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04th May 2022

Derry Girls to air special flashback episode next week

Ellen Fitzpatrick

Only two episodes left.

We’re heading back in time next week on Derry Girls as Ma Mary and Aunt Sarah are heading back to their own school days.

The second last episode ever is out next Tuesday and as we come to an end of the series, creator Lisa McGee has said that she wants to pay tribute to the mother figures on the show.

Opening up to Digital Spy, Lisa revealed that the upcoming episode will pay tribute to Mary and Sarah in a way we haven’t seen before, revealing the “horrific” way they had to grow up while in school in Derry in the 70s.

“Writing this show, honestly – and this might sound a bit sentimental – it’s been a real learning experience for me as a person, not just a writer. I don’t talk about a lot of the terrible things,” she said.

“In Northern Ireland, you handle it with humour, and you just crack on. I think for the parents’ generation, it was a war zone. It was horrific what they went through, and we just didn’t appreciate it.

“We just moaned and then complained when we were not allowed to do anything. By writing the show and looking back I realised why they were so strict, why the school was so strict, what they had seen, what they lived through, and I have such an appreciation and respect. I’m so embarrassed at how we behaved now!”

She added that she had always wanted to write a tribute for those women, as it was typically the women of Derry who had done most of the workforce at the time.

Explaining it as “mammy culture”, Lisa says there were few jobs for men at the time and women needed to earn a wage, and this episode will be her tribute to that.

As this is the final series, this was Lisa’s last chance to pay tribute like this and it was the first episode of the new series to be pitched to Channel 4.

Not only will this air, but Lisa confirmed that the final episode will surround a very important part of history – the Good Friday Agreement.