What happened to Lisa in Professor T? Emma Naomi warned that viewers "will certainly be shocked"

Lisa is killed in the closing minutes of episode 6, "Attachment Issues", run over by a suspect while Professor Jasper Tempest watches on a video call.

How the finale gets there

The case opens with Marianne Tierney, found dead after a car crash. The post-mortem says murder, and that she was six weeks pregnant — impossible for her husband Peter, who is infertile.

• The affair — Marianne had been seeing teenage gymnast Seb Vermorel, who trained at her gym.
• The crash — Seb hit her car by accident on his way to meet her and drove off, having been drinking.
• The murder — Seb's mother Leah (Flora Montgomery) followed him, found Marianne injured but alive at the scene, and smothered her before the pregnancy could wreck her son's career.
• The confession — Seb's father Duane gives Lisa the whole story, having spent the entire case covering for his wife.

Tempest works out it is Leah rather than Duane and video-calls Lisa, who is already outside the Vermorel house and has got there on her own. He tells her not to confront Leah alone. Leah bolts for her car; Lisa stands in front of it; Leah hits her, then drives over her a second time on the way out. Tempest sees all of it down the phone and reaches her before Dan Winters (Barney White), who had proposed earlier in the same episode. The credits run in silence.

What Naomi said beforehand

Asked about the finale before transmission, she gave away nothing and everything at once:

"Our viewers will certainly be shocked by what happens," Naomi told What To Watch in April 2024.

She added that the ending would affect the characters for series to come, and that this was the only thing she could safely say. White's contribution to the same interview was to advise viewers to keep tissues nearby.

Is she coming back?

No return has been announced, and Naomi has discussed the job in the past tense — she told Country & Town House in 2024 that Professor T was mostly filmed in Belgium, that she loved it there, and that she picked up the language. Flashbacks remain technically available to the writers.

How series 4 handles it

Series 4 picks up six months later with Tempest refusing to work with Winters, avoiding the police entirely, and retreating into routine. The premiere's case turns on false memory — witnesses recalling a woman who was never there — while Tempest keeps misremembering the night Lisa died. New arrivals include DC Chloe Highsmith (Rhian Blundell) and Zelda Radclyffe (Zoë Wanamaker).

For the record: Naomi won that National Film Award in 2022, two series before the writers put her character under a car.