Suranne Jones and Rose Leslie Return for Vigil’s Most Dangerous Case Yet — As BBC Thriller Heads Into the Arctic for Explosive Season 3

Vigil has already sent Suranne Jones beneath the ocean and into a world of deadly drone warfare. For its third series, the hit BBC thriller has found somewhere even more unforgiving to put her.

The Arctic.

Jones returns as DCI Amy Silva alongside Rose Leslie as DI Kirsten Longacre for a new investigation centered on a remote research station, a murdered member of a covert British special forces operation and an escalating struggle between nations competing for influence over the Arctic and its resources.

For Jones, the continued ambition of the series is precisely what makes Vigil special.

“This is kick-ass,” she said, proudly describing it as a “big, ballsy, prime time BBC show” led not simply by two women, but by two women whose characters are now married and raising a family together.

And after the extraordinary success of the previous two installments, the stakes are once again considerably higher.

From 13 million viewers to an entirely new world

When Vigil premiered in 2021, Amy Silva’s first investigation took audiences aboard a submarine and became a major television event.

The first series attracted more than 13 million viewers.

Its second installment arrived in December 2023 and shifted the action into another military environment, this time involving deadly drone technology.

Despite television audiences becoming increasingly fragmented across traditional broadcasting and streaming services, more than nine million people watched the second series.

Now Vigil is reinventing itself again.

Season 3 moves Amy and Kirsten into the Arctic, where the killing of someone involved in a secret British special forces mission threatens to become much more than a murder investigation.

They need to identify the killer while navigating a potentially explosive international confrontation.

Suranne Jones is proud of what ‘Vigil’ represents

For Jones, the scale of the thriller is only one reason she remains enthusiastic about returning.

She is equally proud of the relationship at its center.

Amy and Kirsten are no longer simply colleagues whose personal relationship develops alongside an investigation. They are married and have two children.

Jones said she and Leslie have consistently worked to ensure the couple’s private moments carry emotional significance, even when the demands of the thriller leave only a small amount of screen time for their relationship.

“Rose and I have always taken the personal scenes and made sure that there is some weight to them,” Jones explained.

Even if they receive only one or two such scenes, the actors try to make them matter because, as Jones put it, the connection between Amy and Kirsten has “always” been central to the story.

She believes their determination is also one reason viewers continue responding to the characters.

“They keep fighting,” Jones said, describing the pair as hopeful people trying to improve situations even when the systems surrounding them fail.

Amy Silva heads to the Arctic

The latest investigation presented an entirely different challenge for Jones.

“We’ve seen Amy underwater, we’ve seen her fighting drones, and now series three is set in the Arctic,” she said.

Production took Jones and Leslie to Svalbard, giving them the opportunity to experience the landscape in which the new story unfolds.

The scenes there were filmed near the beginning of production, something Jones believes helped the cast understand the environment their characters were entering.

The experience also took them well beyond ordinary tourist locations.

“Rose and I felt like we were just on top of the world,” Jones recalled.

There were reindeer outside the breakfast room in the mornings, while the actors also got behind the controls of snow buggies.

The temperatures required serious preparation.

Everyone had to layer up against the Arctic cold — although that created an unexpected problem when production later returned to Glasgow.

The costumes still required all those layers.

The weather did not.

“We were too hot,” Jones joked.

Season 3 finally gives Amy and Kirsten more time together

One of the changes Leslie particularly enjoyed this time was having significantly more screen time opposite Jones.

The structure of previous seasons often separated Amy and Kirsten while investigations unfolded.

Season 3 allows the partnership to become more central once Amy joins Kirsten in Svalbard midway through the story and they begin working the case together.

For Jones, reuniting with Leslie was one of the highlights of returning to Vigil.

“Rose is always my standout of filming Vigil because it’s always gorgeous to see her and work with her,” she said.

“We didn’t stop talking the whole time.”

Leslie was equally enthusiastic.

She described Jones as “utterly divine” and praised both the energy and joy her co-star brings to their work.

For Leslie, the additional scenes in the third series have allowed Amy and Kirsten’s relationship to progress in a way it could not during the first two installments.

