The season 2 finale of The Artful Dodger on Hulu & Disney+ may have given fans a swoon-y romantic reunion for Jack and Belle, but Thomas Brodie Sangster and Maia Mitchell's characters may be the only ones enjoying a happy ending. There are a lot of uncertain fates and unanswered questions for the road ahead.
It's still so wild that the concept of this show is "what if the teen pickpocket from Oliver Twist was a surgeon in Australia," but season 2 really rolled with that concept in exciting ways. There were new medical mysteries for Jack and Belle to solve, including a whole outbreak! And their very adorable, but lowkey forbidden, romance had some new hurdles. A handsome detective asked Belle to marry him, promising a love that was more like a And Jack's former pickpocketing mentor Fagin, of course, is as up to stuff as ever.
So who was the serial killer, like, actually?
Inspector Boxer and especially Sneed found out the hard way that Professor McGregor was the one cutting and slicing victims in Devil's Elbow. Tough break for our heroes all around. They've lost a mentor, kind of, and are in serious danger! In a particularly tense part of the finale, McGregor stabs Sneed and while Boxer swoops in and takes out the killer doc we don't know whether or not Sneed survives. Eek!
Does Lady Jane die of cholera?
Thanks to Jack and Belle's medical prowess, the mother of the latter pulls through. Not only did they figure out how to treat cholera, they discovered that the disease spread thanks to a contaminated water supply. It was not airborne after all!
Thinking she was about to die, however, Jane confesses to Belle that the Governor is not her biological father. He's actually her uncle. Dickie Fox, the man who Belle thought was her uncle, impregnated her mother and then bounced. (Until recently, that is, when he returned to town and immediately got involved with Fagin.)
However, after Jack effectively saves Lady Jane's life, she gives Belle her blessing to pursue him romantically. She admits that she was worried about her daughter repeating her own mistakes, but that the fear no longer really applies. What they have is true love! Jack is a good dude, all crime-adjacent activity considering! He was falsely imprisoned at the beginning of the season, after all. That said, at the end of the season he's also leaving on a boat from Port Victory. What?! Nooooo!!
Did Jack a.k.a. Dodger really leave Australia?
Thankfully, Jack did not get on that boat and reunited with Belle on the docks. His plan was to reenlist in the Navy and head to Rio San Janeiro, but, thankfully decided against that at the last second. (He also, to be fair, didn't know that Belle had refused Boxer's marriage proposal.) Who among us does not love it when the person someone is looking for shows up behind them, slightly out of focus at first? It's such a romantic little trope.
What about Fagin?
The old man asked Dodger to drug him in order to fake his death and avoid the consequences of his own actions. But Dr. Jack did too good of a job. At the end of the episode, Fagin wakes up literally six feet under. He's been buried alive, accidentally, by some of his criminal allies! Honestly? Given the fact that his antics earlier in the season corrupted Fanny (not that I'm necessarily against her dark turn) and a major cholera outbreak, maybe he deserves this punishment. Surely he won't die down there... right?
