It takes a fair amount of time and a lot of concentration to get to the climax of Hound’s Hill, so most viewers will enter it with high expectations for the ending. Luckily, Episode 5 is, if you ask me, the best of the series, certainly the installment with the most suspense and dramatic payoff. This was probably unavoidable, though, because everything has deliberately led to this moment, and very little of consequence has been revealed up until now. It’s all contained in the finale.
What we need to know is who killed Daria 18 years previously, and how that relates to the torture and murder of Bernat in the present day. We also need to know what happens to Zybork regarding the plans to “improve” it by displacing an entire colony of its citizens. It’s a lot to be getting on with.
So… let’s get on with it.
The Truth About Daria’s Death
The opening of the finale is an animated sequence detailing Daria’s death from Gizmo’s acid-fuelled perspective and gives us some key details that are explained properly later. In short, though, Gizmo didn’t kill his sister, he simply found her body and was blamed for it.
In actuality, it was Bernat, Jarecki, and Macius who killed Daria after taking turns sexually assaulting her. They had followed her from the club where Macius drugged Gizmo and taken advantage of her. Gizmo wasn’t there at the time but found her body later. Mikolaj wasn’t there either, since we see a younger Tomek pick him up outside the party shortly before.
Mikolaj naturally still felt tremendous guilt over what happened, since he was complicit in drugging Gizmo, which he has spent his life believing was the proximate cause of Daria’s death. This is presumably why he turned to drugs and why he tried to unburden himself with the “truth” of what happened that night in his book, not realizing he was furnishing the real killers with their alibi.
Tomek Is The Present-Day Killer
Thanks to Justyna’s efforts blackmailing the attorney general involved in the Winnie the Pooh pedophile ring, sacrificing her own career in the process, Tomek is freed from custody. But Justyna is still determined to find Mikolaj and ignores Tomek’s advice to follow him to Warsaw, where she believes he is thanks to a message received from his phone. In the process, she witnesses Macius being kidnapped and bundled into a car and is shortly after kidnapped herself.
Justyna is taken to where Mikolaj is being held alongside Father Bernat, who explains to him what really happened to Daria. When Tomek and Grzesiek arrive, we find out what has been happening since. When Tomek had his first heart attack, Father Bernat read him his last rites. In the process, believing Tomek would never live to tell the tale, Father Bernat revealed what had happened to Daria. The murders since then have been revenge, with the advantage of stymying the sale of the lease that Mayor Burmistrzyni and Kalt needed to build the hotel over the colony.
All of Daria’s rapists have been killed and stuffed in the basement of the titular Hound’s Hill, and Macius is the last one remaining. Mikolaj, still a little strung out on the drugs and now traumatized by these revelations, kills Macius himself. Tomek and Grzesiek burn the place down with the bodies still inside. Justyna is allowed to go free since Tomek is confident that she won’t speak out about what she knows, and that even if she did, she wouldn’t be believed (which makes it highly convenient for him that she torpedoed her journalistic career to free him.)
Robert Wieckiewicz in Hound’s Hill | Image via Netflix
Three Months Later
The ending of Hound’s Hill takes place three months later. The hotel plans have been scuppered, with Kalt instead working with Tomek to build a senior care home that will employ some of Zybork’s jobless citizens. It’s quite clear that if Kalt doesn’t play ball, he’ll be killed.
Elka is the new mayor, and Tomek extends his enthusiastic support to her in the hopes she will preserve the sanctity and culture – not to mention secrets – of the town. It was also revealed that Officer Dobocinski was well aware of what Tomek was doing and allowed him to do it in order to atone for his past mistakes. This is just another facet of Tomek’s total control of Zybork, with his own family ruling it with an iron fist and a shotgun blast or two.
To this end, Mikolaj has moved back to town to serve as his father’s glassy-eyed enforcer of sorts, making the quiet threats necessary to ensure he gets his way. He’s also now in a relationship with Kaska, who we see burning one of the postcards she has evidently been sending. With all of Daria’s rapists dead, there’s no need for any more. Remember that exchange earlier when Kaska said she wanted to be just like Justyna? Well, she got her wish.
But Justyna’s cautionary response – “I wouldn’t recommend it” – rings true. Her life is going especially well; she wins a journalism award but under false pretenses, and she’s back with her creepy editor. Kaska’s isn’t much better. Mikolaj has fallen back into drugs, and the final shot of Hound’s Hill shows him having shot up in a bathroom. It’s unclear whether he’s unconscious or dead. Given everything he has been through and been responsible for, it’s possible there isn’t much difference.
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