Summary
“Mayday” finds Karppi in an awkward position, stuck between family and work, as it becomes clear that there’s still a killer on the loose.
This recap of Deadwind season 2, episode 7, “Mayday”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
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“Mayday” opens by revealing what Routa whispered to Karppi at the end of the previous episode — she didn’t kill Koskimaki and Kerttu. Needless to say, this changes things. Karppi, now considered a “supercop” and the pride of the department, takes this information to Sten. He thinks the theory sounds far fetched. Sten won’t go around Kulju, and Karppi needs his permission to keep the investigation going.
Sara gets a shock in Deadwind season 2, episode 7, when she’s ousted by the Pro-Change Movement, which will now be led by Mikaela. It’s a tough pill to swallow and you get the sense Sara knows something’s amiss.
Meanwhile, Karppi meets with Henna, who has discharged herself from the hospital. Henna confesses everything, from stealing the stash to going to Tallinn with Sasha and killing him on the ferry. She’s terrified of going to jail, but Karppi encourages her to keep it quiet and do what she tells her.
Karppi gets a call informing her that Jere’s body has been found at the bottom of a remote well. He was strangled. Since he was selling Subutex for Henna, he fits the pattern of dead dealers. Karppi and Nurmi return to Koskimaki’s place to go over what he saw, and the more they think about it, the more it makes sense that Routa was telling the truth. Karppi also deduces that Kerttu was the real target, and was shot first.
Karppi takes all this to Kulju. She wants to go to Tallinn to meet with Kerttu’s mother, Yelena, and she wants Jimi’s grave exhumed. Kulju reluctantly agrees.
In Tallinn, Anto Ots gives Karppi and Nurmi the lowdown on Kerttu’s history with drugs and violence. Years prior she had been involved in an incident that she claimed was a car crash but that looked very much like strangulation. Karppi theorizes that this was the first attempt on her life — the killer has been active for seven years. Her next idea is that Kerttu ran into the killer again randomly and he worried that he’d be recognized, so decided to kill her. This, I think, gives the game away. Who did Kerttu meet in the first episode, right before seeing her father? Sten.
Sara has some exchanges in Deadwind season 2, episode 7 that throw her for a bit of a loop. When she approaches Mikaela asking if she’d be interested in leaving the Pro-Change Movement to join her in a new political venture she’s turned down. Paasijoki also reveals that Henri wasn’t the one to send him the email — that was someone who hates her or at least hated her.
On the way back from Tallinn, Karppi and Nurmi discuss Nurmi’s son again. He’s still adamant he wants nothing to do with him and that, if it were up to him, he’d never have been born in the first place. In a very revealing moment, Karppi says she’s envious that he still gets to choose. And who can blame her, really?
They next head to a cottage given to Kerttu by Koskimaki. There, they find drawings of someone’s hands that Nurmi thinks might have been part of her therapy following the attempt on her life. Karppi figures out the drawing is of a hand holding a steering wheel, from the perspective of the back seat. She thinks she was kidnapped, and that this all started here, in Estonia, not in Helsinki. When they attempt to go back into the cottage they come under fire. When they make a break for it the shooter pursues them on a quad bike, chasing them into an abandoned building. They’re able to hide and escape in a tense sequence. In another, they make their escape in a helicopter as the killer shoots at them from the ground.
But the tensest sequence is saved for the very end, as their helicopter starts to spiral out of control and eventually plummets into the frigid ocean, which is where “Mayday” ends.
