'Robin Hood' Finale Recap & Ending Explained: Is the Sheriff Dead?

The MGM+ action-adventure series, Robin Hood, concludes its first season with an intense finale, in which the gang of outlaws, which has now turned into a proper army of the poor and the neglected, faces off against the Sheriff of Nottingham and his allies. In the previous episode, the notorious Guy of Gisbourne had made his entry at Nottingham, where he had been sent by King Henry II to deal with the Robin Hood problem. But as Queen Eleanor had rightly pointed out, Gisbourne only threatened the current Sheriff’s position, which now leads to certain unforeseen (perhaps) twists in episode 10 that are going to have serious repercussions in the future.

Spoiler Alert

What is the plan of attack on both sides?

Back in Robin Hood episode 9, the Sheriff of Nottingham had found out about the location of the cave where the outlaws had been living and had shared the knowledge with both Queen Eleanor and then the royal knight, Guy of Gisbourne. Towards the beginning of episode 10, the Sheriff, Gisbourne, and the Earl of Huntingdon meet at Nottingham Castle to discuss their plan, and the strategy made by Gisbourne is based on the assumption that the rebels are unintelligent fighters who can easily be defeated. His plan is to march his troops into the forest and towards the cave in a strategic manner so that the outlaws will be forced to flee towards the nearby canyon. The canyon will obviously serve as a dead-end and leave the outlaws cornered, following which the soldiers can very easily kill them all.

Despite Huntingdon’s support for the plan, the Sheriff immediately reminds him and Gisbourne that executing this plan might not be as easy as it seems, because of the fact that Robin Hood is a shrewd and desperate rebel who will already be prepared for a direct attack. He suggests that they use a bit more strategy in their plan and be more careful in pushing into the forest, which is the home of the outlaws. But Huntingdon and Gisbourne dismiss his concerns, with the latter stating that his tactics will easily corner their opponents, as they will not even realize that they are being attacked until the very last moment. The knight even proudly boasts that no matter whom the notorious Robin Hood has killed or defeated in the past, he will not be able to hold his own in front of an experienced Crusader hero like himself. The sheriff obviously knows how menacing the outlaw can be, especially since he and the others now realize that Lord Warwick must also have been killed by Robin by now, as there has been no word from him. But he chooses to stay silent, both to stoke Gisbourne’s ego and also because he seems to have some plans of his own.

On the other side, Robin wakes up from an intense dream in which his father urged him to be like Aedric the Wild, the Saxon hero who had continued to fight against the Normans and be killed by them even after the others around him had surrendered. Robin soon comes up with a plan to not just survive the attack being planned, but to turn it into an advantageous position for himself and his followers. Although they are going to be severely outnumbered by the soldiers, Robin wants his relatively small group of warriors to outwit them. His plan is for all the outlaws to leave the cave and hide in the forest, letting the soldiers move towards the cave without the knowledge that it is now empty. Robin and his followers would then sneakily approach Nottingham and take the entire city hostage, since it will be least guarded during the attack in the forest, where most of the soldiers will be. By the time the sheriff and his soldiers would realize what had happened and rush back to Nottingham, Robin and the group would fall back to the castle, from where they would fire a barrage of arrows at their opponents before sneaking out of the city and returning to the forest again, once it was safe. Although the plan is definitely quite ambitious, his followers, and most importantly Friar Tuck, support Robin, and the entire gang starts to prepare for what is going to be the biggest violent conflict that they have experienced.

Can Marian help the outlaws?

As part of the preparation for their attack, it is paramount for Robin and his followers to know about the exact timing of the assault, since their plan is very time-sensitive. Without timing their own actions properly, it would be very easy for the soldiers to find and kill them on their journey towards Nottingham Castle, or worse, find and kill all of them at the cave. This is when Marian decides to step up and help her lover, even though it would clearly put her own life at risk. She states that she will return home and dig out information about the soldiers’ attack, since her father, the Earl of Huntingdon, would surely know about the exact timing and route of the plan. Although Robin is absolutely against letting Marian return to her vile father, she insists that this would be the only way for her to contribute to the effort in a significant manner. Thus, she puts aside all fears and worries and instead spends what might just be her last night with Robin making passionate love to him.

