Protection ITV ending explained: will there be a second series of Siobhan Finneran show

• Protection concludes on ITV in just a few hours.
• Siobhan Finneran leads the cast of the gripping thriller.
• But how did it end - and will there be a second series?

Spoilers for ITV’s Protection up to and including the end of episode six.

Viewers have been kept utterly captivated by ITV’s latest crime drama as the broadcaster’s strong start to 2025 continues. Protection stars Siobhan Finneran as DI Liz Nyles who has her world turned upside down after a bad day at work.

The show has spent the past few weeks weaving an increasingly twisty yarn of death, betrayal and deception set in the world of witness protection. So you might be wondering how exactly it came to an end.

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See where they filmed Protection - as some stunning locations are featured. Remind yourself of who is in the cast as well as Siobhan.

Will there be a second series of Protection?

The final episode of Protection’s debut series is set to be broadcast on ITV at 9pm today (March 31). However the full boxset is already out and you may have devoured it already.

ITV has not yet announced a decision on a second series of Protection - but the broadcaster does tend to wait until after a show has concluded before making such decisions. It has already been broadcast abroad starting with BritBox in North America in late 2024 and Australia earlier this year.

Expect word on the show’s future in due course.

ITV’s Protection ending explained

Full spoilers for all of the six-part crime drama up to and including the end of episode six. Don’t read further if you haven’t seen the end of Protection.

Picking-up from the cliff-hanger at the end of the last episode, DS Raj Kohli (Chaneil Kular) tracks down Liz and informs her that Edward Crowther (Alec Newman) had died, shortly after her visit to him in prison.

Raj and Liz go looking for evidence and discover divorce papers signed by DS Paul Brandice (Barry Ward) prior to his death but not his wife Gemma (Nichola Burley). They also find a picture of Liz’s sister.

But before they could investigate further, Liz gets a frantic call that her dad (David Hayman) - who has been diagnosed with dementia earlier in the season - has gone missing. With her daughter Jasmine (Jodie Price), Liz eventually finds him at his old house and is badly injured after having a fall while trying to open the window.

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Meeting with Soran Ahmadi (Waj Ali), who is also in Witness Protection, she gets the name of a person to meet with - Yaran Nouri (Phillip Ardetti). He explains how he provided heroin to Crowther in exchange for weapons for the fight in Kurdistan.

While speaking with Yaran, Liz notices she is being watched by someone out on the street. However while on the phone to Raj, they are overheard by a suspicious man, who ends up taking them both at gunpoint.

After driving to a woodland area, the gunman threatens Liz to give up what she had on Brandice’s ‘insurance’ against the shadowy Nigel Frankton (Jonathan Cake). Raj attempts to disarm the man and Liz manages to escape, but not before he is shot in the scuffle and potentially fatally wounded.

Despite getting away by flagging a lorry driver, Liz gets sent a video from a withheld number showing her daughter and father being filmed in hospital. She is told to bring what she has found to the McLennan safehouse from the first episode - to protect her family.

Liz is confronted by Frankton at gunpoint, making her handover what she had discovered. He then does a classic villain monologue and implies he’s going to kill her and make it look like a suicide.

Before he can pull the trigger, they get into a fight and the gun gets loose. Frankton eventually manages to recover the weapon and as he is about to kill Liz, DCI Hannah Wheatley (Katherine Kelly) arrives with armed police and saves her.

Liz is rescued but is once again arrested by Wheatley for breach of bail. After she is released again she confronts DCI Amanda Kelman (Nadine Marshall), who attempts to explain her reasons for being the “leak” - believing she was part of a credible intelligence operation.

Kelman urges Liz to hide a “bad man’s crimes to protect the national good” and promises that the charges will be dropped against her.

In the dying embers of the episode, Raj is revealed to be alive - albeit with an arm in a sling. He tells Liz he’s been offered a promotion, in exchange for silence on the events involving Frankton.

After Brandice’s funeral, DI Richard Bewley (Andrew Knott) reveals that the timeline of his movements before his death showed that he had all the information he needed before sleeping with Liz. Suggesting that he wasn’t just using her after all.

The final scene shows Liz calling her daughter and saying “I think everything is going to be okay” before throwing a flower on Brandice’s grave. It leaves plenty of threads open if the show was to return for a second series.

See where Protection was filmed and who else is in the cast. But do you want to see a second series of Protection? Let me know your thoughts: [email protected].