3.6 Death Of A Hero Directed by Nicholas Renton, who’s had an impressive resume of TV classics over the past few decades, the well-conceived opening perfectly set the mood – especially with Feron’s menacing voice-over, which ultimately provided the perfect bookend for the episode. Seeing the Musketeers in moments of joy was always going to herald a fall, but it’s in moments like these when you realise just how short-changed Porthos is. Athos has Sylvie, d’Artagnan has Constance, Aramis has the rest of France and Prothos has, well, you see what I mean? It was also good to launch straight into action with the Grimauld/Athos duel being well staged and as vicious and brutal as you would expect. It was slightly disappointing that the Grimauld reveal was a little too throwaway considering the effort to keep his identity hidden from the Musketeers, but the duel itself more than made up for it. Feron’s death was of course a surprise. With this season going for not one ‘big bad’ we should have suspected that a death was in the offing, but I wasn’t expecting it to be him. He’d grown on me, even when the episodes themselves weren’t great he was at least very entertaining to watch and his departure will need to be filled, although I can’t help thinking that both Grimauld and Marcheaux don’t have the depth of character to replace that level of ‘interesting’, although the menace will of course remain. I particularly liked the fact that he died perceived as a hero – it just increases the frustration on the Musketeers, not only does the man responsible for their troubles gets a thoroughly underserved send-off but also that the King buys so completely into the lies and scheming. Speaking of the King, that was the other nice surprise as Ryan Gage’s Louis has grown into a real character rather than just the comic relief. Seeing what he’s doing this season makes me think that he’s been underused on the previous two. His confrontation with Aramis was well done, and I give much credit to the writers not going down the hanging path with Aramis, because the King’s wish to have him completely removed from the Queen’s and the Dauphin’s life is far crueller and shows the King to have a far more mature approach than we’ve seen previously. You still get a sense that all the pieces aren’t quite in place yet for the show’s finale – still no Milady for example, and surely there’s more tragedy awaiting the Musketeers ahead. However, it’s all largely irrelevant as long as the journey getting to the end is as exciting and as well-produced as this. Read Rob’s review of the previous episode, To Play The King, here.
