Something evil has come to London in Netflix and Tom Bidwell‘s crime drama The Irregulars. Based loosely on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works, the series follows a band of misfits as they investigate supernatural crimes. The series premiere brought up quite many questions and did a fantastic job of introducing the large cast of characters and the mystery that lies ahead. In episode two, “Chapter Two: The Ghosts of 22B”, Bea (Thaddea Graham) reluctantly takes Jessie (Darci Shaw) on a job while Spike (McKell David) does a bit of digging on the mysteries Doctor (Royce Pierreson).
It goes without saying that this recap will contain spoilers for The Irregulars. If you haven’t watched it, I highly suggest checking out the series here!
RELATED: Catch up with the series premiere recap of The Irregulars!
“Chapter Two: The Ghosts of 221B” opens as a gentleman (Ansu Kabia) arrives home to find his son (Ameen Mustapha) excited that his tooth fell out. He informs him to put it under his pillow and the tooth fairy will come. That night as the boy sleeps, something is hiding out front, breathing heavily. When his mother (Muna Otaru) sneaks in to swap out the tooth for money, he finds the boy missing all of his teeth. Consider me horrified.
The next morning, Bea is standing in the street outside of the cellar, trying to psych herself up to steal some jewelry. She manages to pocket a piece but is caught almost instantly. After getting knocked out by the vendor, she finds herself face to face with the Doctor in a jail cell. It turns out she has been avoiding him and he thought she had more morals than to steal. He tells her that he has a case, but she refuses. Unfortunately, if she doesn’t take it, she will be sent to the workhouse by the judge.
At the palace, Leopold (Harrison Osterfield) is trying to make a quiet exit before Daimler (Edward Hogg) catches him. He quickly makes up the excuse that his sister Louise (Nell Hudson) is staying at the palace and he will be spending the next few days with her. Daimler isn’t convinced at first, but he has no other choice but to agree when she shows up. Louise knows that Leopold is up to something but doesn’t want to be apart of it and just wants him to be careful.
At the Duck and Quiver, the Doctor explains to Bea that two children’s teeth are being stolen right out of their mouths. He wants them to interview the children and inform her that a ghost woman was spotted in the area during the night attack. Bea decides to open up to the Doctor and tells him that Jessie thinks people are getting strange powers from somewhere. She asks if he knows anything about this. When he refuses to answer, Bea tries to bait him by bringing up how she found him at the end of the previous episode. Angered, he threatens to have her arrested again if she were ever to set foot in his house again.
So, of course, when Bea returns to the cellar, she hatches a plan for Spike to sneak in instead. Spike is against the idea and afraid of what might happen if he gets caught, but Bea gives him an ultimatum – either break in or go on the job. Jessie offers to go with Bea to investigate the ghost woman and won’t take no for an answer. Bea then asks Billy (Jojo Macari) to interview the two victims. Billy reminds Bea that they swore they would never work for the Doctor again and that he would protect her from going back to the workhouse, but she knows that he is connected to the police and they don’t have a choice.
Billy tries to have a more private and intimate moment with Bea before Leopold arrives and breaks it up. He asks what is going on and only Jessie will tell him about the case. He offers his help and Bea snarkily responds that only if he has the time. If he really wants to help, then he can go with Billy to the interviews. It turns out that Bea is not too happy with Leopold disappearing after that last case without so much as a goodbye. The team splits up and heads their separate ways.
At a boarding school, a young girl (Keira Chansa) overhears two girls talking about the tooth fairy, except this one comes to take the rest of the teeth out as well. Terrified (as she should be), she prays that she will always be good if she doesn’t lose her tooth. Moments after saying amen, she wiggles the tooth in her mouth and it instantly falls out. She ends up staying awake the whole night and when something begins to rattle her window, she goes to investigate. She sees a ghost-like figure breeze pass and goes running to her mother’s (Lucy Russell) room. When she rolls over to check on her daughter, we can see that all of her teeth are missing.
Bea and Jessie investigate the ghost sitings when Jessie decides that she will split off to cover more space in less time. She almost instantly runs into a small boy who smiles at her oddly before running away. She continues to follow him and attempts to talk to him, but he won’t respond to her. As she follows him into a yard she completely misses the dentistry sign lying on the ground outside of the doorway.
At the Hippodrome, Leopold tries to figure out why everyone is mad at him, but Billy is more focused on the case. They interview Laura (Emma Cunniffe) and Carla Machin (Harriet Turnbull) and learn that Carla didn’t recently lose any teeth, but the demon stole all of her adult teeth. It debunks the story about it being a tooth fairy-type creature being the one taking the teeth.
We then see Jessie continue to follow the young boy when she finally meets a lady (Sheila Atim) digging in her yard. Jessie tells her that she is investigating the mysterious ghost lady who has been spotted and the woman invites her inside to discuss the situation more. Before Jessie follows her, she looks back at the boy again. This is the first time we get a close-up of him and, oddly, he is the exact boy from the beginning of the episode. Inside the house, the lady becomes the ghost-like woman and uses gas to knock Jessie out.
