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Wentworth’s Final Sentence: Third Episode

*Foxtel recently changed Wentworth’s 10 episodes from S8E11-20 to a 10-episode season 9.

I wasn’t particularly excited for the final season of Wentworth to air, despite being a fan since the beginning. I didn’t feel like the last couple of seasons were great. Television shows reminding us they’re capable of anything by killing off the main character can be invigorating but Bea Smith’s (Danielle Cormack) death a few seasons ago was just unnecessary. When we were promised the last season would be the most shocking — that it would have the most carnage we’d seen on the show — I assumed they meant more needless bloodshed. I didn’t think Wentworth could shock me anymore.

I was wrong.

Guard Linda Miles (Jacquie Brennan), via Foxtel

Usurping vs. Destroying Power

Wentworth is shocking us with something inspiring this season. I didn’t expect to receive what we should have been wanting the entire time: for prisoners to take on the system. When Bea Smith was top dog, she got close by causing a riot in the prison. One of my favorite scenes in Wentworth history was Bea getting in then-governor Joan Ferguson’s (Pamela Rabe) face and saying: “You don’t run this prison. I do.”  

The difference between Lou Kelly’s (Kate Box) promise come for the guards and, I predict, end the season with the prisoners taking over, and Bea Smith’s, is that Bea wanted to usurp power of the prison. Lou Kelly wants to destroy it. The guards might survive if they stop protecting the system, which is possible now, with the staff cuts and excess work revealing how undervalued they are.

Lou Kelly had an epiphany during tremendous grief: prisoner-prisoner brutality is a result of disempowerment. Would inmates be slashing each other for top dog if they weren’t confined by walls of authoritarian control? If we look at the institution outside of social constructs, as a building manned by complicit power-holders who prevent the freedom of those inside, then is boundless compassion for the guards realistic? Their job requires the imprisonment of other people in order to exist.

The obsession with one’s own security leads to a destruction in personal values. Lou Kelly broke her own set of values when she shivved a (possibly pregnant) Boomer (Katrina Milosevic) for top dog in episode three, only to be disrespected by the corrupt General Manager of Corrections, Ann Reynolds (Jane Hall), who was working with her in secret. Lou remembers she isn’t a morally corrupt person and will not be complicit in Ann’s demands any longer.

Ann, via Foxtel

Two wolves

Like the psychologist said to Joan Ferguson, we all have two wolves, one good and one bad, and it’s up to us which one we feed. What’s “good” to one person isn’t always “good” to another, however. Boomer, for example, isn’t the innocent person we know and love: she’s videotaping fellow prisoner’s fights and lesbian sex to send to a kinky prison fetishist, in exchange for his sperm, so she can have a baby. I think that plan is out of the window after the shiv fight.

Rita Connors (Leah Purcell) is going to play an important role in this season. Last episode, while she was still on the run, Rita was able to be there for the death of her and Ruby’s (Rarriwuy Hick) father, before getting arrested and sent back to Wentworth. This episode she speaks of an identity crisis. She has been an undercover cop for at least a decade and, while taking care of her dying father, she had an epiphany: she doesn’t know who she really is anymore. Is that true for the guards, too?

Rita and Ruby, via Foxtel

Will Rita Connors and Lou Kelly’s power struggle lead to anything substantial? That could depend on which wolf they feed. Lou’s had the realisation that the system is at fault for her partner’s death. She saw beyond Sheila (Marta Dusseldorp) killing Reb (Zoe Terakes), perhaps realising Sheila was simply brainwashed by the cult leader who subjected her to conversion therapy. Will Rita choose to be a cop or join the fight for freedom?

Wentworth is shaping up to have a brilliant ending that’s relevant to what’s going on in the world.

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