MobLand Season 2 Episode 2: Did Frankie Shoot Bella? Why I Think She Is Still Alive

The bang that ended MobLand season 2 episode 2 has my head spinning, and the question is whether it claimed Bella's life. My answer is no. I think Frankie wants the Harrigan family to believe she has been killed while he keeps her alive and useful.

The episode leaves everything hanging. That single word from Frankie sends a message to Conrad at a restaurant while Bella is cornered elsewhere. Kevin has lost contact with his wife. The Harrigans have no idea what is going on, and neither do we.

The television rule says no body means no death for Bella

If I follow the general rule of television, Bella was not killed. Whoever ordered the hit is too clever to have her killed. Another television rule applies here too: if you don't see a body, don't assume there was a death. Many times the reason you are not shown a body, or shown the gun being fired, is that a death was not the intended purpose.

With every rule there is an exception, so it is worth going through the motives, the intentions and the evidence. To be clear about what happens: Bella is held at gunpoint and he says bang. Except we don't see him press the trigger.

Frankie's coordinated attack was a massacre and a message

We are only in episode two and the show has already given us a massacre. It is also a message. Men with guns hit several places almost at once. Fergus gets shot, and it falls to Harry to protect Gina and Eddie. It is when the gunfire reaches home that Bella takes Kevin's call.

Then Conrad is summoned to a phone at a restaurant, an absurdly old fashioned way to reach a man whose mobile is already in his pocket. Whoever arranged that call wanted to create a massive scene, and in the end they achieved their result with the word bang.

The four horses story hints at Bella

I said Frankie wanted Bella alive, and this is what I mean. It starts with the conversation that introduces his strategy, when Frankie asks the man he turns to how someone like him can hurt Harry. I did not think this man was so good with words, but ever since he went to the library and got those books, I kept my eye on him because I knew he was up to no good. That book is the engine.

He tells a story about a man pulled apart by four horses and casts himself as the surgeon who knows where to cut. He identifies Conrad, Kevin, and Harry's wife and daughter as forces that could pull Harry in different directions. When asked about the fourth horse, he hints at Bella just before Harry visits her. "I don't know how Bella fits into this," but he is smarter than I am.

Why Bella fits as the fourth horse

Bella could be the connection that makes people move. She is Kevin's wife and Eddie's mother. She is also Conrad's former lover, and her exchanges with Harry remain charged with a mixture of trust, provocation and suspicion. If you hurt Bella, Kevin will surely want vengeance. If you threaten her, Harry is dragged into Kevin's crisis at the moment Jan and Gina need him.

In this episode Harry proposes moving away with Jan and Gina. Now that he has made that decision, another massacre could drag him into the Harrigans' mess and away from his family. Her connection to Conrad matters too. Conrad is already unstable, and this could fuel that further and make him act impulsively. Frankie's strategist knows Bella is in the middle of it all, which is why she fits as horse number four, and why I stand on the hostage theory.

A living Bella is worth more to Frankie than a dead one

"Immediate execution does not solve anything." It would be dumb, and that is not a word I would use for the man behind this plan. Bella can be used to blackmail the Harrigans more if she is alive than dead. Killing her would only cause more bloodshed and a rather meaningless war. Kevin may instead be made to choose between his new independence and his wife's safety. She is valuable because the people around her cannot agree on what they owe her or one another.

Kevin used to be under Conrad's thumb, but now he is standing against him. In the season 1 finale, Kevin told Harry that he and Bella had tried to build a normal marriage and a normal life for Eddie, even while their family made that nearly impossible. He knew Conrad had been with Bella, but learning that Conrad was Eddie's biological father was a betrayal on another level. This season, when Conrad's violence at the dog track puts everyone on alert, Kevin immediately tells her to abandon her usual car and get home safely. He feared for her safety, and that danger has now reached her.

From where I stand, Kevin has two options: run to Conrad or take matters into his own hands. If he chooses the latter, that proves how split the Harrigan family really is. If Bella is dead, Kevin may still be driven toward revenge, but the enemy loses the ability to set terms.

Bella's talk with Harry shows the family cannot simply be patched up

Earlier in the same episode, Harry comes to Bella with news that Eddie is living with Gina and that the two young people are extorting online creators. She sees that the idea did not come from her son. Eddie is not the one to suggest something like this, so it is definitely Gina's idea. When Harry asks her to persuade Kevin to reconcile with Conrad, she knows it is something she cannot do. The family has a history that talks cannot fix, especially her affair and Eddie's parentage, and she stresses that asking Kevin to return to Conrad will bring up that humiliation. She is funny sometimes while being serious about it, and it is mostly a shield.

