Under Salt Marsh Episode 5: Did James Rees run away or was he kidnapped? Here's what we know

Under Salt Marsh Episode 5 aired on Sky Atlantic on February 20, 2026. The Sky Original series is set in the fictional Welsh coastal town of Morfa Halen, a small town situated between the towering mountains and a rapidly approaching sea.

The cast of the show includes Kelly Reilly as a former detective, now a teacher, Jackie Ellis, and Rafe Spall as DI Eric Bull, the detective assigned to head a murder investigation. The 6-episode series was released on Sky Atlantic on January 30, 2026.

Under Salt Marsh Episode 5, which is the penultimate in the series, is already being termed as its most explosive one. Floods are on the rise and have isolated Morfa Halen, and there is still a murderer on the loose. As the town erupted into chaos and the investigation became even more dangerous, the Episode concluded on a sensational cliffhanger: young James Rees, the closest friend of the murdered boy Cefin Hill, disappeared.

The question viewers were left with was: did James run off by himself, or was he kidnapped by the same person who was killing people and tearing this small town apart?

Under Salt Marsh Episode 5: Did James Rees run away, or was he kidnapped?

Under Salt Marsh Episode 5 opened with Bull and Jackie dragging the body of August Antonov out of the water. August was a farm labourer who had earlier been paid £50,000 to remain silent over the illegal dumping of waste in Morfa Halen. He had also been aware that the body of Jackie’s missing niece, Nessa, had been buried at the landfill. He seemed to have been attempting to blow the whistle on the waste operation before his death.

Meanwhile, an important new fact was revealed regarding the night of Cefin's death. Jackie realized that Cefin had never visited Solomon's farm the night he died. Actually, he and his friend James Rees had been together, strolling up and down the road by the salt marsh, not far away, where the body of Cefin was afterward discovered. This was a major shift from what James had told the police earlier.

Jackie urged James to speak the truth, and James confessed that he had been protecting his uncle Dylan. According to him, Dylan had instructed him and Cefin not to venture anywhere in the vicinity because the Black Sow, a Welsh mythological demon, would attempt to drown them. James replied that it had frightened Cefin.

This discovery in Under Salt Marsh Episode 5 put Dylan Rees squarely into the limelight as the chief suspect. One of the buried documents discovered in the vicinity of the caravan of August was a record of deliveries to the sea wall. A shipment of illegal waste came on every Thursday at low tide, and Dylan Rees took the delivery each time. Dylan’s hair had also been discovered on the dead body of Cefin, and he had been at work on the sea wall the night Cefin was killed.

The situation was even worse when Jackie went to confront Dylan. He came to the house in the same sort of white hazmat suit that Nessa and Cefin had sketched in their illustrations before their respective deaths. This was among the most shocking scenes of Under Salt Marsh Episode 5 because those drawings were one of the most frightening hints in the show.

With all this going on, DI Bull was making his own horrible discovery. He explored the seawall and discovered an orange liquid dripping out of the incomplete building. He told himself that the illegal waste was contained within the wall itself. This was very serious as the poisonous chemical sodium hydroxide had already been detected in the water of the lungs of Cefin when he had died.

In the midst of all this panic and face-off is where James vanished. James ran off into the woods in the confusion of it and was lost. It is not mentioned at the end of the Under Salt Marsh Episode 5 whether he escaped by himself because he was afraid or someone kidnapped him.

There are good reasons to believe that James ran away. Jackie had just pressured him to tell the truth about Dylan. This was not the first time that he had been frightened enough to stay quiet and defend his uncle as well as lie to the police. It makes perfect sense that a terrified child, who knows that his best friend was killed and that the adults around him were approaching a very serious secret, will run to the forest.

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But something is suspicious about the time of his disappearance. Jackie had faced Dylan and revealed him as a main player in the illegal waste business. Dylan had a very obvious motive to keep James silent. The boy was the only witness who could directly testify against him to what Cefin saw the night of his death. In case Dylan is the murderer, knowing what James does would endanger him.

At the end of Under Salt Marsh Episode 5, James had disappeared, providing way for a dramatic finale. As the storm has now completely settled on Morfa Halen and the town is no longer connected with the rest of the world, the hunt to find out the truth about James and the quest to reveal the truth about the illegal waste will collide in the last episode, which will be aired on February 27, 2026.

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