Outside of 221B Baker Street, Spike is waiting for the Doctor to leave so he can break-in. Once inside, he uncovers that the Doctor is named John Watson and he has something to do with an organization named the Golden Dawn. Before he can continue investigating further, someone arrives at the house. Spike quickly hides under a bed before a man comes into the room. He starts to play the violin well before playing off-tune and dropping it onto the floor. To add insult to injury, the man then vomits on the floor right in front of Spike’s face.
Back at the mysterious building, Jessie awakes to find herself tied to a chair. Bea is outside searching for Jessie when she spots the fallen dentistry sign. She is able to quietly make her way into the home and stop the women from ripping out Jessie’s teeth.
Across town, Billy and Leopold pay a visit to John Cooper and his son from the beginning of the episode. He refuses to speak to Billy because he is nothing more than a street rat. The man mentions that he is retired military and a personal bodyguard, which Billy responds that the only reason he is living on the street is that his dad was too, but didn’t live to come back. The man still won’t speak to them and they end up leaving without any information.
Bea and Jessie manage to tie up the mysterious woman and discuss how she must have been warped. Bea begins to investigate when she finds something mysterious. “Chapter Two: The Ghosts of 221B” jumps back to Spike as he listens to the man above him snore loudly. He climbs out from under the bed through the vomit and quickly makes it out of the room without looking back. He manages to uncover a room filled with sculptures and a map and spirit board in what Spike refers to as the sex dungeon.
The scene then flips back to Bea and Jessie, who have found a spirit board in the woman’s home, similar to episode one. Jessie tries to ask her where she got her powers, but she dives into her head when she realizes the woman won’t answer. Unlike Arthur, however, this woman isn’t okay with Jessie’s interference. We see how the woman tried reaching out to her father after he hung himself. But that is as far as we get as the woman grabs Jessie and drags her through her own memories.
They finally land on one with Bea and Jessie in the workhouse. Bea is trying to protect her from an unnamed man (Alex Ferns). The woman warns Jessie that she shouldn’t sift through other people’s memories when she is trying to forget things. Before we can see anything else happen, Jessie grabs the woman and brings them back to the present. Bea tries to ask Jessie what happened, but she won’t talk about it and just sticks to the case. She thinks the woman is trying to get revenge on someone for her father’s suicide.
The episode jumps back to Billy and Leopold as an argument begins about how posh people treat people like Billy and the crew. Billy thinks Leopold is a ‘dabbler’ who is bored of his rich lifestyle and looking for some fun. That he thinks it would be cool to sleep with a poor girl and then dump her back into the gutter. Leopold claims that he doesn’t think that way, but before Billy can say anything else, Leopold’s leg cracks and sends him to the ground. Leopold finally opens up to Billy about his condition but swears him not to tell anyone else.
We flashback to Jessie leaving Bea alone with the woman to go in search of the boys. She asks Bea to try and get the woman to talk. She warns her to be careful not to let the woman inside her head. When she reenters the home, the woman opens up to Bea about how they are the same and lost their parents. She tells Bea that if she knew her mother was murdered, she would get revenge on the person who did it. That is all she wants to do. To get revenge on the man who took everything from her father, and tonight is the night everything comes to an end.
Jessie returns with Billy and Leopold when she finds a skull growing itself buried in the yard where the woman was digging. She calls Bea out to investigate. Leopold realizes that it is growing from the teeth when Billy spots something crawling out of another plot. It looks exactly like the girl Carla from the Hippodrome. The little boy approaches her and the two run off before Billy can stop them. He recognizes both of them as the children missing teeth and Bea realizes that the woman is growing people’s clones.
They rush back inside to figure out who her clones are after. Leopold shares that the Duke of Winchester (Patrice Naiambana) owns all the lands, including where they are now. Leopold starts to piece things together and realizes that if the Duke is who she is after, it would make sense to get past his bodyguards and remembers John Cooper sharing that he was one. They realize that the girl would be working at an event hosted by the Duke that night, putting her in the same room as him. The woman warns them there is nothing they can do now, but Leopold still pushes Billy to head to the theater.
We see the Duke and Winchester and John Cooper making their way to the Hippodrome, unaware of what is about the happen. At the Hippodrome, the real Carla heads off to an empty room to restock the spoons before her clone manages to knock her out, tie her up and steal her outfit. She manages to hide the gun in her serving tray and lets the clone of William Cooper in. He stabs himself in the leg and pretends to be injured in front of his father.
Back at the house, Bea is trying to convince the woman that this isn’t how to fix the problem. She shares that she lost her mother when she went crazy and would wander off. One night she wandered off right into the river and never came back. Bea also shares that the Duke has a young daughter and is worried about what she might become after her father’s murder. She throws the woman’s words right back at her – ‘monsters make monsters.’ For a moment, it looks as if Bea is getting to her, but the woman stands by her decision calling Bea too moral to make the right choice.
