How Baptiste series 2 ended – and what happened to all the characters

Look away now if you haven’t reached the end of the six-part iPlayer boxset because *big spoilers follow*. Still with us? Très bon. Here are the events of the last ever episode explained and analysed.

Baptiste foiled the terrorists – but only “Juszt”

Missing persons specialist Julien Baptiste (veteran French actor Tchéky Karyo) realised in the penultimate episode that Andras Juszt (Miklós Béres) was the far-right terrorist mastermind known as Gomorrah. With his stripy-tattooed neck and hollow stare, Andras had been hiding in plain sight all along. He claimed he was just a low-level errand boy who’d got out but, in fact, he was the ringleader of the anti-immigration extremists. So, could Baptiste put a stop to his evil plan?

The finale opened by flashing back a week to demonstrate how Andras led everyone on a merry dance. He’d deliberately cast suspicion on populist politician Kamilla Agoston (Gabriella Hámori). Manipulative Andras made her play ball by blackmailing her with a recording which suggested she knew about the massacre at Józsefváros, a market square in the immigrant quarter of Budapest where dozens were gunned down by so-called “Demons in the Daylight”.

Even when cuffed and in custody, Andras coolly pulled the strings by passing notes and unplugging the wire he was wearing for whispered conflabs. He was planning an attack on a refugee centre which would “make Józsefváros look like a teddy bear’s picnic” but Baptiste worked out that he was hiding out in a nearby cabin with accomplice Will Chambers (Conrad Khan), thanks to Will letting slip during idle smalltalk that he lived near a noisy waterfall.

A woodland chase and a bruising fight later, the ex-cop got his man. The “hero of Józsefváros”, as the Hungarian media dubbed him, had saved the day again. But at what cost?

We thought our hero was dead…

The Julien vs Andras dust-up was a gruntingly visceral scrap for survival. The younger man initially gained the upper hand, before Julien fought back with some bone-crunching headbutts. But as he sat catching his breath on the forest floor, the apparently unconscious Andras pulled a knife and stabbed Julien several times in the side. Baptiste knocked him out with a rock but the damage was done.

As he bled heavily from his abdomen, Baptiste slipped into unconsciousness and had a sequence of visions. First, he saw the knitted elephant toy which has haunted him all series. He’d bought it for his baby granddaughter on the day that her mother, Baptiste’s daughter Sara (Camille Schotte), died from a drug overdose. Poignantly, he retrieved his wedding ring from his pocket and put it on as his life flashed before his eyes.

He saw Sara, estranged wife (Anastasia Hille), homicidal secret son Niels (Boris Van Severen) and Niels’ murdered mother Martha (Barbara Sarafian). There were glimpses of other Baptiste cast members, including missing five-year-old Oliver Hughes (Oliver Hunt) playing with his cuddly toy fox, abducted Alice Webster aka Sophie Giroux (Abigail Hardingham), corrupt cop Khalid Ziane (La Haine’s Saïd Taghmaoui) repeatedly slamming Baptiste’s leg in a car door (hence that trademark limp), the operation on his brain tumour and the shock houseboat drowning of sex worker Natalie Rose (Anna Próchniak).

Loved ones alternated with allusions to previous cases – two seasons of The Missing, set in France and Germany, and the debut run of his eponymous spin-off, set in Amsterdam – before the camera slowly tilted up towards the tree canopy and night sky. It was a profoundly affecting sequence. If this truly was Baptiste’s last scene, it made for a worthy farewell.

…But happily he survived for a rooftop farewell

As we’ve learnt from copious crime thrillers over the years (Reservoir Dogs springs to mind), a stomach wound might result in catastrophic bleeding but it takes a long time to die from it. Seven sad minutes after we presumed him dead, Baptiste reappeared for a fond farewell with British ambassador-turned-sleuthing partner Emma Chambers (the mighty Fiona Shaw).

Emma was at the Budapest hospital bedside of her comatose teen son Will (Conrad Khan) – more on him in a moment – when she received a text invitation to a rooftop rendezvous. Waiting up there was the resurrected and fully recovered Baptiste who, he said wryly, had “seen enough of hospital ceilings”.

Given a second shot at life, Baptiste told her how he’s been to visit Niels in Dutch prison. He expressed admiration for how Emma had adapted to being in a wheelchair and bravely taken ownership of her family trauma. The philosophical Frenchman poetically expressed his desire to do likewise, to “heal by experiencing our suffering to the full” because “perhaps that’s the price of progress”.

