‘Bad Sisters’ Creator Sharon Horgan on the True Villain of Season 2 and Season 3 Possibilities

[This story contains major spoilers from Bad Sisters season one and the final episodes of season two]

Bad Sisters creator Sharon Horgan had what she calls “a germ of an idea” for the second season of the Apple+ series while in the midst of shooting season one. 

That idea, as the final episodes of the second season reveal, revolved around Ian Reilly (Owen McDonnell), Grace’s ex-husband, and the idea that while Grace (Anne-Marie Duff) got some happiness after killing her cruel first husband, she couldn’t escape her own tragic cycle. 

“Basically, I had that when I was on set for the first season, the sort of lightning striking twice idea and how vulnerable women like that who have been through an abusive relationship, don’t necessarily walk into a healthy one. They’re kind of open and vulnerable to people taking advantage,” Horgan tells The Hollywood Reporter. 

In the season finale, the show finally reveals what happened between Grace and Ian after she reveals she killed her first husband. Reilly runs off — during which time Grace finds out he has another wife, family and name — and returns to try to blackmail Grace for keeping her secret. 

However, Grace refuses to hand over the money and instead drives off and calls Eva, played by Horgan, asking for help with her situation. Immediately afterward, however, she gets into a fatal car accident. 

“It’s such a brilliant moment of drama, isn’t it? Because it’s just too late. She’s just found some kernel of strength and integrity. For the first time since the murder, she’s found that weird inner resolve that she had before, but this time, it isn’t an evil action, it’s a good action, and she won’t succumb, and so she reaches out, but sadly, it’s too late,” said Duff.

As the sisters confront Reilly over his actions, he reveals his true inner character, that of a conman and a corrupt former police officer, and refuses to give back the money he’s stolen from Grace’s daughter Blainaid. Just as he goes to leave, however, he’s hit in the head by Angelica, who says she doesn’t like what he had been saying about Grace, and appears to die. 

In that moment, Angelica, played by Fiona Shaw, becomes somewhat of an ally for the sisters (though she also causes them the headache of having to deal with the body), after they had initially, and wrongfully, viewed her as a villain. 

“They lost their minds. They lost their sister. And they were looking in the wrong place. All the way through they were, they were looking for somewhere to take their hurt out and that’s where it landed. Also, she is a wagon,” Horgan said. 

To create the character of Angelica, Horgan and executive producer Dearbhla Walsh said they drew inspiration from aunts, neighbors they knew growing up, self-proclaimed do-gooders, and “anyone who walks around with a big set of keys.” 

Shaw said she viewed Angelica as someone who is self-obsessed, feels a great sense of ownership over friendships and is overall “the opposite of cool.” But while Angelica was initially set up as the villain (and she does questionably blackmail Ursula for money to fix a window at the community center), Shaw said she believes Angelica is a victim as much as a perpetrator, as she was treated cruelly by the Garvey sisters. 

“It’s that somebody is being thrown a curveball by befriending somebody who doesn’t really want to be her friend, and then something terrible happens to them, and then she tries to understand and get close to a family who don’t want to, so a lot of it is about people rejecting Angelica, which makes her maybe madder,” Shaw said. 

Angelica was the red herring for the “real bastard,” Reilly, Horgan says. But the “bigger global villain” that the series was taking on was the police system, she noted, which is shown in the season to have protected bad behaviors from ex-officers such as Reilly, who has a pattern of abuse against women and still believes the police will take his side, as well as Detective Inspector Fergal Loftus (Barry Ward), who had questionable tactics throughout his investigation of the sisters.  

“How can we trust the people who are supposed to protect us when they continually let us down? Horgan said of the central thesis for season two. 

After driving Reilly’s body to the cliffs to dispose of it, the sisters find that he is still alive. Bibi (Sarah Greene) considers killing him then, but is stopped by Eva, who says “We’re not murderers,” which Walsh notes is an important reminder for the viewers given the focus of the series. Eva calls emergency services and Reilly is taken to the hospital, where he is alive but intent on pressing charges against the sisters. 

Detective Una Houlihan, the younger, more trustworthy officer, eventually decides to help out the sisters and visits Reilly in the hospital with Loftus, who confronts him about returning the money to Blanaid (Saise Quinn) and says he will hide evidence and contradict any testimony from Reilly. Therefore, in the end, the sisters get away with almost all of it, even though they still have to deal with the repercussions of losing Grace. 

“They do, and they don’t, emotionally,” Horgan said. “But yeah, thanks to a bit of police corruption, they do.”

As for whether there could be a third season, Horgan said it may be tricky given the way the set up of the show.  

“You have shows like White Lotus, and I guess Beef is doing it, where you can start again with a whole new cast, and so you can go for it. But with these sisters, you have to believe that they can be in that situation again. Because the reason why the show works is because people believe their situation, and we could do what we wanted this time around, because it’s all the fallout of what happened in the first season,” Horgan said. 

“How many more people could we kill?” Walsh joked. 

“I’m thinking all the time, and let’s see what happens,” Horgan continued. “But that’s the tricky thing of it. You’ve got to really, really believe it could happen to these women again.”