Death in Paradise teases character return – with potentially dangerous consequences

Family dynamics can be complicated, as Death in Paradise's Mervin knows all too well.

He first arrived in Saint Marie to track down his mother Dorna, who was given up for adoption as a young child. But that reunion didn't happen because she had been murdered a few months prior – a mystery which Mervin himself uncovered and then managed to solve.

But little did he know that he also had a half brother, Solomon, who he eventually came face to face with, after some hesitation – although it was a far cry from the introduction he had hoped for or envisaged.

"I think phrases like ‘two peas in a pod’, do not apply," said Don Gilet ahead of season 15 (via the BBC). "They couldn't be more opposite.

"There's Mervin and then there's this guy who is on the opposite side of the tracks... he's having to accept that whatever his notions were about what Solomon could be like, it might not be like that."

That became painfully apparent when Solomon stole all of Mervin's belongings after the DI refused to lend him some money, which resulted in a confrontation between the pair which saw Mervin knocked into a swimming pool by his sibling.

Solomon did eventually apologise for his behaviour and returned Mervin's possessions, but there was no happy conclusion.

While Mervin was still holding out hope that they might be able to start again and really build something, Solomon made the executive decision to keep his distance.

He hopped on a boat to Antigua to take care of some business there – and that, it seemed, was that.

But more fool us for thinking that was the end of Solomon.

In the most recent episode (Friday 27 February), Mervin discovered their mother had left all of her estate to his brother – news which he wasn't surprised or vexed by. But he was disappointed that Solomon had put the house up for sale straight off the bat, and had arranged for everything in it to be removed by a clearance company and auctioned off.

"I thought we'd at least chat about it first," he explained to Naomi. "It all seems so rushed to me. I would have liked at least a last look around the place, maybe keep something of hers to remember her by."

Naomi then encouraged her colleague to call his brother and after some deliberation, Mervin took her advice. But his efforts were unsuccessful. Solomon wouldn't pick up the phone as poor Mervin continued to blame himself for the pair going their separate ways.

Yet, it looks like they are about to be reunited – and in dramatic fashion.

After Naomi suggested her partner travel to Antigua to find Solomon, an initially resistant Mervin takes a day off work to do just that – which is as clear a sign as any that this is highly important to him.

"I don't even know if he wants to see me. But hey, what's the worst that can happen?" he says. But the unsettling score and hard cut to black suggests that the worst might just be about to happen.

Flash forward to a gravely serious Naomi driving at speed to address to her colleagues with some urgent news.

"I think something has happened to the inspector," she says, and she's not wrong.

In another scene, a groggy-looking Mervin can be seen tied to a chair, his arms behind his bag, in an unknown location.

"What the hell's going on?" he says, before a figure appears before him, off camera.

"You."

Is Solomon responsible for this? "Like you said, I am trouble," he said to the detective before he departed Saint Marie. "And no disrespect to you bro, but ain't much good to me having a police officer around."

But is he capable of such a thing? And what is his end game?

Or (and we rally hope it's an 'or') is there another explanation that will absolve Solomon and crucially, rebuild their relationship?

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Death in Paradise airs on Fridays at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

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