The next day, Marian travels to the Locksley estate alongside Milange, who leaves her there, promising to return in the evening, by which time she must gather all the crucial information. Marian has to immediately face her father, who had banished her from the house and the family earlier because of her decision to side with her lover. Now, she begs for his forgiveness, stating that she has been temporarily relieved from her duties at the palace by the queen so that she can focus on mending her relations with her family. Marian lies about having realized how she had wrongly prioritized her love over her father’s good intentions, and her words seem to work on Huntingdon, who welcomes her back to the house. After a few more lofty praises about his strategies and tactics, Huntingdon even states that he wants Marian to be more involved in the family’s running, even though they have had their differences in the past.

Through her clever ways, Marian fishes out the information that the soldiers will not just attack the cave in the forest, but more units from Leicester will be marching towards Nottingham to provide extra security at the city in case of Saxon retaliation. She also has to sneak out of the house in the evening to pass on this information to Milange, which is a risky task, as she has to lace her father’s drink with sedatives to even leave the house unattended. However, her younger brother, Aleppo, seems to sell her out in this instance, as he had possibly warned his father about the sedative, and so Huntingdon is able to run out of the house with his crossbow and shoot at Milange, although he misses. Milange manages to return to the outlaw camp, but Marian is now kept hostage by her own father in a locked room inside her own house. Meanwhile, Robert and his men have to tweak their plan according to the new information, and so they decide to blow up the bridge connecting Nottingham to Leicester, with Friar Tuck leading the charge. 

Do Robin Hood and the Merry Men succeed in their plan?

With Robin Hood and his gang of outlaws now knowing the exact timing of the military attack on their camp, they leave in time and take shelter in the dense forest, laying low to keep an eye on the road. The soldiers, led by the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisbourne, pass by them, with the former sensing that something is wrong because of how quiet the forest is. Once they make it to the cave and realize that it is completely empty, there is some confusion among the soldiers, as Gisbourne believes that the outlaws have fled, while the Sheriff is confident that they have moved from the place in a very organized manner, as is evident from all the signs. A rough sketch made on the ground soon confirms that Robin had been planning an attack on Nottingham Castle, and the soldiers now begin to rush back to the city.

Meanwhile, Robin and his followers make it to Nottingham safely and rather quickly take control of the city and the castle, as the few guards left there are very easy to deal with. By the time the Sheriff and Guy of Gisbourne return, their unit is already divided between protecting the city and fighting off the rebels near the entrance to the forest. When the time is right, Friar Tuck leads a small group to the bridge where the soldiers from Leicester are to arrive at any moment, and despite facing serious obstacles, they do manage to complete the task. Isabel and Gamewell are killed in the effort, and they are the two most significant characters to fall during the bold mission. But ultimately, Robin and his band of followers are able to slip away from Nottingham just as they had planned, meaning that their operation is successful.

What happens to Guy of Gisbourne?

Interestingly, the Sheriff of Nottingham had also been waiting for an opportune moment to execute his very own secret plan, which he’d made with the queen’s counsel. As seen in the previous episode, the Sheriff genuinely wanted to protect his position from Guy of Gisbourne, whose success at Nottingham would surely lead to the current sheriff being fired and even executed for his inability to deal with the trouble. Now, amidst the chaos at Nottingham, the Sheriff tells Gisbourne that he knows a different way to reach the upper floor of the castle, from where Robin and his men are shooting the soldiers. Gisbourne does not suspect anything and rushes into a private room with a group of his men, not even noticing that the place is secluded from the main street. 

He even hurries the Sheriff to move up the stairs fast, and this is when Guy of Gisbourne gets murdered by the Sheriff of Nottingham, who had planned this betrayal from before. The Sheriff’s most trusted commander helps in killing the other soldiers in the room and sacrifices his own life in the process. But the sheriff manages to get away with his lie, as the scene of the crime can easily be said to have been caused by Robin Hood and his dangerous outlaws, just as Queen Eleanor had suggested. The Sheriff then discusses the matter with the Bishop of Hereford at the end of episode 10, confirming that his undesirable partnership with Queen Eleanor has only just started. The fact that the Sheriff has helped the queen with this plan now means that he will also have to help her execute her next plan—to eliminate King Henry II, his own cousin, once he arrives in England.

Does Robert finally avenge his father’s death by killing the Sheriff?