The woman begins to focus intensely as the scene flips back and forth between the woman and the Hippodrome. She inhabits Carla’s clone’s body and walks onto the stage behind the Duke, who has left John Cooper back in the lobby. When the Duke tries to cut the girl off from talking, she pulls out the gun. Outside, Billy has arrived at the Hippodrome and makes his way inside. The woman, through Carla, tells a room full of people how the Duke raised the rent on homes and shops, forcing people, like her dad, out because they couldn’t pay.
While this is going on, Billy meets up with John and tells him that his son is really a clone. Back at the house, Bea realizes the only way to stop this is to kill the woman, but at the last minute realizes she can’t. Carla’s clone shots at the Duke, but thankfully John is able to get to him first, and the shot hits his soldier’s vest. Billy is able to knock the clone down before joining John and the Duke in a safe room. Back at the house Bea, Jessie and Leopold realize that it’s over and Bea goes off to find the Doctor.
Outside, Leopold stops her to tell her that he isn’t a dabbler and apologizes for leaving without saying anything. He isn’t here because he wants some kind of thrill but because he likes her and the rest of them. She knows he isn’t that kind of person, but they are different and that’s okay. Jess then comes running out when she realizes the other body growing in the garden is missing. They realize that it isn’t over.
At the Hippodrome, Billy joins the Duke and his family as John goes out to get their carriage. The young girl with them is the same girl from earlier in the episode who lost her tooth but whose mother was the one the demon took the rest of the teeth away from. Bea watches as the woman enter’s into the mother’s clone and attacks Billy. He fights back against the mother’s clone, but Jessie tells Bea there is only one thing she can do to end this. She picks up one of the instruments and hesitates before Jessie finally gets through to her and Bea kills the woman and stops the clones.
Bea struggles with having to take a life, but Jessie and Leopold are there to help her through it. Billy consoles the young girl who believes she just watched her mother try and kill her dad and Billy. He promises her that the clone isn’t her mom and they will find her. Later that night, the group returns home and Bea is sitting by herself outside of the cellar. Across the street, Billy and Leopold argue who knows what is best for Bea. When the bells go off, Billy assumes Leopold will go running home, but he doesn’t. Instead, he states he isn’t going anywhere and goes to sit with Bea.
Jessie has fallen asleep in the cellar and ends up back in her nightmare before the Linen Man (Clarke Peters) can pull her into his little world again. She shares that she is afraid of her nightmares, so he places a spell on her wrist that will bring her to this little place if she ever becomes too scared. Jessie also shares that she did what he asked and that with the tooth-fairy woman, it felt like the power was still there for anyone to take. He realizes that the barrier between the real world and the spiritual world must have ripped open and every time someone reaches over, that hole gets bigger.
Jessie shares with Bea and the rest of the crew what the Linen Man shared, explaining that they would need to find the Rip to stop what was happening. She also shares that Bea was right. When people take powers from the Rip, it warps the most negative and darkest side. Jessie isn’t sure where exactly the Rip is, but she says the Linen Man is sure it is here in London. Spike shares that there was a map of London in 221B with a bunch of weird markings on it.
He also shares the letter he found with the group and John’s real name. Bea goes off searching for the Golden Dawn and ends up at a mysterious building where the butler allows her in. He brings her into the office and the man behind the desk recognizes her immediately and introduces himself as Mycroft Holmes (Jonjo O’Neill). And before we can learn anything else, “Chapter Two: The Ghosts of 221B” comes to a close.
Well, I’ll be; the second episode of The Irregulars was quite a doozy. First, I can not tolerate anything that has to do with teeth or their removal, so I spent quite a bit of time during “Chapter Two: The Ghosts of 221B” hiding behind a pillow. I really like how both the tooth-fairy lady and the bird master (Rory McCann‘s character from the last episode) aren’t inherently bad. They both suffered and lost their loved ones and turned to the spiritual side to reach them. It reminds us that not all villains have to be bad people all the time. Now unlike the Bird Master, the tooth-fairy lady wasn’t about to let go of her revenge. This is another great example of how power can corrupt people in different ways.
This leads into the subject that weighed heavily on me the entire episode, and that was Bea and her struggles with morals. Both Watson (and yes, we can finally call him Watson now!) and the tooth-fairy lady bring up her morals throughout the episode. Bea is struggling to do what is right for herself, Jessie and the people around her and some of those choices are tearing her apart. We can see how she struggled with just stealing and then having to choose to take a life? I can only imagine how she is suffering inside. It will be interesting to see how her character progresses through the season.
Also, can we talk about how cute it is that Leopold and Billy are clearly “not” fighting to be her savior? I hope they both know that our girl is strong enough to take care of herself, but they need to support her.
RELATED: Check out all of our recaps for The Irregulars!
Who I Am: A nerd by the strictest definition. I enjoy diving straight into my favorite fandoms without a care in the world. I live on video/board games, fantasy movies and TV, and all things geeky.
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