‘Wolf Hall’: What to Remember About the Story Before ‘The Mirror and the Light’

Think the years-long hiatuses between streaming TV seasons are bad? Wolf Hall says, “Hold my mead.”

The follow-up series Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light debuts on PBS’s Masterpiece on Sunday, March 23, at 9/8c, nearly a full decade after the original Wolf Hall aired stateside.

2015’s Wolf Hall adapted two of Hilary Mantel’s historical novels for the screen, the 2009 book of the same name and the 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies. And Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light adapts the final novel of the trilogy, picking up right where the series Wolf Hall left off.

But let’s unwind the scroll a little more and get you reacquainted with what Wolf Hall depicted so many years ago.

The series starts with King Henry VIII (Damian Lewis) firing Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce) as his lord chancellor after Wolsey failed to get Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon (Joanne Whalley) annulled through order of the pope.

Rising to power in Wolsey’s shadow is Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), a blacksmith’s son turned mercenary and hustler turned lawyer and secret Protestant reformer, who loses his wife and daughters to sickness in Episode 1. Cromwell’s support for Wolsey pits him against Thomas More (Anton Lesser), Wolsey’s successor. But Cromwell does find assistance (with strings) from the Duke of Norfolk (Bernard Hill).

Once he gets an audience with the king, Cromwell continues advocating for Wolsey. Despite Cromwell’s efforts, though, Wolsey is banished to the north. He tells Cromwell to curry favor with Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy), Henry’s mistress, who still has a grudge against Wolsey for intervening in her romance with nobleman Harry Percy (Harry Lloyd) years prior out of fear that the Boleyns would become too powerful. But it’s Anne’s sister Mary (Charity Wakefield), another of Henry’s mistresses, who takes a liking to Cromwell.

Henry is also taking a liking to Cromwell, even summoning him to his bedside after having a distressing dream — and afterward, Cromwell returns to his own bed alongside Johane Williamson (Saskia Reeves) his late wife’s married sister.

Then, however, comes the news that Wolsey has died. It was Harry Percy who arrested Wolsey on Anne’s say-so, after which Wolsey fell ill and died. Amid Cromwell’s grief — and his determination for vengeance — he gets one step closer to Henry when he is appointed a member of the king’s council.

Cromwell works to get Parliament to make Henry the head of the Church of England, not the pope. His efforts upset Katherine, whose nephew is Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Johane, meanwhile, worries Cromwell will become a target of More’s anti-heretic arrests. More, it turns out, knows Cromwell has been communicating with reformers. But in the end, Cromwell’s bill passes in Parliament, and More resigns.

Cromwell starts growing fond of Jane Seymour (Kate Phillips), one of the ladies in Anne’s court, even though he’s still sleeping with Johane. Anne, meanwhile, is dealing with her own potential scandals. Percy claims he and Anne married in secret, but Cromwell gets Percy to backtrack on that claim after calling out Percy’s many debts.

Henry and Anne get married — once in France, and again in England — while Mary and Cromwell have a near-kiss, and Jane thanks Cromwell for a gift he had sent to her.

Cromwell continues to work his way into Henry’s good graces — he helps the king nullify his marriage to Katherine and helps Anne ensure that her children would be Henry’s heirs.

But Cromwell also sees what happens to those who oppose Henry’s agenda. His friend James Bainham (Jonathan Aris) is burned at the stake for disseminating the New Testament in English instead of the traditional Latin, and More is beheaded after refusing to recognize Henry as the head of the church.

Meanwhile, Cromwell gets closer to Jane Seymour, even deciding to visit her family home of Wolf Hall. But Cromwell finds a new romantic rival for her affections, Henry himself, who’s becoming increasingly resentful of Anne’s seeming inability to produce a male heir. (Instead, Anne has a daughter named Elizabeth.) Cromwell starts working with the Seymours to help them advance their favor with the king, but he has to take care not to make an enemy of Anne, who already took down Wolsey. That balancing act becomes trickier once Henry asks Cromwell to help free him from his marriage to Anne.

Cromwell hears from Jane Rochford (Jessica Raine), Anne’s sister-in-law and one of her ladies-in-waiting, that Anene has been canoodling with brother George Boleyn (Edward Holcroft), Jane’s husband. Jane also gives Cromwell a tip-off about Anne sleeping with a musician named Mark Smeaton (Max Fowler), who eventually confesses to the affair.

Anne is arrested, as are five men who have been keeping her company: Mark Smeaton, George Boleyn, and the courtiers Harry Norris (Luke Roberts), Francis Weston (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), and William Brereton (Alastair Mackenzie). Cromwell remembers that Boleyn, Norris, Weston, and Brereton all mocked Wolsey after his death.

And in the Wolf Hall finale, all six of those arrested are put to death, and Anne’s beheading seems to weigh heavily on Cromwell.

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Now, The Mirror and the Light will continue the story, as Henry moves on to a marriage to Jane Seymour, and Cromwell continues his climb to power and wealth.

“Cromwell, a man with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, and no private army,” Masterpiece says in a press release. “Navigating the moral complexities that accompany the exercise of power in this brutal and bloody time, Cromwell is caught between his desire to do what is right and his instinct to survive. But in the wake of Henry VIII having executed his queen, no one is safe.”

Adds Colin Callender, CEO of production company Playground: “Intimate, thrilling, and deeply moving, The Mirror and the Light shines a fresh light on the politics of power and the personal price paid by those who wield it. Cromwell’s story is as contemporary as ever – a story of loyalty and betrayal that just happens to be about people 500 years ago.”

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, U.S. Premiere, Sunday, March 23, 9/8c, PBS