Towards the end of the finale, while fighting on the outskirts of Nottingham, Robert finally gets the chance that he had been waiting for for so long. He gets to have a face-off with the Sheriff of Nottingham once again, and this time the odds are heavily in his favor, since he has already triumphed in all the plans of the day. The two figures clash once again, with Robin still being extremely vengeful over the ruthless execution of his father, whom he regards as an innocent man. The sheriff retorts that he had always tried to help Will Locksley in every situation, but the latter had ultimately given in to his pride and tried to lash out against the authorities by killing one of the guards. What remains unknown to both of them is that it was the Earl of Huntingdon who had created this whole mess, and neither Will Locksley nor even the Sheriff of Nottingham could be completely held responsible for whatever happened. Robin more resolutely states that whatever his father did was a matter of dignity and not pride, and he now starts to fight his arch-nemesis, the Sheriff.

However, something completely different happens to Robert now, who had been contemplating how to get over his vengeful thoughts for quite some time now, after having been told by Tuck to do so. Even at the beginning of this episode, he states that he is unable to forget what had happened to his father and set aside the extreme anger and hatred that engulf his mind every time he gives the matter a thought. Unlike the other times, though, Robert now starts to think of a very different matter during the fight, even though this is really his best chance to achieve what has been his goal for so long. Just before he ran into the Sheriff, Robert had failed to stop the Earl of Huntingdon, who openly stated that he would rush home and kill his own daughter, Marian, just because doing so would hurt Robert more than just directly killing him.

Therefore, Robert now constantly keeps remembering how his beloved Marian is at risk from her own father and how he is riding fast towards the estate at the same time that Robin is technically wasting time fighting the Sheriff. In these tense few minutes, priorities take a shuffle inside Robert’s mind, as he finally considers it much more important to help save Marian than fight and defeat the Sheriff. Essentially, this change of priorities also means that Robert is now able to keep his vengeful thoughts in check by seeking shelter in his thoughts of love instead. Thus, Marian becomes the new driving force in his life, replacing his desire to avenge his father’s death, and the next choice that he makes is an obvious one. Robert sheathes his sword mid-fight and leaves the Sheriff with a promise that their fight will continue some day in the future. Instead, he now swiftly rides to the Locksley estate to rescue his beloved.

Is the Earl of Huntingdon finally dead?

As Huntingdon returns home to fatally punish his daughter, he realizes that Marian had just escaped from the room with the help of her brother, Aleppo, whom she had managed to turn to her side. Robert reaches the spot around the same time, and a terrific fight between the two men ensues. Huntingdon manages to injure Robert, and this is when Marian jumps in to save her lover from her monstrous father. She had already convinced Aleppo to escape on horseback, as the boy had always dreamt of doing, and now joins the fight against the earl. For a moment it seems like Huntingdon might overpower them both, but Marian fights back in the end and drives her sword into her father’s chest. The shock is evident in the eyes of the egoistic Earl of Huntingdon, but he soon falls dead to the ground, meaning that the main antagonist of Robin Hood season 1 dies in the end.

Are Robert and Marian together in the end?

In Robin Hood season 1’s ending, Robert Locksley and Marian Huntingdon manage to stay together as lovers, since there is absolutely no one preventing them from doing so. Marian travels to the royal palace at Westminster once again to meet Queen Eleanor, who grants her freedom and also clemency to Robert as she had earlier promised. But Eleanor also asks Marian to consider being by her side when King Henry II comes to England, since the king would definitely not respect any act of clemency and will surely want to hunt down Robin Hood. Marian agrees to at least consider the proposal, and she shares the same with Robert as well, meaning they can be expected to team up with the queen in the future as well. Meanwhile, Robert and his outlaw friends decide to hide in plain sight by returning to society and living ordinary lives, keeping their real identities secret. He also decides to give away all the money they had stolen to the poor and the needy, thus starting the practice that the legendary Robin Hood is best known for.

What happens to Priscilla?

Priscilla of Nottingham has a particularly sad fate in Robin Hood episode 10, which might go on to become significant in the future. She returns to her home in Nottingham and realizes that she is pregnant with William Marshal’s child. Priscilla has no choice but to share this news with her father, who is absolutely livid and immediately decides to send her away to the convent. He enlists the help of the Bishop to get his daughter to the convent, and Priscilla now tries to play the same manipulative game that she has played throughout the season. She tries to convince the Bishop to help her escape the convent and travel to Rome, where she hopes to reunite with her lover, and states that she will help and support the Bishop in return when she takes the position of her father after his death. Although the bishop acts convinced and also tells Priscilla to go ahead with her plan, he ultimately betrays her by having informed the convent authorities about her attempted escape. Thus, Priscilla gets dragged back to the convent, being forced to try and carve an escape through letters, in which she significantly promises to describe in detail the situation in Nottingham, Robin Hood’s real identity, and Queen Eleanor’s many questionable decisions. 

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