The Guinness siblings have had a few months to breathe since the chaos of May, but peace is a luxury they cannot afford. By August 1868, the grief has cooled into something harder, sharper — strategy. Edward is no longer just the younger brother with a vision; he is becoming the family’s de facto prime minister, pulling levers, drafting plans, and quietly reshaping both the brewery and Dublin itself to fit his idea of the future.

Anne’s storyline takes us far from the polished rooms of St. James’s Gate, into the raw heart of Ireland’s past. Her journey through the Guinness estates lands her in Cloonboo, a village scarred by the Great Famine. The landscape is hauntingly beautiful, but its people are haunted — by hunger, death, and neglect. When Anne suffers a miscarriage, there — a child she didn’t even know she was carrying — Sultan (Hilda Fay) steps in, saving her physically while forcing her to confront her own conscience. This moment becomes Anne’s turning point. Her grief and guilt twist into resolve: she will dedicate herself to helping Ireland’s poor, even if her brothers scoff. Her proposal to invest 10% of Guinness profits into housing and food is more than charity — it is a declaration that she will not let the empire be built only on profit and politics.

Back in Dublin, Arthur’s personal drama finally finds its solution, though not its resolution. Enter Olivia Charlotte Hedges-White (Danielle Galligan), all sharp edges and sharper wit. She doesn’t flatter, she doesn’t charm — she negotiates. Their marriage will be a contract, not a love story: a mariage blanc that secures Arthur’s public image while protecting his private life. Olivia’s candor disarms him, her pragmatism matches his own, and their arrangement becomes strangely compelling. It is not a romance, but it is an alliance — and in this family, that might matter more.

Meanwhile, Edward meets Byron Hedges (Jack Gleeson, yes, our eternal Joffrey from Game of Thrones), the charismatic wild card who bursts into the Guinness plan like a shot of whiskey. Byron is dangerous, charming, and already halfway to America, where he promises to pave the way for Guinness beer — if the family is willing to deal with the Fenian Brotherhood. Edward takes the gamble. In his hands, benevolence is a strategy: pensions for workers, health benefits, social programs — all designed to create loyalty, votes, and power that will deliver Arthur’s election and secure the family’s grip on Dublin.

Ellen, ever the firebrand, is arrested for leading a protest and receives an unexpected olive branch: an invitation from Edward to tea. She resists, but Rafferty, equal parts threat and temptation, nudges her toward the meeting. What follows is one of the episode’s best scenes: Edward pouring two glasses of Guinness and using them as a metaphor, letting the beer settle halfway through as he argues that Ireland, too, must “settle” before rushing into independence. It’s patronizing and persuasive at once — exactly the kind of politics that makes Edward both admirable and terrifying.

By the end of the hour, the pieces are in place: Arthur’s marriage will give him the respectability he needs to enter Parliament, Edward has aligned the family with Byron and, indirectly, with the Brotherhood, and Anne has found a moral mission that could either save or sink the family name. The harp of Brian Boru becomes the new symbol of Guinness, to Arthur’s disgust but Edward’s quiet triumph.

The episode closes not with fire but with a toast — Ellen raising a glass and, perhaps, beginning a fragile détente with the family she once sought to ruin. But make no mistake: this is only a pause. The storm is still coming. Marriage, expansion, politics — and a brewing peace with the Fenians — may hold the Guinness empire together for now, but the cracks are already visible. And when they split open, the cost will be higher than any of them can imagine.