“I feel really for series three that our relationship has developed more than in one and two,” she said.

Rose Leslie returned to ‘Vigil’ after becoming a mother

The years between seasons have also brought major changes away from the screen.

Leslie, 39, married her Game of Thrones co-star Kit Harington in 2018. They welcomed a son in 2021 and a daughter in 2023.

Jones noted that Leslie went through two pregnancies across the years in which Vigil was being made, something that became another shared experience between the co-stars.

Jones, 48, is also a mother and joked that while Leslie was experiencing pregnancy hormones, she was at the other end of the spectrum with perimenopause.

For Leslie, returning to acting after having children brought both practical relief and a new perspective.

She said she felt “incredibly grateful” to have jobs waiting for her after giving birth.

Knowing she could continue earning while growing her family provided what she described as a “mental safety net.”

But she also spoke candidly about the pressures facing working mothers.

“We’re f***ing lionesses,” Leslie said.

She described motherhood and work as an ongoing act of “spinning many plates” — trying to maintain a career while ensuring children feel secure, loved and supported.

A new season means an almost entirely new cast

While Jones and Leslie provide continuity, Vigil has built its identity around changing environments and supporting characters.

Each investigation effectively drops Amy into another unfamiliar world.

That means much of the cast changes from one series to the next.

Jones considers that one of the show’s strengths.

“What’s also lovely is having a new cast for every series of Vigil because we’re in a different world every series,” she explained.

Among the performers joining the latest installment is Eric Godon, who plays Mayor Korotayev.

Jones recalled that the Belgian actor would bring his own coffee to set and occasionally arrive with Belgian chocolates for his colleagues.

Those small rituals helped create a close atmosphere among cast and crew despite the intensity of the material.

Jones described the production as being like “a band of brothers,” with everyone working together as one team.

Amy and Kirsten are facing more than a murder

The stars are understandably reluctant to reveal too much about the new mystery.

But the basic setup promises the combination of conspiracy, danger and large-scale action that has defined the drama.

Kirsten is newly returned from maternity leave when the investigation draws the characters into a murder connected to a covert British special forces mission.

The killing unfolds against a much larger geopolitical backdrop.

Different nations are competing for influence over the Arctic and its resources as the polar climate changes.

That leaves Amy and Kirsten attempting not only to catch a murderer but to prevent the situation from escalating into an international confrontation.

Explosions, deaths and characters with hidden agendas once again complicate their investigation.

This time, however, the pressure could threaten both their careers and their marriage.

Amy is once again somewhere she doesn’t understand

Putting Amy Silva into unfamiliar environments has become one of Vigil’s defining storytelling devices.

Jones believes that uncertainty is essential to the character.

“Each series also brings new challenges with Amy not knowing her surroundings,” she said.

Every new investigation comes with different rules, different people and a different power structure.

Amy therefore has to determine exactly how much authority she possesses while simultaneously questioning whether those around her are telling the truth.

Jones said Amy and Kirsten are frequently kept in the dark.

Their job is to identify what is missing from the version of events they have been given and assemble those fragments themselves.

In the Arctic, where murder becomes entangled with covert operations and competing national interests, finding those gaps could prove more dangerous than ever.

‘Vigil’ returns bigger, colder and more personal

The basic formula that made Vigil successful remains intact.

Amy Silva enters another closed and unfamiliar world.

Someone is dead.

Powerful people know more than they are willing to admit.

And uncovering the truth carries consequences far beyond the original crime.

But Season 3 also gives the drama something Jones and Leslie have wanted more of: Amy and Kirsten together.

They are now wives and parents as well as investigators, meaning the danger surrounding the case is no longer limited to their professional lives.

That combination of blockbuster-scale thriller and personal drama is exactly what Jones remains proud of.

After more than 13 million viewers for its submarine mystery and more than nine million for its second case, Vigil has once again abandoned familiar territory.

This time, Amy and Kirsten are heading to one of the most isolated places on Earth — where a single murder could become the spark for something much bigger.

Vigil Series 3 returned to BBC One on August 30, with the opening two episodes also available on BBC iPlayer.