• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, March 17, 2025

Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII are back after a 10-year absence -- and it is as if they never left.

They return this coming Sunday to finish what they started in the sensational “Wolf Hall” miniseries that premiered on PBS in 2015. The new one is “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.”

The 2015 miniseries was adapted from the first two Wolf Hall novels of a planned trilogy by the late Hilary Mantel, who died in 2022 at age 70.

The first two books -- Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies -- were published to great acclaim in 2009 and 2012, respectively.

They were astonishing works of fiction. The author researched the history of King Henry’s court and the minutia of everyday life in 16th-century England so thoroughly that the experience of reading the books produced the uncanny sensation that you were there.

The third book in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was published in 2020, and at long last has been made into a six-part miniseries of its own.

Like the first one, the new “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light” centers on Thomas Cromwell, a tight-lipped, low-born lawyer who rises improbably to become Henry’s chief advisor and consigliere.

Then as now, Cromwell is played by Mark Rylance, whose performance in the first miniseries was among the finest seen anywhere on television in the entire 2010s.

He is joined once again by Damian Lewis as King Henry (both pictured above), who is just as electrifying.

Their relationship is the centerpiece of the drama and the origination point for the show’s creeping sense of doom.

In this show, suspense comes quietly, stemming mainly from the King’s moods. One minute he is merciful. The next minute he is threatening long-time allies with death -- to say nothing of his second wife Anne Boleyn.

The first miniseries ended with her execution. Claire Foy played her up to the very end in a performance that was one for the ages.

Her execution ended the original “Wolf Hall” and it is the starting point for the new one.

The first miniseries told the by-now, oft-told story of how Henry -- who ruled England for 38 years (1509-47) -- engineered an annulment from his first wife, the Catholic Spanish noblewoman Katherine, in defiance of the Pope.

He did this in order to marry Anne Boleyn in the hopes that she would produce for him a male heir.

In the show, Cromwell was portrayed as the fixer in the annulment drama. And later, he was called upon by the king to help him get rid of Queen Anne when a male heir never materialized.

A few minutes into the new series after the deed is done, Cromwell’s son asks him, “Why did it have to be this way?,” referring to poor Anne’s execution by beheading.

And Cromwell answers: “When negotiation and compromise fail, and your only course is to destroy your enemy, before they wake in the morning, have the axe in your hand.”

When I heard that on Friday when I previewed Episode One, I thought: That is so Cromwell!

And so it is -- in the Wolf Hall books, the first “Wolf Hall” miniseries and now, 10 years later, in “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.”

“Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light” premieres Sunday, March 23, at 9 p.m. Eastern on PBS.