
There is a downside to the traditional way of watching TV, waiting until a specific time for each episode. With The Musketeers, we’ve seen it get pushed back several times for rugby, football and Comic Relief, and now, in the UK, we’ve got to wait a whole week for next week’s conclusion to this thrilling episode (those darn Americans are fine, what with BBC America). In “The Accused”, we got a perfect penultimate episode, well-paced and exciting as it tied together loose threads from the season. Basically, they’re all gonna die.

Even the occasional misstep in this episode wasn’t altogether bad. Catherine returned to get her revenge on Milady, in something of an anti-climax. Hopefully Athos was wrong in declaring “This ends here”, because otherwise, that was a waste of the character and entire storyline. (Her method of vengeance was pretty funny, though – how did she know where Milady was going to walk? Did she just have nooses set up all over Paris for the dramatic reveal?) But at least this led to more Athos and Milady plot, as the two snuck around tunnels and kissed at inopportune moments.
Probably the most shocking moment of the episode came with the execution of Lemay. The camera cut away only at the last moment as the sword swung towards his neck, and then lingered on Constance’s screaming, traumatised face. True, Lemay was only a minor recurring character, but we were really rooting for him to win Constance over. The relatively abrupt death is a reminder before the finale that anyone not wearing the Musketeer badge is fair game for the chop.