Harry Wild cast: who died? Those in-memoriam cards have a story behind them

If you've been bingeing Harry Wild and clocked the dedication card in the end credits, you probably did what everyone does: paused the telly, grabbed your phone and typed "harry wild who died" with mounting dread. Was it someone from the cast? Deep breath. It wasn't.

The name on the cards

Every episode of series two carries a dedication to the memory of James Flynn — not an actor, but an executive producer on the show and a genuine giant of the Irish film industry. Flynn died in February 2023, aged 57, after a short illness. His CV is absurd: The Banshees of Inisherin, Vikings, Love/Hate, The Tudors — if something big filmed in Ireland over the past three decades, odds are Flynn had a hand in it.

The scale of the man is best measured by who turned up to mourn him. President Michael D Higgins called his death "the loss of one of the key figures in modern Irish film-making", and at the funeral his son Alex told mourners:

"He fought like hell until the very end."

Flynn's name still appears among the show's executive producers — a quiet, lovely bit of posthumous credit.

So why did you assume it was an actor?

Because Harry Wild has done a couple of things that make viewers suspicious, frankly:

• Ray Tiernan got a face transplant. Harry's ex was played by Stuart Graham in series one — but when Ray was killed off in the series two opener, a different actor, Frank Smith, stepped in for the death scene. Cue half the audience deciding something terrible must have happened. It hadn't; Graham simply didn't return.
• Orla was recast too. Amy Huberman played Charlie's wife for three series before Aoife Mulholland took over in series four.

The whole main cast — Jane Seymour, Rohan Nedd, Kevin Ryan and company — remain very much alive and solving Dublin's most cheerfully implausible murders. The in-memoriam cards are grief, yes, but the good kind: a show tipping its hat to the man who helped build the industry it lives in.