The third and final season of Derry Girls is out on Netflix and The Telegraph had a hard time bidding adieu to the crazy bunch of school students who are always up for some (mis)adventure. Now that the show has been (binge) watched and some feelings have been felt, here are some of our most favourite moments from this season. (Warning: spoilers ahead.)
When the bunch end up in prison: The first episode opens just before the start of school year at Derry, which also means one thing is in store —the GSCE results. Mind you, Clare is not worried about her own results but for her no-gooder bunch of friends — Erin, Orla, Michelle and James. More so, after Sister Michael tells them to “enjoy the time they have left”, which skyrockets their tension to a catastrophe. They decide to find out their marks before everyone else and barge into the staff section, only to find unlikely companions there.
Two seemingly nice fellas are moving out the computer equipment from the school into a van. They help them with their task and bid them goodbye. Only then does realisation dawn upon them that they were actually thieves! Before they can do anything they are surrounded by cops. “We can’t go to prison, girls,” Orla quips. “We are too delicate for prison!” To which Michelle fires back: “We went to convent school, Erin, for f*** sake. We’ll be grand.”
Hot plumber in the house: Ma Mary has had it enough with everyone in the house hankering after her for every little thing they need. But little does she know that a cheering up would arrive on her doorstep in the form of a hot plumber named Gabriel. What more? He even reads Emily Bronte and talks about forbidden desires after having fixed the boiler and served more than one cup of tea. But later, Clare catches a rather brewing moment between Gabriel and Ma Mary, as he gives his contact number to her before leaving. Upstairs, the group is practising for a school talent show, rather out of sync. Clare bursts into the room with the info and unable to keep her daylong no-word policy, reveals what she has just seen.
Derry Girls as Spice Girls: You mean to say that a show set in the ’90s won’t have a Spice Girls reference? Of course not! It is nothing less than a moment when the girls and their Wee English Fella shake things up with their rendition of Who Do You Think You Are. Each impersonation was bang on. Who plays who? Of course, the Wee English Fella plays Posh Spice, and he is joined by Clare as Baby Spice, Erin as Ginger Spice, Michelle as Scary Spice and Orla as Sporty Spice! We only wished the performance lasted longer.
Train on the tracks: A little annual trip for the Quinn family to the amusement park starts off rough in true Derry-style when Clare misses the train while her companions completely forget about her absence until the train had left. Lucky for her, the next train arrives in 20 minutes, and Clare is all set to wait it out when she sees Sister Michael stumbling along the platform. Her eye-roll is enough to mortify. Aboard the train, the girls are hungry to buy some snacks and find out from the snappy trolley-man that the KitKats are only for display, not for sale.
A tale of kisses: Two kisses occur in this season, that add unexpected flutters in the cumulative, carefree energies that Derry Girls displays. But we aren’t complaining one bit. The first comes after a long period of secret crushing, as our Wee English Fella James finally musters the courage to tell a flustered Erin that he likes her. They kiss and kiss some more until Michelle blurts out — “What the actual f***?” The final season also gave a chance to Clare for a queer romance, and how! When the girls show up at the record store to get tickets, Clare admonishes any thought of her being loud about her queerness and in the next moment shouts: “I’m a lesbian.”
“Congratulations,” is what the record store girl says, but actually gives her the shout that she’s one too, and will be there in the concert dressed as a clown. When Clare finally finds her out, they share the cutest kiss to ever exist.
A ghost story: After a devastating end to episode six, the final episode takes on a serious note. It begins with a sequence that takes us through the world of Derry. “They told us we were young,” Erin looms in through a voiceover: “Yet we understood the enormity of it. We understood what was at stake. Our fear was replaced with something altogether more terrifying... hope. Hope is so much worse.”
There’s this reminder that the Derry Girls are growing up and not everything will remain the same. When faced with the reality of the referendum and their chance to vote, reality looms large. “What if we vote yes, and it doesn’t even work?” Erin asks her grandfather in the end. “And what if it does?” he says. “What if all this becomes a ghost story you’ll tell your wains one day?” Will we get more? Only time will tell.
