‘Rivals’ Season 2 Episode 6 Recap & Ending Explained: The Series Just Killed Off Its Most Beloved Character, and Tony Baddingham Has Blood on His Hands

The mid-season finale of ‘Rivals‘ season 2 arrived on June 5, and it delivered the kind of gut-punch that has fans across Hulu and Disney+ absolutely reeling. Episode 6, which caps off the first batch of six episodes before the show takes an extended hiatus until late 2026, did not hold back. It was, by every measure, the most devastating hour the series has produced yet.

The episode was an explosive, mostly Baddingham-focused installment that leaves the future of ‘Rivals’ a much darker place. Rutshire was hit by a storm both literal and emotional, and when the dust settled, the landscape of the show had changed forever.

Monica Baddingham’s Shocking Death Ends the Mid-Season Finale

The episode opened with what seemed like sweet scenes of young love, as Caitlin lost her virginity to Archie. But moments later, Caitlin was forced to hide in his photographic darkroom when Archie’s mum Monica returned home. What Caitlin discovered in that darkroom set the entire episode spiraling into devastation.

While hiding, Caitlin was horrified to see naked photos of her own mother Maud O’Hara among the photographs. Tony had been having an affair with Maud and had used the camera to document it. When the quietly stoic Monica saw the photos too, it was awkward and heartbreaking all round.

In a scene that crystallized Tony Baddingham’s moral bankruptcy, Tony spat at his family that he had cheated on Monica dozens of times, dismissing it as simply what people do. David Tennant delivers the line with a chilling casualness that makes it all the more damning.

Tony and Maud’s Affair Tears Two Families Apart

Maud O’Hara had been making increasingly destructive decisions throughout the season by choosing to carry on an affair with Corinium TV executive Tony, while the wholesome pairing of Lizzie and Freddie drifted further apart. The consequences of Maud’s choices collided catastrophically in episode 6, with Caitlin caught squarely in the crossfire of her mother’s secret life.

Running from the house to escape her cheating husband, Monica found herself at Lizzie’s doorstep, and in emotionally raw scenes with the equally warm Lizzie, Monica revealed she had been in love with someone before Tony.

Reading between the lines, it was strongly implied that the love had been with a woman, something that in the show’s 1980s setting would have been deeply fraught. Claire Rushbrook had explained ahead of the finale that Monica’s feelings had been taking center stage almost without her noticing, having never been given any air at all throughout her marriage to Tony.

Monica’s Triumphant Exit Speech Sets Up a Devastating Ending

In triumphant scenes, Monica returned home after her heart-to-heart with Lizzie and finally told Tony she was divorcing him, vowing to be honest with everyone about his systematic infidelity throughout their marriage, and that she had simply had enough. For a character who had spent so long as the silently suffering spouse, it was a moment worth cheering.

Throughout season 2, critics had noted that Claire Rushbrook had essentially been carrying the show on her back. Where Monica had been downtrodden and sidelined in season 1, season 2 had transformed her into a woman standing up to Tony and fighting for her own agency. The cruel irony of the finale is that Monica’s liberation and her death arrived in the same hour.

The Ending Explained: What Monica’s Death Means for Part Two

Monica got in her car to drive Caitlin home with the intention of telling Declan about his wife Maud’s affair. Tragically, she never made it to the O’Hara house. A tree fell on the car while she was driving through the storm, killing her instantly. Caitlin was able to escape relatively unharmed. Maud’s secret remains intact, at least for now.

The one grace note in an otherwise devastating episode came from Lizzie. After her emotional conversation with Monica, Lizzie realized she did not want to waste any more time with someone who was not good to her. She decided to live a less timid life and drove to Freddie’s house to tell him she could not do without him. His response was simply, “Then don’t.”

They kissed, the only real happiness in a very sombre episode. Notably, Monica Baddingham does not die in Jilly Cooper’s original novel, where she continues to quietly endure Tony’s neglect and appears in later entries of the Rutshire Chronicles series. The show’s writers have made a bold deviation from the source material, one with massive implications for the second half of the season.

As of episode 5, season 2 had been building the television franchise war at full intensity, with Tony destroying the Golden Gauntlet tapes that could have helped Rupert and Venturer. Now, without Monica as his anchor, the question of how far Tony will spiral becomes the most urgent dramatic engine heading into Part Two.

The remaining six episodes are set to drop in late 2026 with no fixed date yet confirmed, leaving fans to speculate through a potentially months-long hiatus about what a Tony Baddingham without conscience or consequence might do next.

Given everything that just happened in that storm on the road to the O’Hara house, we have to ask: do you think Monica’s death will finally be the thing that brings Tony Baddingham down, or will he find a way to weaponize even his own grief?