Young Wallander season 1, episode 5 recap – the line of succession

This recap of Young Wallander season 1, episode 5 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.

Check out our spoiler-free season review.

Young Wallander episode 5, the penultimate installment, opens with Wallander sitting down with Hemberg, who reckons he should send him home more often given what he manages to turn up during his time off. Both men think that Gustav is involved, though they can’t tell how, but the dead dog is too much of a coincidence and, as Hemberg tells us for the second time, there is no such thing as coincidences.

Time to watch and wait, then, which is the job as Hemberg sees it, though it doesn’t mesh well with Wallander’s personality. Luckily, Mona has been personally invited to Leopold’s 70th birthday party, so that’s a convenient way in. Those two lovingly stare at each other in the car in a way that makes me hope they crash. Apparently Mona and Gustav had a thing, which we predicted way earlier in the season, so she reckons he might be weird with Wallander. If only he knew!

The party is, in Gustav’s words, an ostentatious affair, but Wallander takes the opportunity to poke around. Leopold is coerced into saying a few words, at which point Wallander and the audience learn that he’s dying; something to do with his liver, which apparently Gustav isn’t handling very well. When Wallander catches him outside, he lets on that he knows about his secret woodland parties and his relationship with Isak and Hugo. Wallander points out how odd it is that Gustav never mentioned this, which is a good point. Gustav doesn’t take it well and has Wallander ejected for his accusations. Mona isn’t thrilled either, since she’s correctly deduced that Wallander only attended for the opportunity to interrogate Gustav. She demands the car keys and he dopily hands them over — isn’t that his car? — so he has to get a taxi all the way back to the estate.

On the way home, Wallander sees Ibra with his new mates and calls Bash to tell him. These two head out together. Bash tells Wallander that Ibra’s initiation involves punishing a former member for treason. Bash can’t get involved without sparking an all-out war, so the responsibility falls to Wallander. He intervenes in the beatdown, which is of Ibra, who supposedly bottled his initiation. Guns are drawn on all sides and it looks a little shaky until Bash himself intervenes. He defuses the situation by showing them something on his neck — a tattoo, Wallander theorizes, but we don’t get confirmation. Wallander takes Ibra home to his mother.

Back at home in Young Wallander episode 5, Wallander researches a word that a woman at the party said takes precedence for the Muncks when he asked why there are no women on the walls. You’ll be very surprised to learn that this is all about the Munck family fortune, and who’s going to inherit it. The Muncks are an old-money family who still pass down their wealth to the first-born son, but Karl-Axel has been shafted in favor of Gustav, which can’t be a coincidence (remember what Hemberg said.) Wallander takes all this to Hemberg and Rask, the latter of whom reveals there has been a DNA match for Hugo, Zemar, and one other male in his mid-30s who isn’t in the system. Wallander, naturally, assumes this is Gustav.

Isak is at the police station looking through mugshots, trying to determine who his attacker was. He points out the guy who battered Wallander at The Cube. He’s a known associate of the Dodo. Rask and Wallander openly discuss details of the C4 and such in front of Isak. Anyway, it’s looking like the Dodo might have been behind everything all along, but what’s his cause? Why create so much attention when he has spent so long shielding himself behind legitimate businesses? Rask will work on it while Wallander continues to investigate Gustav.

He’s going to do that with help from Reza, who he tasks with finding out why Gustav got a six-month suspension from boarding school. Wallander himself goes to see Leopold’s wife (they never got divorced) who left him and her children just after Gustav got expelled from school. Her loyalty remains to her family, for now.

Wallander goes to see Mona, but, of course, runs into Gustav (isn’t it against her anti-fascist principles to fraternize with billionaires?). Wallander’s unconcerned, though, and tells Gustav outright that he knows he’s involved and he’s going to find out how. Back at the station, Reza has been deemed fit for duty and tells Wallander about the wall of silence that has been put up around Gustav’s school days. Typically, though, it would take an act of violence to get suspended from school. Wallander and Rask look up kids from the school who were hospitalized just before Gustav’s expulsion, and they find one that the school never reported. Rask also has a photo of the Dodo stood outside a Munck Foundation building. They must be in business together.

Wallander and Hemberg go to confront the Dodo. He tells them to contact his lawyer, and he’ll apparently tell them why he was at a Munck building. Rask reveals it to be a shipping contract to handle their maritime imports and exports. But nobody thinks it’s legit. In the meantime, Reza has found the kid Gustav assaulted at school, so Wallander heads out to speak with him. His name is Tomas Von Rosen, and he owns a hunting supply store. “What are you hunting?” he asks Wallander. “Just the truth,” he replies, in easily the worst line of the entire season. He makes light of what happened to him, explaining that it’s apparently commonplace for older boys to play pranks on younger ones. Wallander presses the issue, though, telling Von Rosen that more people are suffering how he did. He explains how they started by pushing a pillow over his face and beating him while he suffocated. Then he was tied to a chair and beaten further. Then everyone left besides one, who set about him with crowbar, saying he wanted to see how far he could go without him dying. When Von Rosen couldn’t take it anymore, this boy just sat there and watched him suffer. Only, according to Von Rosen. it wasn’t Gustav. Well, there’s only one other Munck to choose from!

Thanks for reading our recap of Young Wallander season 1, episode 5.