Yahoo News Dublin Murders' [SPOILER] moment connects to creepy real-life story
Note: this article contains spoilers for episode one of Dublin Murders.
Dublin Murders, the BBC adaption of two of Tana French's best-selling crime novels, premiered on Monday (October 14).
At first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's just the latest in a string of crime dramas, but actually there's a lot more at play in Sarah Phelps' (The ABC Murders) new project.
Detectives Cassie Maddox (Sarah Greene) and Rob Reilly (Killian Scott) are landed with a case that dredges up memories and emotions from a mystery that still plagues the local residents outside of Ireland's capital.
Related: Dublin Murders star says *that* shocking scene was handled "sensitively"
When 13-year-old Katy is discovered dead in the woods by a pair of student archeologists, detectives Maddox and Reilly are called to assess the scene.
"Is this something to do with the others? Back in the '80s?" one of the forensic team asks them, before a flashback to the show's past timeline offers a glimpse at a group of young children entering that same spot.
It is later revealed that, in 1985, three children – Jamie, Peter and Adam – entered the woodland and only one made it out. No bodies were recovered and, at least by the end of episode one, nobody knows what happened to the two missing children.
Maddox and Reilly have secrets, too. The former has a battle with another former case bubbling under the surface, having been called to court to testify for witness protection and having someone presumably linked to the convicted man breaking into her flat. Rob, meanwhile, has an unconventional relationship with his landlord and a dark link to the past that only surfaces at the end of episode one.
Following some eerie clothes-smelling in the evidence-filled police basement, it becomes clear that Rob is Adam, the only child to survive the '85 mystery.
It seems as though fellow Detective Maddox is also in on his secret.
"This isn't for us. We can't do this, not this one," she tells Rob, after they start work on the latest child murder and deliver the devastating news to Katy's family.
"You know why you can't do it," she says directly to Rob.
Not only have the police been asked to set about reinvestigating possible links to the unsolved '85 disappearances, but local residents seem to be drawing comparisons too.
Aside from Rob's conflict of interest, one other thing seems clear: there's a lot more to this town than a straight murder mystery. With some almost-supernatural elements pushing their way through, we're left wondering what it all might mean.
During Katy's post-mortem, it is decided that she would have been carried into the woods after her death, implying that she would have been placed in the woods – and more specifically, on the 'altar' – for a reason.
Dublin Murders creator Sarah Phelps recently revealed that she had been heavily inspired by a real-life story she once saw on Countryfile (yes, really).
The BBC show visited Northern Ireland for that particular episode, and they interviewed a man who had been protesting against a motorway because it would have meant destroying a Hawthorn tree.
Phelps described this tree as "magic", and said that the man's argument had centred on the belief that "if you cut it down, everything will be disrupted [because] you cannot upset the fates".
What drew Sarah to this story, she explained, was that "he won [his protest] because at some deep, metaphysical level every person involved [must have] woken up at 4am and thought 'What if he's right? What if you cut down that tree and all hell breaks loose?'"
Superstition, after all, is embedded in all of our lives in one way or another, whether we say "touch wood" so as not to jinx ourselves, or avoid walking under ladders to stay away from bad luck.
This resonance of belief or mythology has undoubtedly crept into Sarah's script, but what if the story of the Hawthorn tree actually has deeper roots for the show's plot?
Katy's parents were said to have been campaigning for the move of a motorway, according to one conversation between the detectives. And what if that 'altar' was, in fact, a tree stump, or perhaps the site where a Hawthorn tree once stood?
One of the forensic team points out that the archaeologists who found the child's body had been digging around the area because "all this is going to be flattened for the new motorway".
In fact, Adam (the boy that made it out of the woods in '85) was discovered, covered in blood, terrified, clutching A TREE.
The wood seems to be a place of mysticism, fuelled further by the big wolf that wandered through the foliage and right into Rob's bedroom while he was asleep. His dream and the real world collided for a moment, but then he was jolted awake by falling off the bed and dislocating his shoulder.
We've been left with a lot of questions, that's for sure.
Dublin Murders continues tomorrow (October 15) at 9pm on BBC One.
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