Harry is seeing something none of them are seeing: a bigger threat is coming while the Harrigans are playing Scooby Doo. Harry thinks restoring the old Harrigan arrangement would save everybody, but Bella disagrees. Jan says something similar when she tells Harry that Gina learned the family trade by watching him, and as much as we want to disagree, that is the truth. Bella being alive can force Harry and Kevin to face the choice they were avoiding before this attack: is the way to keep her safe to rebuild Conrad's family, or to put distance between Bella and Conrad for good?

Frankie is telling the Harrigans their methods are old school

The Harrigans think they are powerful, and when it comes to violence I give it to them. But Frankie is telling them that is old school and their method is not enough. People get hurt, like Fergus, and that is the price. Fergus was not caught in the crossfire, though. He was on the list, hit at the same time as everybody else. At Gina and Eddie's flat, Harry was already nearby and able to fight back. Lucky them.

Bella's final moment is withheld. She is neither visibly rescued nor visibly killed. The series knows how to show a death when it wants us to know someone is dead, and here it spends its last seconds on uncertainty and on Conrad hearing a voice. This alone does not prove she survived, but it feels obvious to me, which is why I am betting on this theory.

The call to Conrad was designed to set off his temper

Why must it be Conrad who hears the bang? Earlier, a doctor tells him his memory is intact but the brain systems involved in control and judgment are weakening. Conrad's immediate response is to intimidate the doctor into hiding the result. Now he is on the phone, and the caller seems to announce the death of Kevin's wife, who is also the mother of Conrad's son. If we know Conrad, he will explode and blood will spill, exactly as Frankie's strategist anticipated.

Frankie could have waited for Conrad to hear the news from someone else, but he called the restaurant because he wanted Conrad. At the precise moment Conrad is sitting with Maeve, expecting a young woman to join them, he is pulled out of a public dinner to take a call from a person who knows exactly where he is. Before he learns what has happened at the house, he learns his enemy can locate him, and then he is insulted with Bella's death. This looks like someone trying to get into his ego and cause a spark.

Maeve's dinner invitation raises its own questions

Why did Maeve invite the girl, and what does she want from her? She said she wanted to reconcile. I don't believe it, because why would she ask a veterinarian unusually detailed questions about substances that could be put in food or drink? The young woman is warned away and does not appear. We cannot state as a fact that Maeve would have poisoned her at the table, but her absence leaves Conrad and Maeve waiting in frustration when Frankie's message arrives.

If they decide she knew about the assault, or mistake her no show for proof of betrayal, the enemy gets a second advantage. The Harrigans may start accusing one another while Bella's fate remains unknown.

Some fans think Frankie pulled the trigger right after the cut

This is not my idea, but some fans are theorising that Frankie may have killed Bella immediately after the cut. I do not buy it, but their case is worth hearing. Frankie has shown he can coordinate lethal attacks, and there is no rule that a clever plan cannot include a murder. His gun has a silencer, so it does not need to make a loud noise for the trigger to have been pulled. As fans put it, "Why bring a silencer to a scene when you do not intend to use it?" That question does make sense.

They argue that no body being shown should not be turned into a promise that she lives; it is only a reason to keep the verdict open. If the next episode reveals she was shot, the end of episode 2 will have given us a few minutes of the same false hope Kevin might cling to.

Bella alive keeps Harry's obligations colliding

If she is killed, as I said above, the strategist's story of pressure points would be short lived. I don't see how Bella's death achieves it. His whole proposal depends on Harry being pulled by obligations he cannot satisfy simultaneously, and Bella alive creates time for those obligations to collide. Kevin might demand Harry find her. Jan, already asking Harry to leave the life behind, might see that rescue as another promise he will break. Gina is now entangled with Eddie, who has his own reason to react if his mother is taken, except he does not love his mother. Bring Conrad into it and that is full war to keep Harry busy and make him forget the promise to his own family.

Frankie may not intend a prolonged kidnapping. He could be staging a short demonstration and release Bella once the family has exposed itself.

Bella may have to save herself

Right now, everyone who could save Bella is away from her, so it is up to her. She already tells her kidnapper he has no idea who he is messing with, and she has proven she can survive people who want to control her life. In the first season, the revelations about Conrad and Eddie almost reduce her to a scandal in Kevin's story and a lie in Eddie's. In the finale, Eddie turns on her violently after learning the truth, and Kevin still speaks about the effort she made to keep their home together.

Putting everything together, my theory is that Bella is alive, that Frankie used her to make Conrad imagine the worst and act foolishly, and that he is likely keeping her as leverage for the next move. We don't have the next episode to confirm it, but I hope to be right. The more consequential question is what the family will do while they think she might have died.

Is Bella still breathing, or did Frankie pull that trigger the second the screen went black?