“Let Us Sit Bent, and Talk Straight” is a nasty, mean-spirited episode of Culprits that really raises the stakes heading into the back half of the season. Episode 5 offers new context on old events, kills off a few characters, and pushes the survivors to their limits, especially when alliances are tested toward the episode’s end.
The key question emerging from the outcome is who our masked, balding assassin is working for, which weirdly enough hasn’t been raised before. It was assumed – by me, anyway – that Devil himself was the wronged party in the whole heist affair, but it seems he’s working on behalf of someone else with scarily extensive resources.
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Culprits Season 1 Episode 5 Recap
“Let Us Sit Bent, and Talk Straight” doesn’t spend much time in the “THEN” timeline, but it’s revealing when it does. The episode’s cold open is set there, for instance, and shows the gang breaking into and unlocking the vault, which doesn’t come without a cost. Azar loses two fingers after trapping her hand in the mechanism.
There’s a lot of tension in this sequence. The backup team is imminent, only minutes away. Azar faces being irreparably mangled. And the gang’s creepy masks, all locked into immovable expressions, add a strangely horrifying quality to the whole thing.
Who shot Right Hand?
The other key thing revealed in the flashbacks is that Right Hand was shot and killed during the getaway, but it’s left deliberately unclear who by. We’re expected to believe it was one of the vault’s backup security team, so it was almost certainly one of the heist crew.
This throws how little we already know about the heist itself even further into question since while we’re told Dianne died in a collapsing building after Fuse messed up a secondary explosion, there’s absolutely zero proof of this
How does Youssef die?
Right Hand isn’t the only major death in this episode – Youssef is also killed in by far the most brutal and emotional demise of the series thus far, being burned alive in front of his granddaughter.
“Let Us Sit Bent, and Talk Straight” sets most of its action in France, where Joe and Officer finally catch up with Azar and Youssef. The grandfather-granddaughter pair have been hiding since the job, and naturally assume that Joe and Officer are there for the money. They’re surprised to learn that they’re being hunted by a killer, and even more surprised to learn that the killer has already caught up to Malek.
A ringing phone kicks off a wave of gunfire on the house, sending everyone scrambling. Azar and Youssef try to escape, but Devil is already waiting in the back of their car. In the ensuing scuffle, Youseff is shot, but not killed, and Azar is able to flee back inside the house.
Devil drags Youssef to a chair outside the house and douses him in petrol. Devil is looking for Dianne specifically, but Azar and Youssef both earnestly think she’s dead, so they can’t offer any information. Azar runs outside with the cash and begins throwing it at Devil, but he isn’t interested. He sets Youssef alight, and he burns to death in front of his granddaughter, screaming all the while.
How did Specialist know Officer was lying?
Out of nowhere, Specialist arrives. She followed Joe and Officer from England, using them as bait. While Specialist draws Devil away, Azar, Joe, and Officer try to escape, but Officer disarms Joe and holds him at gunpoint.
Of course, we learned in Episode 4 that Officer had been pinging their location to Devil. It’s here that Joe figures the information out for himself. Devil was going to kill her since she wasn’t able to escape, so she gave him whatever she could to stay alive. And she implores Joe to do the same. She figures they can give Dianne up and save themselves. There’s no loyalty among thieves.
Joe isn’t having it, but the two still leave with Azar and, eventually, Specialist, who had already figured out that Officer’s story was bogus when she described Devil as having two differently-colored eyes. Nobody gets that close to Devil and survives – unless he needs them for something.
How does Culprits Season 1 Episode 5 end?
Devil, patching himself up after being clipped in the shootout with Specialist, looks up a photo of Joe. It allows Devil to find his driver’s license and thus his U.S. address, where Jules and the kids are. Devil radios this in to whoever he’s working for, who immediately dispatch a local team to raid the place.
At this point, what do we know? Well, Devil isn’t looking for money, so something else must have been taken in the heist. And whoever he’s working for has incredible reach and resources, able to pull up personal information from a photograph and send mercenary teams all over the world at a moment’s notice.
The episode ends with Joe, Specialist, Officer, and Azar escaping on a train, where Specialist reveals she was badly wounded in the shootout. Jules chooses that moment to call Joe, who is forced to let him go to voicemail while he tends to Specialist. Jules’s words close things out as we see a car full of men outside his home, ready to enter.
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