Summary
The midway point of Netflix’s Gone for Good once again alters the point of view, slowing down its narrative, attempting to show the essential nature of everyone’s past. Instead, the show needs to live a bit more in the present.
This recap of the Netflix series Gone for Good episode 3, “Daco”, contains spoilers.
After two episodes focused on how the murders of Guillaume’s (Finnegan Oldfield) brother, Fred, and Inès’s (Garance Marillier) sister, Sonia, affected the two leftover siblings, Netflix’s Gone for Good turns onto a different lane. Focused on the caretaker/leader of the social work facility, episode three, aptly titled “Daco,” begins without murder or death, or grief.
Gone for Good episode 3 recap
It begins with a neo-Nazi meeting, a picture of a group of young and middle-aged men with shaved heads, with Daco at the center (Guillaume Gouix), receiving a swastika tattoo on his forehead. The French thriller series slows down a bit with this episode, not in tone or anguish, only in pace. In Ivry in 2005, the same suburb where Judith (Nailia Harzoune) was murdered, Daco lived, breathed, and fought for Nazism, angry at any person that wasn’t white. For an episode, it’s his story, one riddled with violence and a lack of an explanation. While his little brother was sick in the hospital, sharing a room with a Black child, which old-Daco despised, the man now with a sunflower tattoo on his forehead attacked a pregnant woman and went to jail, changing his life during those moments.
In present-day, Daco and Guillaume head to Ivry to investigate Judith’s murder once the latter hears from her mother, who hasn’t heard from her since early 2018. She drops the bomb that Judith had a daughter named Alice, furthering the idea that no one in the world of Gone for Good knows about their friends’ or significant others’ pasts. After talking to a journalist that neither helps nor confirms much, the two attempt to see security footage of a nearby street, forcing Daco to visit one of his old friends, a man at the head of a company called French Security, a larger front for a Nazi party.
They fight and scramble and scratch against Nazis in order to see a glimpse of the footage, which shows Fred hand-in-hand with Alice. Creators David Elkaïm and Vincent Poymiro seem to have no shortage of surprises, most likely thankful to novelist Harlan Coben whose book they’re adapting. Still, the story trudges onward, enjoying this brief respite from the Fred/Sonia night in 2010, though hardly advancing the story beyond the first and last 10 minutes of the episode.
The ending
For clarity, here’s what happens within the final minutes of “Daco:” Inès and Guillaume kiss due to shared grief, Daco tells his wife, Awa, about his awful past, and the two social workers head to Judith’s funeral only to find that the woman in the coffin isn’t Judith at all. Episode three, putting the series more than halfway through its season, ends with an odd sensation: that the entirety of the first two episodes have lost the bulk of their meaning.
If this is the real Judith Conti, the information, the surprises, and the realizations of the first 80 minutes of this series have little merit. It’s likely that the creators will pull the strings so that everything comes together in the end, but for the moment, all feels trite.
Highs:
- Guillaume’s speech skills, as he pulls Daco out of the dumps after learning he used to be a neo-Nazi.
- The realization that it looks like actor Garance Marillier is playing both sisters in Inès and Sonia, which means she’s grieving for herself. Weird and tough, but great.
Lows:
- The fighting choreography in the security center is wonky at best. The punches don’t seem to land yet each person looks like they’ve been hit by a brick wall.
Ramblings:
- Inès kissing Guillaume after her sister has died and his current girlfriend just passed is absolutely wild. Not the right time!
- How easy is it to get tattoos in prison? In lots of films and series, characters leave prison with new tattoos, or they’re seen getting them in the cafeteria, etc. Just would love a deeper dive into the best tattoos ever given in prison over the course of film and TV.
What did you think of the Netflix series Gone for Good episode 3? Comment below.
