Summary
Capitani refreshingly ends on a proper conclusion, with the mystery solved and the character arcs mostly completed, with only a couple of compelling threads left dangling for a potential follow-up.
This recap of Capitani season 1, episode 12 for the episode titled “It Happened One Beautiful Summer’s Day”, contains spoilers and a discussion of the Capitani ending.
Surprise surprise, folks — the Capitani ending is a real ending! Mostly, anyway. The mystery is solved, justice is kind of served, and the character arcs reach logical and meaningful conclusions. Some elements are left unaddressed, particularly what’s going to happen to Capitani himself, but that’s fine. It gives the story some texture and some threads for a potential second season to tug on and unravel. This has been a highly engaging series all throughout and has earned a continuation if it gets one.
But let’s go over how it all came together in Capitani season 1, episode 12. It begins on July 14, Day 8, after a very eventful penultimate chapter. Capitani is checking out of the hotel. Carla has left him a message. Somewhat bitterly, he rats her out to the lady who works there, but she claims that Sofia grew up there and they were friends as children. Perhaps Carla was the alter ego all along, and she simply found her way back home. This lady also says Mick was a serial adulterer, which we’ll promptly learn was true and then some.
A lot emerges when Capitani goes to speak to Manon before she heads for rehab in Germany. He inquires about the Belgian’s sex parties and if “Babes” in her phone is him — of course, we know it isn’t, and she’s forced to confess that this mysterious Belgian is Mick. He organized the soirees twice a year for important contacts he needed in his wood business, which is a hilariously over the top way of trading lumber. On the evening of Tanja’s death, Manon says Mick left the Cloister House for a while and didn’t join in the festivities when he came back. Manon asks for a bottle of water, and when Capitani goes to get it, she tips Mick off that she spilled the beans.
Mick’s looking at eight years inside, four with good behavior, and the whole village is behind him — it seems like a good deal. But when he receives Manon’s message he’s forced to confess to more. Why now? Who does he have left to protect if not himself?
We’ll get there. Before that, Capitani season 1, episode 12 checks in on Elsa, who is alive but unresponsive, and sadly there won’t be any children in her future. Steve is with her and Capitani is fuming to see him. They argue, and when she wakes up, she says that Frank told her Steve had something to do with Tanja’s death. She’s disgusted by him. Steve holds the nurse at scalpel-point, but Elsa pulls out her drip so that he has to let the nurse go. That leaves him to Capitani’s interrogation, and he spills what happened that night — or, at least, a version of it.
In a flashback, we see Steve trying to stop Jenny from attending the soiree that Jerry has let slip about. Naturally, she went along anyway. The soldiers believed they saw her outside and they chased her, during which she fell about 10 meters and died on impact. Mick, not wanting to scare his deep-pocketed contacts away, personally relocated the body away from the Cloister House. There are elements of truth to this, as we’ll see, but it’s not a complete picture.
Before we get the next retelling, though, Bonifas arrives to arrest Capitani, but since he’s so close to uncovering what really happened, and he clearly has the support of the locals, she can’t just yet. Instead, he goes to see Nadine and Jenny, and the girl gives him the real version of events from her own perspective. She did indeed attend the sex party, and what she saw her father doing inside horrified her. She ran, and the soldiers gave chase, but out in the woods, she ran into Tanja. The latter showed her new tattoo and said she missed her sister, but Jenny argued with her about her drug addiction, and her and Rob trying to protect her. In the argument, Jenny pushed Tanja to her death. Mick, distraught, did indeed move the body, but only after some heavy prompting from Steve. She couldn’t believe that Mick just left “her” there. After, she swapped their belongings because she felt Jenny deserved that fate more, to be gone forever, not Tanja. Now, all she has to do is endure. Usch watched it all happen.
Capitani, having learned all this, says nothing. With Mick in prison, having confessed, he allows Jenny to endure, as she wished. Nobody knows her secret — nobody who would spill it, anyway. Capitani ends with him being arrested and driven away, his fate uncertain, and his principles intact.
