What happened to Zilpha?

The estranged daughter of Horace Delaney and James’s half-sister, Zilpha Delaney (Oona Chaplin) was thrown by the sudden reappearance of James, who she had long believed to be dead. Suffering at the hands of a stern and abusive husband, Zilpha spent season one desperate to reconnect with James, constantly being thwarted by her husband’s reluctance to let her interact with her half-brother.

Although she is married, Zilpha cannot repress her feelings for James. (After all, this is Tom Hardy we’re talking about.) She also struggles with becoming pregnant, a fact which enrages her husband who humiliates and shames Zilpha for her inner desires.

Season one brings a ghastly twist to Zilpha’s story as she murders her husband with a hairpin during the night. When she expects James to embrace her into his life, she is shaken and disappointed when he instead rejects her. Thrown into a depressed haze, she writes James a final letter and, at the end of the first season, throws herself into the Thames.

Or does she?

It does certainly look to be the case. We see Zilpha step onto the ledge of a bridge and fling herself over the edge. But James doesn’t seem to think that this is the case. When talking with Horaces’s wife Lorna Bow (Jessie Buckley), he tells her that he would have felt her death had it been real.

Whether he believes this out of some strange sibling connection or from the depths of the romantic undertones that lay between the two throughout the show, we aren’t sure. But if James doesn’t buy it, then we don’t either.

Three burning questions we have ahead of Taboo season 2