Rivals returned this week with six episodes to conclude its second series, putting Bella Maclean's Taggie O’Hara back at the center of the show’s most awkward creative problem. The Disney+ drama is still built on adultery, rivalries and a large cast, but the review says the romance being pushed to the front has not been given a character strong enough to carry it.
Bella Maclean and Taggie O’Hara
Bella Maclean plays Taggie O’Hara, the character described as having “big eyes, making nice canapés, and being dyslexic.” That is the point where the review stops sounding like a soap summary and starts sounding like a warning: Taggie is being pushed inexorably together with Rupert Campbell-Black, yet her personality is presented as too thin to support the endgame the series appears to want.
That weakness matters because the second series is not easing off. Six episodes now have to carry the remaining storylines to their end, and the show is already working through Monica Baddingham’s death after she uncovered Tony Baddingham’s infidelity, Declan O’Hara’s Yeats documentary, and the fallout from Lizzie and Freddie's affair.
Rupert Campbell-Black’s problem
Rupert Campbell-Black is still the series’ loudest force. He says, “There’s probably been a sleeper since we started,” a line that fits a story built on hidden betrayals and leaks, including the mole inside The Venturer camp whose disclosures threaten the franchise bid. The review also quotes Minty asking, “have you taken that girl’s virginity yet?” — a blunt reminder that the show is still moving its romantic material faster than its emotional foundations.
There is a business-like logic to the return: Rivals is not selling restraint, it is selling volume, and six episodes is enough room to close the current run without pretending the show has suddenly become tidy. It remains a high-class soap opera with racier sex scenes, but the review’s friction is clear enough — the characters are abundant, the subplots are plentiful, and the central romance is being asked to do more work than Taggie O’Hara has been written to handle.
Six episodes, one weak link
William Butler Yeats supplies the review’s sharpest frame with “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” and the line lands because Rivals keeps stacking chaos around a centre that the review thinks is underpowered. Declan O’Hara’s family story has already moved through betrayal, grief and a documentary airing, while Nafessa Williams’s Cameron Cook has moved back to America after her sexual intrigue with Tony Baddingham ends, then returns for the reemergence of Patrick.
The clean reading is that the final six episodes will decide whether the series can turn Taggie and Rupert into a believable finish or whether the show’s biggest romance stays a mismatch between writing and intention. For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: the second series is now in its closing stretch, and the show is asking them to buy into Taggie O’Hara even though the review says she has so far been reduced to “big eyes, making nice canapés, and being dyslexic.”
