Summary
Axel’s worst transgression is revealed, as it seems his killer is closer than ever to justice. But do we really know who his killer is?
This recap of White Lines season 1, episode 9, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Check out our spoiler-free season review.
As Zoe tells us that Axel lived his dream, we see flashbacks of him opening his own club and being widely beloved by sesh-happy Ibiza weekenders. She’s not just telling us, of course, but Marcus and Kika, who seem pretty happy together as of White Lines Episode 9. I suppose they’ve all lost a lot of what they thought defined them. They’re united in being lost and alone, getting pilled up and wearing glow-bands like teenagers. Their youth might be lost, but they all decide they can be reborn.
The conversation naturally shifts to those who have actually been born, such as Jenny, and Zoe sends her a frantic, ill-advised video call. Mike catches her talking openly about taking ecstasy and savagely lays into Zoe about her infidelity, her possible prison sentence, and all her lies and irresponsibility. I guess Kika was right when she said calling was probably a bad idea.
Speaking of births and rebirths and such, here’s David, attempting to be Oriol’s “spiritual guide” by exorcising his own demons with an exciting concoction of illicit substances — none of which are well-suited to a recovering junkie. He necks it anyway. He warns Oriol not to be alarmed by anything he sees, which is the kind of advice that you just know is going to be awful in retrospect.
Zoe turns up for court, not in the best of moods. Boxer is there to testify and she lays into him, though I’m not entirely sure how this is entirely his fault? Like, is she absolving herself of responsibility completely? Whatever. She’s at least having a better time than Oriol, who is hallucinating another version of himself, a giant gorilla, and Clint in a balaclava — although that last one might not be a hallucination.
Under oath, Boxer says that Zoe is “somewhat unbalanced.” He says he had romantic intentions towards her until he realized she had a habit of randomly changing her mind. It’s a petty move, though one that’s expected given she verbally attacked her only corroborating witness moments before the trial. As Boxer leaves court, he gets a message from David saying that Oriol has disappeared. Zoe is left behind to have her entire mental health history be unfurled.
David, looking a little worse for wear, suggests that Oriol was being pursued by something black and hairy, like a bear or an ape. He surmises that this wayward animal might be a manifestation of the Martinez family and impending war. It’s as good a theory as any. But Zoe happens upon a more likely explanation when she goes to Clint’s camper van to tell him that she isn’t going to prison but owes a few grand that she doesn’t currently have. In the camper van, she finds Oriol, tied up and covered in blood. Clint plans to take him back to England and force him to stand trial for Axel’s murder.
At the Calafat residence, Marcus cooks up some Mancunian paella. Anna arrives out of nowhere to collect Tanit and Matilda, but Tanit refuses to go. She lays down some heavy truth bombs in Marcus’s defense; she explains how Marcus hasn’t made bad decisions, he never had any decisions to make. He did what he did to try and give Anna what she wanted, knowing he couldn’t afford it. As if to underscore the point, Anna quite easily manipulates Marcus into coming with Tanit to the wedding.
Speaking of weddings, we get a flashback to Anna and Marcus’s, which was, of course, officiated by Axel. Almost forget about him for a moment there.
Boxer investigates the area where Oriol was taken; he finds a nightstick courtesy of the Manchester Metropolitan Police. I imagine there aren’t too many of those knocking around on Ibiza. Boxer immediately contacts Zoe, who he threatens. She can help him get Oriol back, or he can tell the police who’s got him. Seems an easy choice.
Clint, predicting this it seems, sets out on his own. He shares a touching farewell with Miguel and leaves Zoe a voicemail explaining that he’s leaving without her. She and Boxer head to the port.
Anna, meanwhile, goes home to George. They start having sex but it doesn’t go well since she’s thinking about Marcus and her old life with him. We flash back to the peak of Axel’s success, to the night he married Anna and Marcus; the memory of herself she saw having sex in the mirror was having sex with Axel, not Marcus. Even for the “messiah of electronic music”, that’s a bit of a low blow.
Back at the Calafat residence, Marcus and Andreu share a spliff, while Kika explains to Conchita how she has fallen in love with Marcus. Conchita says the same thing has happened with her father, after 40 years, even though Andreu confesses to Marcus how much he’s unable to do now that he’s confined to a wheelchair. He might not be a good man, he says, but he always knew when to stop.
Here’s someone who didn’t: Axel. Flashing back once again, we find him visibly regretting his tryst with Anna, and then baiting Marcus into assaulting him, the latter presumably penance for the former. He’s a complicated guy, that one.
Zoe and Boxer arrive at the port. There’s apparently another one, which Boxer heads to, leaving Zoe behind. All the while, we see snippets of Oriol breaking free of captivity. He finally manages it and attacks Clint while he’s driving, causing a crash into a log pile. Clint ends up very dead. And just in time, he leaves Zoe a very emotional goodbye message, in some sense saying farewell to Axel just as much as her. Oriol calls Boxer and tells him he’s just killed a man. And you can’t imagine it’s going to go down well.
