Endeavour: Why Joan Thursday Has To Choose Strange Over Morse

Joan Thursday and Attempt Morse can't end upward together. That's the unavoidable truth casting a mantle over their every run into. However much chemical science and yearning those two share, when Inspector Morsebegins sixteen years down their timeline, Miss Th won't be role of Morse's life. Colin Dexter'south Inspector is destined to remain unmarried and to live out his days alone, in the very firm that Endeavour fans saw him purchase in the series six finale.

That house – which, like Morse of late, has been in a fleck of a land and requires some work – is destined never to be a family domicile, just as Morse is destined never to be a husband or father. The destiny of Sara Vickers' Joan Th nonetheless, is still to be decided. Equally Endeavour nears its ultimate decision (series 9 is likely but nonetheless to be appear), series eight has offered up one proposition for Joan's future in a burgeoning relationship with DS Jim Strange.

Jim Foreign? The unglamorous, unimaginative company man who aspires to climb the ladder and keep his nose clean. Wearer of tank tops, drinker of Double Diamond and bearer of James Last Orchestra LPs? Compared to clever, cultured, tortured Morse, what would Joan Thursday ever run across in him?

Plenty, if she knows what's good for her, which Joan seems to of late. It'south a long time since her head was turned past a chancer like DS Jakes, and years since she got involved with a married man who became physically abusive before leaving her pregnant and homeless. Joan concluded up in hospital when the pregnancy was lost, after a doubtless euphemistic "fall". That may take been stone bottom for her, but it was past no means the end. Like Morse, she'due south been through the wringer, just unlike him, she's dealt with her experiences and used them to make meaningful changes.

When Joan returned to Oxford after the Leamington interlude, never sounding more like her father she told Attempt, "Something happens. You take to look a bad thing in the middle. Break the spell." Plenty of bad things have happened to Morse, not least the murder of his lover in Venice in series seven's finale, but unlike Joan, he's failed to wait them in the middle and pause their spell. In serial eight, he'south by and large been looking in the bottom of a bottle and it's sent him on a down spiral.

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While Joan has found real significant in her career as a social worker (she besides is saving the world, ane woman at a fourth dimension), thanks to Fred Thursday, she grew upwards with the message drummed into her that work should be left on the hall stand up, by the front door. Yet many times Fred tells Effort that "there's more to life than coppering," it'southward a lesson he never learns. Even every bit his drinking starts to brand him unreliable at his task, Morse's work is everything to him. That's not going to cut it for Joan. While she's inappreciably going to step into Win'southward role and send any time to come hubby off each morning with his sandwiches, she'southward also been raised to know that work isn't the be all and end all.

Someone who seems to share that perspective is DS Jim Strange, whose ambition to steadily climb the ladder we know pays off in afterwards life when he becomes Main Superintendent to Morse's Inspector. Boring, mayhap, but reliable and solid in a manner that the increasingly cynical and petulant Morse volition never exist.

Dissimilar Morse, Jim Strange has never injure Joan's feelings or belittled her. The opposite in fact – when she was arrested in series 5 at an anti-racism protest that turned violent, Jim took it upon himself to check she was okay and send her home, fudging the station's records then that she wouldn't be charged. Trying to curry favour by helping the guvnor'south daughter? Maybe. Still, he looked out for her and unlike some of the other men in her life, asked goose egg in return. And though Jim can't truly make caput nor tail of Endeavour, he's even been a steady sort of friend, and flatmate, to him over the years. When Morse is "marinating" his sorrows over the loss of Claudine, it's Jim that Joan offers to call to see him abode safe.

In serial eight, Sean Rigby'south Jim Strange is cut an entirely new romantic figure. He'due south conspicuously besotted with Joan, who seems to genuinely enjoy herself with him, too. When she accompanies him to a masonic ladies night, he'due south very sweet and treats her well. They dance together to 'Earth Angel' and his esteem for her is made articulate when later on she leaves, the 1970s cabbie describes her as "a nice bit of crumpet" and Foreign corrects him: "She's not crumpet. She's a smart, bright, independent young woman." When the pair win tickets to run across The Carpenters in London in a raffle, Strange is endearingly unassuming and gives Joan a get-out in case she feels trapped into going, only Miss Thursday's quite clear that she'll be snapping upward the opportunity.

Jim Foreign may be worlds away from Endeavour Morse, but he's a adept man and a reliable one. He'south certainly no genius, but he's too non a womaniser, or a problem drinker, and he has a trivial of Fred Th's steadiness about him. He clearly thinks the world of Joan and would no doubtfulness do good from a chip of her political censor and intelligence rubbing off. Joan and Endeavor may have fire, but Joan and Jim accept gentle warmth. And, to quote the wise words of Fred Thursday, there'south a lot to be said for beingness settled – something Joan seems to be recognising for herself this series.

That'south all assuming that the Endeavour-Joan-Jim love triangle is immune a relatively happy ending by Attempt 's creator. Joan's time to come could exist far from settled if Russell Lewis chooses to sacrifice her character as office of Morse'south journey to bachelorhood. Let'southward face it, she wouldn't exist the first woman fridged to nurture Endeavour's growing angst. Perhaps fans hoping that Joan and Jim won't work out should be conscientious what they wish for. If joining ane of Oxford's many alternative (simply murder-filled) communes and living out her days as a free spirit's not an option, that's why Joan has to choose Foreign over Morse – the alternative could be as well deplorable to deport.

Endeavour Series 8 concludes on Sunday the 26^th of September at 9pm on ITV.