I think they are only doing this because the reveal was the worst thing everFrom today's Daily Telegraph. There's a paywall, so, sorry if you can't read the whole piece but I think the headline says it all. I could cut and paste it but it would probably take up a whole page!
Line of Duty will return… and unmask the real H, reveals Adrian Dunbar
The actor, who played Supt Hastings in the police corruption drama, says the actual villain will be identified in a new instalmentwww.telegraph.co.uk
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Line of Duty will return… and unmask the real H, reveals Adrian Dunbar
The actor, who played Supt Hastings in the police corruption drama, says the actual villain will be identified in a new instalment
ByAnita Singh, ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR23 August 2022 • 6:00am
When Line of Duty unmasked bumbling detective Ian Buckells in its final episode, viewers were dismayed.
The nine-year wait to reveal the identity of “H”, the criminal mastermind operating a network of police corruption, ended with the unlikeliest of characters.
However, the star of the show, Adrian Dunbar, has announced that Buckells (played by Nigel Boyle) was not H after all. The search continues, he said, and the real villain will be revealed in a new instalment planned for next year.
“He’s not H. We just got the guy we could actually pin a charge on. We didn’t get H, we got Buckells, the patsy,” said Dunbar, who played anti-corruption boss Ted Hastings.
He told Radio Times that Chief Constable Philip Osborne (Owen Teale) was “probably” the guilty man, “unless there’s another twist and someone’s pulling his strings”.
Bumbling Detective Superintendent Ian Buckells, played by Nigel Boyle CREDIT: Steffan Hill
Dunbar said: “There’s been talk about a movie or a four-parter or two [episodes of] 90 minutes. We’d love to do it again. I’m really hoping something might happen next year,” he said, adding that the show’s writer, Jed Mercurio, had devised “a couple of templates as to how things could go”.
The Line of Duty finale drew a record audience for a drama of 12.8 million but left fans so disappointed that the BBC was forced to defend the show, saying it had “deliberately aimed to wrongfoot viewers’ expectations”
Mercurio appeared to confirm afterwards that Buckells was H, saying: “Going into season six, we made the decision that we were going to reveal H, and then it was a case of, how do we make that the most surprising reveal?”
He said in another interview: “By going for this crossover between incompetence and corruption, rather than a criminal mastermind, it was a down ending. But it couldn’t be a predictable solution.”
Dunbar will return to television this month in Ridley, an ITV drama series in which he plays a retired detective who returns to the force as a consultant.
The actor, who played Supt Hastings in the police corruption drama, says the actual villain will be identified in a new instalment
ByAnita Singh, ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR23 August 2022 • 6:00am
When Line of Duty unmasked bumbling detective Ian Buckells in its final episode, viewers were dismayed.
The nine-year wait to reveal the identity of “H”, the criminal mastermind operating a network of police corruption, ended with the unlikeliest of characters.
However, the star of the show, Adrian Dunbar, has announced that Buckells (played by Nigel Boyle) was not H after all. The search continues, he said, and the real villain will be revealed in a new instalment planned for next year.
“He’s not H. We just got the guy we could actually pin a charge on. We didn’t get H, we got Buckells, the patsy,” said Dunbar, who played anti-corruption boss Ted Hastings.
He told Radio Times that Chief Constable Philip Osborne (Owen Teale) was “probably” the guilty man, “unless there’s another twist and someone’s pulling his strings”.
Bumbling Detective Superintendent Ian Buckells, played by Nigel Boyle CREDIT: Steffan Hill
Dunbar said: “There’s been talk about a movie or a four-parter or two [episodes of] 90 minutes. We’d love to do it again. I’m really hoping something might happen next year,” he said, adding that the show’s writer, Jed Mercurio, had devised “a couple of templates as to how things could go”.
The Line of Duty finale drew a record audience for a drama of 12.8 million but left fans so disappointed that the BBC was forced to defend the show, saying it had “deliberately aimed to wrongfoot viewers’ expectations”
Mercurio appeared to confirm afterwards that Buckells was H, saying: “Going into season six, we made the decision that we were going to reveal H, and then it was a case of, how do we make that the most surprising reveal?”
He said in another interview: “By going for this crossover between incompetence and corruption, rather than a criminal mastermind, it was a down ending. But it couldn’t be a predictable solution.”
Dunbar will return to television this month in Ridley, an ITV drama series in which he plays a retired detective who returns to the force as a consultant.
Mercurio is clearly just making it up as he goes along, it's getting desperate at this point.
He keeps re engineering things and the story just doesn't make sense any more .
The whole H story line should have ended with Hilton .
After the last season he was defending the idea of Buckles being H now suddenly that's a gotcha and he's a patsy?
I think he is seriously over estimating how much the viewers even care at this stage especially after the whole morse code none sense
This show was great for the first 3 seasons, 4 was a drop in quality but still ok, 5 was awful and 6 very poor. The best you can say about 6 is "at least it isn't as bad as season 5"
Why can't he just lay the H storyline to rest and write something new?
Definitely shouldve ended the H storyline an started fresh for S6.
This S7 plan is just a retcon because we all hated the ending. But I think people have moved on from LoD because of how bad the last series ended.
I really don’t understand how people can say “woohoo we will find out who H really is” when the only person it could be is Osborne. The good thing about S6 was it was really suspenseful in places personally I loved E3 - E5! I really don’t see it happening
Urgh. They need to put LoD up against a wall and shoot it.
It’s getting embarrassing. The glory days of The Caddy and Lindsay Denton are just a hazy memory now.
God the Denton days. Inject me!!
It wasn’t. People watched it over and over during lockdown and made up wilder and wilder theories so inevitably people were annoyed when it wasn’t Osborne (or Kate). The ending did make sense and retconning it now would be stupid as heck.
I agree with this, along with the drawn out reveal making people expect a last minute twist because what they’d said had already made it obvious it was Buckells.
Completely agree. I watched the whole six series again recently and it totally made sense. The little clues are there all the way through once you know…
Haha damage control because no one liked the ending.
Definitely.
I don't care how many clues there were to the identity of H, it was dogshite and not good enough.
I’m still disappointed at how it ended. The fact it’s only 3 episodes makes me think they definitely had to cobble something together at the last minute
The whole ending of the last series made it seem very final. Retconning stories is never easy, and could make it even worse.
Despite knowing that this is going to be absolute shite, I will watch it anyway and utterly enrage myself. 
Yeah can’t see how they’ll turn this around in three episodes but I’ll be watching it anyway 🥹
"by 2024"? So in 2023 then...am I being dumb
