🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐
In the first season of Lockwood & Co., Lucy Carlyle (Ruby Stokes) escapes a rough home life to join Lockwood & Co., a teen-run ghost-hunting agency in a very haunted London. She proves to be an exceptional “listener” — someone who can hear spirits — and becomes a huge asset to the agency, where her partners are Anthony Lockwood (Cameron Chapman) and George Karim (Ali Hadji-Heshmati). The crew hunt down not only ghosts, but also the answers to mysteries that not even their rival agencies can suss out. While doing so, they nearly die or become “ghost locked” (basically, a haunted coma) countless times.
So how’d it all end up? We’ll answer your burning questions and rehash that spooky ending.
Bridgerton breakout Stokes, up-and-coming actor Chapman and Holby City’s Hadji-Heshmati star in the series as the gifted listener Lucy, sensitive know-it-all Lockwood and snarky whiz kid George, respectively. Ever since The Problem (aka ghosts running rampant in London), the world of Lockwood & Co. has been populated by a variety of shady characters. Filling out the cast are Ivanno Jeremiah as DEPRAC (aka the Department of Psychical Research and Control) Inspector Barnes, Hayley Konadu as Flo Bones, Jack Bandeira as Quill Kipps (the Lockwood agency’s fiercest rival), Morven Christie as Penelope Fittes, Ben Crompton as Julius Winkman and Luke Treadaway as The Golden Blade. To read more about the cast and characters, check out this guide.
A gravedigging operation hires Lockwood & Co. to investigate a historical cemetery where Edmund Bickerstaff, a rumored necrophile who performed ghostly rituals, was buried more than a century ago. They uncover an iron coffin containing a skeleton and an unusual mirror they refer to as the Bone Glass. This was all mysteriously sealed away decades before The Problem began. In researching the case, George realizes the person in the iron coffin is Bickerstaff himself. Before Lockwood & Co. can do anything with the mirror, it’s stolen from under their noses.
Attending a party held by Fittes, the renowned paranormal investigation agency, Lucy and Lockwood sneak into the library to steal a rare book. At first, occultist Mary Dulac’s book of confessions appears to be full of nonsense and made-up mysteries. But upon closer inspection, it tells how Dulac killed Bickerstaff while he held the Bone Glass for her to see. After shooting him, she sealed him up so as not to unleash his dark powers on anyone else. The book reveals that the Bone Glass is in fact not a mirror at all, but a window to another realm that possesses anyone who looks at it.
After stealing back the Bone Glass from black marketeer Julius Winkman, Lucy and Lockwood are confronted by expert swordsman (and accomplice of Fittes Agency chairwoman, Penelope Fittes) The Golden Blade. Barely escaping him, they hand off the mirror to George and Lockwood’s former associate and relic hunter, Flo. The plan is to return the Bone Glass to DEPRAC — but as soon as George is left alone with it, he diverts from his route and instead makes a call to a mystery person, telling them he has the mirror.
Lucy and Lockwood, on the outs because Lockwood has yet again put them in grave danger, make amends just in time to more closely read the Dulac book. They learn that the mirror hypnotizes people — and notice George has been drawing hypnotic circles all over their house ever since he encountered it. George, meanwhile, makes it to the cemetery with the Bone Glass. There, he meets up with paranormal researcher Pamela Joplin, the mystery woman he’d called earlier; she tells George it’s better that the two of them have intercepted the Bone Glass, because DEPRAC would have destroyed it forever, eliminating any chance of finding out how The Problem started in the first place.
Back home, Lucy communicates with the trusty relic George stole from a previous job — a skull in a jar — and it helpfully tells her that George can be found in the cemetery. Lucy and Lockwood realize Joplin must have arranged for the Bone Glass to be stolen by Jack Carver, the man who earlier showed up at their door with a knife in his back — who she then kills when he double-crosses her.
Meanwhile, Joplin and George descend into the catacombs, where George finds Fittes agent Kipps being attacked by a rogue spirit. After George saves him, Joplin handcuffs Kipps and threatens him with a knife that George eventually recognizes is the weapon that killed Carver.
When Lucy and George arrive at the cemetery chapel, they notice Bickerstaff’s body is no longer in his iron coffin. They figure it must be in the catacombs, but their descent is interrupted by Kipps’ fellow Fittes agents, who’d followed George to the cemetery to intercept the Bone Glass. The two groups set aside their differences and band together to find the missing agents, George and Kipps. Winkman and his crew approach, so Lucy goes down to rescue George while the rest fight them off — and barely get away.
In the catacombs, Lucy consults the ever-reliable skull in a jar, who says he was there when the Bone Glass was made and that it was created from the bones of seven bodies — whose torment was trapped in the glass to make a window to “the eternal.” The skull says he’s never actually looked in the mirror, because it’s too dangerous: The way to look is through someone else’s eyes — someone weak, curious and vulnerable. Lucy thinks of George.
Nearby, George notices Bickerstaff’s corpse and questions Joplin. She says she’s figured out that kids have the best ability to see into the beyond and wants to use Kipps as a conduit to see (indirectly) into the Bone Glass — to the eternal. George puts two and two together: He was going to be the conduit had they not come across Kipps. But Kipps has lost his ghost-hunting powers — which happens with age — so he’s useless. Joplin lets him go, instead targeting George.
Lucy finds George tied up and offers to look into the mirror to save his life, which Joplin agrees to. But it’s a trick: Lucy has the skull look into it instead. The skull tells Lucy what it sees is not what they expect: The mirror doesn’t give viewers a glimpse of their truest desires; it kills them. George breaks the mirror, but Joplin is still able to gaze into it — which destroys her and frees the trapped souls within it. Lockwood, who’s been shot by The Golden Blade while fighting off Winkman and his crew, recovers in time to save Lucy and George from Bickerstaff’s ghost, who escapes when the mirror explodes. After the dust settles, Lockwood makes peace with Kipps.
But it’s not all happily ever after: The series hints at a larger conspiracy involving Penelope Fittes and The Golden Blade, and it ends on a cliff-hanger just as Lockwood prepares to reveal more about his mysterious past.
So far, we have no clue if Lockwood, Lucy and George will continue their adventures into a second season. But if we get to see Lockwood & Co. once more, there are a few questions we’ll be desperate to get answers to:
Since The Golden Blade admitted he doesn’t work for Fittes, what are he and Penelope up to with all these undercover rendezvous?
As Season 1 ends, Lockwood leads Lucy and George to the mysterious room in his house. What’s Lockwood hiding? Will his past — including what happened to his parents — be explained?
George takes a backseat in most of the adventures in Season 1, but the crew seem to make amends with him at the end, promising that he’s more than just backup. Will he get more involved in their ghostly pursuits come Season 2?
Will Kipps become closer with Lockwood & Co.? Lockwood and Kipps make peace after the Bone Glass is destroyed — but will it last?
Will Winkman go to trial — or to jail — for running an underground black market? And will we see more of his creepy son, Leopold?
And will Lockwood and Lucy — who seem to be milliseconds away from kissing a number of times in Season 1 — continue to get closer? The people want to know.
