Trapped Season 2 Episodes 9 & 10 Recap

By Alix Turner
Published: March 17, 2019 (Last updated: December 4, 2023)
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Trapped Episode 9 Trapped Episode 10 Season 2 Finale Recap
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Summary

A terrific finale, full of flashbacks, exposition, moody men, impassioned speeches, and another death… and pigs. Roll on season three.

This recap of Trapped Season 2, Episode 9 and Trapped Season 2, Episode 10 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous two episodes by clicking these words.


So Trapped Season 2 is over: we have more tension leading up to the ending, and we have more secrets being uncovered. And we have more Trapped to come, as Season 3 is well and truly in the pipeline. I do hope we won’t need to wait three years this time.

This finale does wrap things up with some closure, but let me warn you not everything is explained cleanly. Some of the exposition is a little hasty, some of the resolution is a little vague, and some of the action kind of far-fetched. But the people make this show for me (even more than the landscape): as far as I’m concerned, the mystery is there simply so we can get to know some great characters, earthy and believable, every one (even if some of their decisions aren’t quite).

Episode 9 opens with Andri (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and Hinrika (Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir) panicking about their colleague Ásgeir (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson), as they cannot get hold of him. We know he’s been badly stabbed, but they don’t know what kind of trap he’s fallen into; just that he’s not answering the phone. Fortunately, the police have an app to trace his car… unfortunately, the car is burnt by the time they get to it, and with the beloved Ásgeir inside.

(Personally, I don’t get why so many viewers loved him so much, having always found Ásgeir to be somewhat dim and sometimes a jobsworth. But they do. And he has been more committed to his work and compassionate to his customers this season. And – as they were saying just a couple of episodes ago – the three of them have been a team… so yes, he’ll be missed.)

Sorry, but that really was Ásgeir inside the car. It’s easy to have some doubt and some hope until we see him being prepared for autopsy by Guðrún, the techie officer he was due to cook dinner for last night. She is the absolute picture of professional stoicism, not least when Bárður comes by with some clothes for Ásgeir’s burial. Hinrika is bereft but stoical too; though Andri – guilt-ridden bear that he is – takes the loss very hard. Reassuring Thórhildur that it’s not her fault (it is!) is too much for him, and it takes Hinrika (yelling and knocking on the door) to get him focused again.

But anyway, regardless of fault, Thórhildur must leave Siglufjörður and go far away: of all the clues she saw on the baddie’s phone, the one text she remembers is the one saying he saw her at the funeral, so everyone agrees she could be in danger. As luck would have it, the next two planes to Reykjavík are booked up, so Andri insists that her aunt Laufey drives her all the way there.

In the meantime, Víkingur is freed from jail and goes home for a meeting of minds with Ebo. And actual toxic waste is found in a nook between crags on the hillside, explaining the poisoned water. So Andri and Hinrika go talk to Stefán, who runs the waste disposal firm. Stefán? Stefán? Who’s he? Yeah, I’d kind of ignored him so far, as he didn’t appear to have much personality beyond a bland smile, or purpose beyond giving Ebo some crash space when he was being bullied. But the guys at the plat say Stefán had called in sick, and Stefán’s wife assumes he’s at work…

On the road to Reykjavík, Thórhildur is whining about being hungry; and when offered lovingly home-made sandwiches, whinges she can’t eat shrimp. So Laufey stops at a service station for new food, telling Thórhildur and Aron (who has tagged along) to stay put. What are the odds? Thórhildur needs a pee so insists on going inside, and gallant Aron insists that it will only happen if he goes too. The ladies’ room is uncannily empty, but the gent Aron waits outside… there bumping into Stefán (so that’s why he was neither at home nor at work), who attacks him, then knocks out and grabs Thórhildur. Now that we’ve seen someone actually committing violence (not just a crime scene afterward), and we have a key suspect, the episode ends.

Trapped Season 2, Episode 10 is another directed by Baltasar Kormákur, writer and creator of the show. It is full of flashbacks, exposition, moody men, impassioned speeches, and another death… and pigs.

The first flashback is right at the start of the episode, looking back at Finnur trying to persuade Gisli to sell his land… I’m not going to do a complete he-said-she-said recap with this episode; it goes all over the place. I’ll tell you roughly what happened (and I can’t promise it’s exactly in the right order), and see if I can outline roughly why… but I do wish the Log Lady appeared again this week to give us a summary in rhyme or something. Kind of like the Story of the Reason, everything makes some sense while watching the episode but seems sketchy afterward.

Stefán is very clearly the bad guy, having stolen Thórhildur and run off with her in his car over hills and vales. And having found both Aron and the service station’s CCTV, the police know it too by now. But if he had a plan a few days ago, he’s completely lost hold of it by now and seems to have stopped caring too. Stefán’s car gets stuck in the water early in the episode, and he makes no effort to sneak off with his hostage: some horserider actually sees him carrying the girl and reports it to the police. He makes his way off to some ski hut but actually drops her down a rocky hillside! (I think I yelped watching that bit: it was very realistically done.) Everyone is after him by now, even a police helicopter, who he has the gall to shoot at; so consequently, when the police track down the cabin they know he’s armed.

Meanwhile, Andri is carrying out interviews to “gain some understanding”, including Stefán’s mother Jórunn. She reveals she’s never loved Stefán as she wanted to: she adopted him as a baby, is not his real mother, the episode’s first big secret out in the open. His next interview is Elín, Aron’s mother and Halla’s sister, who tells them what she saw all those years ago. In this scene, we find out what those gravediggers were on about and what Halla had been in denial about (and it’s a very nicely written flashback): Elín, Halla and Gisli’s father used to beat them, occasionally locking the older kids in the pig pen, and raping Halla too, which Gisli did his best to protect her from. Then one day came the last straw, and Gisli hits him several times over the head with some farm tool, and the twins drag his body to the pigs… which is why their father’s body is never found, and why Gisli was a deeply troubled man.

So by the time Andri catches up with Stefán on the mountainside, and – against everyone’s better judgment – goes into the ski hut unarmed, he does have some compassion towards the messed up history which tipped him over into violence. His main aim is to get Stefán to tell him where Thórhildur is, of course; but in doing so gets Stefán to talk about the toxic waste, the money he had stashed away for the foreign workers, how Finnur tried to keep it for himself (so he could buy Gisli’s land) and how if it wasn’t for finding that money, Thórhildur wouldn’t be in the fix she’s in now.

Unfortunately, Stefán finds himself to be in a hopeless situation and shoots himself, but not before Andri finds a piece of Thórhildur’s clothing, and throws it out of the window for the search dogs to use.

Epilogue time and we have another dead man; Thórhildur rescued and in hospital with her family around her; Vikingur on his own, now that Ebo’s gone back to Ghana and his family (though talking to his mother again); and Hinrika refusing to take Bárður back, although clearly pining for the baby that never was. There is so much on the parenthood theme in this season. There are definitely loose ends, such as the Hammer of Thor gang, and the American Aluminium deal; but these were only about the side plot. Some say it was never quite clear that Stefán killed Ásgeir, but I think that’s more to do with slightly slack writing than odds on an extra killer.

Overall, season two has had a complex plot which is less believable the more one looks at it. But the characters are either loveable, well drawn or painfully realistic, with the acting and camera work sharp to match. I’ll recommend this show to anyone who’s not put off by subtitles (and the idea of a rapist getting comeuppance via hungry pigs), and it’s made me more likely to watch Adrift.

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