Summary
The ending of Criminal Code Season 2 doesn’t provide an ending so much as a reset, with the power vacuums getting filled almost immediately.
Cut off one head, and two more take its place. This is the central idea of the Hydra from Greek mythology – and the extreme Nazi organization within the Marvel universe – and also, at it happens, the ending of Criminal Code Season 2. The forensically detailed Brazilian crime thriller is, after all, about systemic rot and moral decay. There’s always someone else ready to step into the shoes of the previous gang boss, corrupt politician, or rogue lawman. The cycle always begins anew.
In Netflix terms, we sometimes call this “leaving things unresolved in the hopes of another season.” You could level that accusation at Criminal Code, but it’d be less true than usual. When the point of a show is largely that the conflict at its core can conceivably go on forever, it feels unfair to dock points from it for not wrapping everything up with a neat and tidy bow.
Setting the Scene
It’s important to note the gist of this season’s narrative as it spins out of the Season 1 finale. The Federal police are on the back foot against Isaac’s Phantom Gang, the crimes of which begin to seem like public displays of supremacy meant to taunt a collapsing legal system. And true to the focus on minutia and detail exhibited in the first season, the second struggles to proceed without institutional ego and jurisdictional confusion being ironed out first. The finale isn’t about closure; it’s about the payoff of finally getting the opportunity to earn a brief reprieve.
Along the way, the show uses shocking deaths – Gabriel, the Ambassador, the Professor – to increase the personal stakes and create more urgency and complexity in the cat-and-mouse game. In many ways, the finale could be summed up as Suellen and Benicio finally managing to follow the trail of clues to a final showdown with Soulless and Isaac, but that’d be a gross oversimplification in light of everything that has happened until this point.
Isaac Gets Away – Again
Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of the show’s underlying themes is the fact that Isaac is once again able to escape, despite a very close call with Suellen and the death of his associate, Lobo, during an epic fight in the Santos port.
You can see how personal vendettas get in the way here, as Benicio’s obsession with soulless prompts him to leave Suellen to deal with Isaac alone. This not only damages their relationship but is arguably the root cause of Isaac’s escape. In an entire season characterized by nobody being able to get on the same page, it only feels right that even the supposed “heroes” can’t put their heads together for long enough to deal with the most pressing problem. The seizure of massive amounts of cocaine is framed as a win for the federal police, but it feels like a hollow one.
As for Isaac, he’ll be back. If he’s able to stay under the radar of the police and form a fruitful partnership with Italio, he can rebuild his underworld reputation from scratch and menace the authorities once again in a virtually inevitable third season.
A still from Criminal Code Season 2 | Image via Netflix
Soulless Is Just A Man
Another recurring motif in Season 2 of Criminal Code is the idea of the Phantom Gang taking on a larger-than-life mythological contour in their provocative and very public misdeeds. This is most aptly explored through Soulless and Benicio, since for the latter, the former has become emblematic of a kind of grief, rage, and impotence that he feels within himself and the system. He buys into the mistaken belief that Soulless lives up to his name as an avatar of pure criminality, something less than human.
The one-on-one final fight has all the right stakes, but despite Benicio coming out on top and killing Soulless, he doesn’t get anything like the closure he’s looking for. On the contrary, what he sees in his adversary is the similarities to himself; affection for his son, devotion to his own kind of justice. The dividing line between each side of the law is so thin that in this moment, it’s almost impossible to see any distinction between the two, other than one person getting to their knife moments before the other.
This is closure of a kind – Soulless is indeed dead, unlike Isaac – but not for Benicio. In the context of how unsatisfying his revenge ends up being, it’s hard to suggest that abandoning Suellen and potentially facilitating Isaac’s escape was really worth it.
The New Ambassador
As mentioned, Criminal Code primarily ups the stakes using key character deaths, and one of them is the Ambassador, who meets his end thanks to Isaac and his own traitorous right-hand man. But as intimated at the top, there’s always someone new waiting to step into an old role. Enter Cabeca.
The idea of a new Ambassador is significant because it doesn’t just fill the power vacuum caused by the original’s death and Isaac’s close call with the law, but also because it gives Criminal Code itself the scope to keep going into another season and potentially beyond. Isaac is in hiding and rebuilding, which leaves him on the table, but Cabeca now has considerable power and influence in his absence, which will make him the target of Suellen and Benicio – providing they can reconcile after they quite literally went their separate ways.
And that’s very much the ending of Criminal Code Season 2 in a nutshell. Nobody wins the game – certain players just manage to keep themselves on the board in whatever way they can.
