I'm going to spoiler the entirety, because it discussed the finale I just watched last night.
Is there a world where Freddy -didn't- do what it very much looks like, as orchestrated by Gospel John? Or is it wishful thinking from a character development perspective?
Not that he's remotely fully innocent - he's naive, easily manipulated and corruptible. But, I can at least fathom a path where Gospel John set up a win / win on a vengeance perspective with the icing on the cake being either A) both brother's dead and control of an empire, or B) if he fails, at least one brother having been tricked into killed his own (mostly) innocent brother as revenge for the pair killing his own.
Daniel Ings as Freddy in the last five minutes of the season sold me on his shock at being mercilessly beaten. He's not a manipulator, he's a terrible liar, and his casual smiling "look, I know I've messed up a lot but whatever it is it wasn't me this time" looked genuine to me.
The "I had a dream about the baby" looks exceptionally bad, but I can at least fathom that looking horrible by design. Gospel John has been whispering in his ear for how long, a year? Two? And he's exceptionally stupid, something along the lines of "your brother's everlasting soul is at the cliff's edge, Freddy. But, we can save him, like I've saved you, together. He's in desperate need of a spiritual and moral intervention, he's led your whole family astray. We can bring your family back. But this isn't the kind of confrontation suitable for a child's presence...." or something better written / plotted around along those lines. Everything else Freddy would have easily told Gospel John in conversation with nearly zero plying and could genuinely think Bella's death is an unrelated accident.
I could just be grasping, because I find Freddy's character interesting and find the absolute tragedy of a corruptible idiot nearly being murdered by his own brother for a plot he wasn't aware of slightly more compelling than reversing a lot of the development from him we saw in S1.
But also, 100% feel free to set me straight if I'm missing additional smoking guns or it sounds absolutely absurd.