud’s daughter Caitlin (Catriona Chandler) that she’s planning on brushing the indiscretion under the carpet. But when Archie yells at Tony over the dinner table about the affair, it’s too much for Monica to bear, and she races out of the house. Monica arrives at the home of Lizzie Vereker (Katherine Parkinson) in her slippers, clearly out of sorts after wading through the terrible storm blustering across the county of Rutshire. As the two women sit down for a hot drink, Monica openly asks Lizzie about her affair with Freddie (Danny Dyer), questioning if she’ll end her marriage to James (Oliver Chris) to be with her lover. ‘Is he a good husband?’ Monica asks. ‘Hardly ever,’ Lizzie replies candidly. ‘Why do we stay, though?’ Monica continues, her eyes brimming with sadness. ‘With these men who aren’t nice to us at all. Why can’t we find the courage to change things? ‘I thought that I’d get braver with age, that at some point I’d live like blazes. But I’m just as timid now as when I was a girl.’ Monica reveals to Lizzie how there was someone in her past whom she loved before Tony, but she wasn’t ‘allowed’ to love them, and they weren’t ‘allowed’ to love her. ‘And neither of us ever found the courage to break the mould.’
Missed Potential for a Happy Ending
Earlier on in the season, it was revealed that Monica had history with musician Dame Enid Spink (Selina Griffiths), the implication being that they had a romance in the past, and still harbour feelings for one another. Many of us watching desperately wanted Monica to have her happy ending with Enid, when she tells Tony that she’s going to divorce him. But instead, when she ventures back out into the storm (which was inspired by The Great Storm of 1987), she dies when a tree falls on her car. Monica’s death gave me the gut punch that I’m sure the writers intended. However, beyond me simply being upset about her demise and distraught that we wouldn’t witness her exact vengeance against Tony, it also made me think immediately of the ‘Kill Your Gays’ TV trope.
The 'Bury Your Gays' Trope
For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, the ‘Kill Your Gays’ trope, or the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope, is a common theme in television when LGBT+ characters are killed off unnecessarily, and more frequently than straight characters. Examples from recent years include Villanelle (Jodie Comer) in Killing Eve, and Teddy (Diego Calva) in the second season of The Night Manager. It happens all too often, and needlessly so. Monica’s death can also be seen as an example of ‘fridging’, a storytelling device that’s used when a female character is killed in order to propel a male character’s narrative. There’s no doubt that Tony will be heavily impacted by the loss of his wife, suffering from grief while also seeking out revenge against his enemies. ‘Tony has lost the person who he loves in his own way. It is his own fault, and he has lost his moral compass. Going forward, he’s lost all his morality. We thought Tony was bad before. He gets even worse, and that ups the stakes for the show,’ producer Dominic told Entertainment Weekly.
A Controversial Creative Choice
Did Monica need to die so that the extent of Tony’s savagery could be unleashed? I don’t think so. Could Monica have left Tony and finally found her own pocket of happiness with Enid? Yes, after her many years of having to put up with an awful husband, it was the least that she deserved. There is hope among Rivals fans that Monica might not really be dead, despite Rupert (Alex Hassell) tearfully telling Tony face-to-face that he found her body in the car. Would Monica really have faked her own death, and would Rupert have been ok to go along with the ruse? I personally don’t think so. The way that the creative brains behind Rivals have been speaking about Monica’s death (with executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins telling TV Insider that the decision wasn’t taken ‘lightly’) makes it sound to me that she is, devastatingly, deceased (although I’d be very happy to be proven wrong when the next batch of episodes premieres in November). This episode of Rivals might not have been as impactful without Monica’s death, it’s true. But keeping her alive and allowing her to have a beautiful gay relationship that she’d previously been barred from could have been groundbreaking in a far more powerful way. Rivals is available to stream on Disney Plus, with the second half of season 2 coming this November.
