Summary
“Trade-off” reveals the identity and motive of the kidnapper, as a police sting goes wrong and Henna gets in over her head.
This recap of Deadwind season 2, episode 4, “Trade-off”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
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The “Trade-off” in Deadwind season 2, episode 4 is the obvious one — the kidnapped Lida for Sara. But there are also plenty of other things to exchange, including information, which is where we are at the start of the episode when Sara sits down with Karppi and Nurmi. They go over the link between the killings, the attempt on her life, and the Meelika, which it turns out she was briefly aboard for a meeting with Kaartamo Nordic before leaving on a helicopter due to a family medical emergency. She left Henri behind. She doesn’t know Jimi Aho. She has no idea who might be behind the kidnapping.
The van used to transport Lida is found with a trail of her nail polish, but the nearby CCTV isn’t much use. The Pro-Change Movement is falling apart in Sara’s absence, with a particular rift forming between Henri and Mikaela, who suspected the former is trying to take Sara’s place.
A rift also forms between Karppi and Nurmi, who argue briefly over Emil and Henna — Nurmi suggests that she should spend more time with them and that she’s trusting everything they say so that she doesn’t have to do anything about their problems. She gets very defensive but it’s easy to side with Nurmi here. A photo from the CCTV reveals that the kidnapper is a woman, and Karppi wants to disseminate the photo everywhere, but the police are dragging their feet and she clashes with Kilju. JP suggests faking the hostage exchange and sending one of their own, Pia, in Sara’s place.
Deadwind season 2, episode 4 continues to see Henna in a bit of a predicament. She goes to retrieve the stash but finds it missing, and can’t get hold of Jere. She’s forced to return with egg on her face to the enforcer who is casually cooking vegetarian food in her apartment, and explain that the stash is gone. Thus, she owes him 30K, which of course she doesn’t have. So she has to pay the debt off another way — by being a drug mule, transporting Subutex from Tallinn.
Karppi goes to see Jimi’s father. She learns some interesting things, including that Jimi wasn’t his biological son — his real mother is Mari Routa, the woman from the CCTV footage. She’s the kidnapper. Antero at the nursing home was her counselor when she was growing up in orphanages.
The trade-off goes down, with Pia in the Sara role, but it isn’t Mari who turns up in the car. In a cardboard box in the back of the car the decoy was driving is a phone showing a GPS location — presumably Lida’s location. The cops send a drone out, but it can’t get low enough to see what’s what, so Nurmi and JP go out in person. Watching through the drone feed, NBI agent Poteri, who is watching with Sten, realizes something is wrong but can’t stop explosives being detonated when the cops try and gain entry.
Meanwhile, Karppi — after finding confirmation that it is, in fact, Emil who is bullying Matti and not the other way around — goes to see Sara. When she gets there, she hears that the mission was a failure, and JP was hurt in the explosion. Sara has somehow slipped out of her house. Karppi thinks Mari contacted her and orchestrated the whole thing.
Thankfully, Lida is found, having been left to roam. She’s otherwise unharmed and knows little. But Sara’s phone is also found, which reveals Mari called her. The next the police see of Sara she’s on a video feed, bound, reading a pre-written statement that reveals a secret meeting aboard the Meelika, during which the Pro-Change Movement leadership met with Kaartamo Nordic executives. A murder occurred, and it was covered up to keep the meeting quiet. Mari Routa sees herself as a kind of vigilante, punishing the privileged and those who covered it up. Sara refuses to read the section that most incriminates her; at that point, the video suddenly cuts off, and “Trade-off” ends.
