What is Fergus's mother up to in Harry Wild? The season sits on her real motive until the last episode

Paula Kenny, played by Samantha Mumba (yes, "Gotta Tell You" Samantha Mumba, a fact I'm still processing), walks back into her son's life after five years of radio silence. She's polite. She's remorseful. She has excellent hair. Fergus, correctly, does not trust a single second of it.

The setup: a phone call and a woman from Florida

Season 1 ends on Fergus getting a call from the mother who walked out on him and his little sister Liberty. Season 2 opens with her in the flesh, explaining that she went to Florida, built a real estate business and has now realized what's missing in her life is her children. Which is a lovely thing to realize, five years and one time zone later.

Fergus wants nothing to do with it. Harry, who is nobody's idea of a soft touch, actually thinks he should hear the woman out. This is the first sign the show is going to make you sit in the discomfort for a while.

Paula spends most of the season doing everything a reformed parent should do, and the show lets you wonder the whole time whether the performance is the point.

What she's actually after

Here's what unspools across the episodes, without the show ever tipping its hand early:

• Paula reconnects with Liberty first, because Liberty is younger and easier and doesn't remember the leaving as sharply
• She keeps circling Fergus with apologies and offers, none of which he accepts
• She quietly builds the case that Malky, the kids' dad, is unfit (not a hard case, to be fair)
• And in the finale, the cards go on the table: she wants custody of Liberty, and she wants to take her to the States

So the mystery of the season isn't a locked room or a Zoom strangling. It's "is Mom here for her kids or for a do-over?" And the answer the finale gives is: both, in a way that leaves Fergus lawyering up.

The kid whose whole deal is abandonment

Rohan Nedd, who plays Fergus, has been pretty clear about why his character reacts the way he does. Talking to Collider, he put it like this:

"There's a deep-seated fear of someone walking out on him again that immediately jumps straight to the surface."

Which is the whole engine of the Paula story. Fergus raised his sister. He's the parent in that house. Someone showing up to relieve him of that job reads, to him, like someone showing up to take his family.

Mumba didn't think she'd survive the season either

The funniest part, in hindsight, is that the actress playing the most suspicious woman in Dublin assumed she was a one-season guest star. Mumba told The Irish World she figured Paula was disposable:

"When I first came in, I didn't know if I'd be in another season. I kind of thought they'd probably write her out to be honest because they could have easily."

Instead Paula stuck around. The custody fight carries into Season 3, where she eventually sells the business and moves back to Ireland, and she's back again in Season 4 and the upcoming fifth season. The writers, Mumba says, "love creating that kind of mystery and intrigue," which is a very diplomatic way of saying they enjoy making Fergus sweat.

In conclusion

Fergus's mother is up to exactly what a teenage boy with abandonment issues would assume she's up to, which is the rare case of the paranoid kid being right. The twist isn't that Paula is a villain. The twist is that she's sincere and self-serving at the same time, and the show makes you watch that dawn on everyone slowly.

Anyway, I'd trust Harry's pub friend Glenn with my life before I'd trust anyone who opens with "I've been in Florida."