After six increasingly dark weeks, we came to the finale of this series of 'The Fall' which crept, calmly and horribly, to its climax.
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We'd been promised that our two moral bookends - Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) and Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) - would be meeting in this last feature-length instalment, but writer Alan Cubitt kept us waiting for that final encounter.
Instead, it was a chilling first half-hour, with all the violence implicit in this story decanted into the sub-plot of Spector's beaten client and her unstable husband.
By contrast, all was calm at the police station, with Spector calmly doing press-ups in his cell, and Gibson toiling away on the case, keeping her usual poker-face even as a series of increasingly dodgy videos crossed her path.
Finally face to face... Paul Spector and Stella Gibson, as the true nature of his crimes is uncovered
One by one, Gibson's minions tried their luck with Spector, where Jamie Dornan's stillness proved as thoroughly chilling as throughout this series, even in the constrictions of a cell. And then he invited her in, and our two stars stopped dancing around each other to conclude their gavotte.
And what did we get? A sparring match that veered from his childhood to her inner psyche, and included Spector's longest monologue of the series, with full acting chops on show from both Jamie Dornan, as he explained his sensual, righteous relish in inflicting harm, and from Gillian Anderson, as she calmly, compassionately followed him down his dark rabbit hole. A tour de force from both actors, as she valiantly withstood his charismatic chill to slam the lid down on top of him.
But there was more to come… with Stella swapping her silk blouse for a silk dressing-gown and her own unique way of unravelling once she was off duty - rumpled sheets, sleeping colleague… well, I think we could all have placed a small bet on that one, surely?
By now, it was all a bit exhausting, but Spector had a final payoff up his sleeve, leading his valiant pursuer to the woods, pausing to indulge his senses, before Rose Stagg burst back into life in the boot of the car, and Spector's Nemesis James Tyler turned up, gun in hand, to extinguish our serial murderer's last spark, much to Stella's anguish. Or did he…?
Well, goodness knows how Stella, the police, and writer Alan Cubitt, are going to sort all that out… Series 3 anyone? A valiant, gripping end to Series 2, with consuming performances once again from everyone on board.