In typically no-nonsense style, Emma said of her own predicament: “It’s all a mess but I should think myself lucky. Life isn’t going to get any worse for me – short of the lump I haven’t yet found.” She then dismissed the grizzled detective: “With respect and gratitude, Mr Baptiste, I hope I never have any reason to see you again.” It was a lovely scene – two formidable characters, two estimable actors and even some hand-holding as they parted. Sweetly done.

Emma Chambers saved life of her fugitive son

We just knew that “Stayin’ Alive” would come back into it somewhere. Emma Chambers’ murdered daughter Laura (Claude Scott-Mitchell) was seen in flashback, practising CPR to the rhythm of the Bee Gees’ disco classic. Now Emma used the technique to save her last surviving child, Will.

He’d been laying the groundwork for the next terror attack by working undercover as a volunteer called “Nicholas” at the abattoir-turned-refugee centre which was the primary target. What the volatile Andras hadn’t told Will was that he’d be the first sacrifice. After instructing Will to covertly collect anything that looked like a weapon from the camp residents – rolling pins, planks, metal pipes, pots, pans – Andras brutally beat the boy with the assorted implements.

“They’re going to find you, surrounded by these pathetic weapons, and their fingerprints will be all over them,” he sneered like an exposition-spouting Scooby Doo villain. “The poor immigrants you were trying to help turned on you like the animals they are and beat you to a bloodied pulp.”

Foolishly, however, he didn’t finish the job. While Baptiste wrestled with Andras, Emma desperately hauled herself out of her wheelchair and managed to keep Will breathing until ambulances arrived. He was last seen on a life support machine, his mother watching over him.

Supported by her protective colleague Nadeem Chaudhry (Line Of Duty’s Ace Bhatti), with whom she had a sweet friendship, Emma decided to go public with the truth. She and Baptiste had hushed up the fact that her eldest son, Alex (Stuart Campbell), radicalised by his sister’s death at the hands of a mentally ill immigrant, had been the gunman at Józsefváros. Now she came clean at a cathartic press conference.

It was a towering turn from Shaw: sharply witty with moments of raw intensity. Her performance surely drew on the inescapable similarities between Emma’s loss and the devastating trauma endured by Shaw’s real-life wife, Sri Lankan economist Sonali Deraniyagala, who tragically lost her entire family in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Andras was jailed but fight against hate continues

Andras Juszt was last seen languishing in a Hungarian prison but giving a satisfied smirk. His hate crime had been foiled but he knew his toxic legacy would continue.

Far-right thug Viktor Rádán (Dávid Zoltan Miller) – his name’s resemblance to current Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán’s probably no coincidence – inherited both the mantle and devilish folk mask of Gomorrah. He fired up his webcam to film a rabble-rousing video to post online, where the hate-fuelled movement fomented. It’s likely that, like Andras, he had backing from friends in high places, too…

Corrupt Kamilla dodged blame and gained ground

Provocative local politician Kamilla Agoston, leader of the “Hungary First” party and “respectable face of the far right”, might have been cleared of being Gomorrah herself but she still had strong links to the terror group. When Andras leaked recordings of their conversations to the media in an attempt to shift blame and strike a plea bargain, it rightly hit the headlines.

However, it didn’t put paid to her career. Far from it. As we’ve seen in the real world recently, certain populist figureheads seem to be fire-proof, with brickbats sliding off them and scandals not sticking. So it proved here, as Agoston’s approval ratings went up.

As her English husband, crooked property developer Michael (Poldark’s Peter Sullivan), smugly said: “Maybe fewer people believe the press than we thought.” “Or maybe they like what I have to say,” she smirked in reply. Depressing, but all too plausible.

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Rays of hope for Baptiste’s marriage

Emma Chambers had told Baptiste that it was never too late to save his marriage. The long-suffering Celia had served him divorce papers in the wake of their daughter’s death. Julien failed to face his grief, instead hiding in his obsessive workaholism or at the bottom of a whisky bottle. “Hercule f***ing Poirot”, as Celia called him, went AWOL when she needed him, thanks to “stubborn Gallic bullshit”.

Baptiste threw away the booze and spruced up his cesspit of an apartment. Rather incongruously, he signalled his retirement and desire for a fresh start by attending a cookery class. Rarely has a spatchcocked chicken acquired so much metaphorical significance.

There were two last things for the master-finder to track down: a cuddly toy fox like Oliver Hughes’ for his adorable granddaughter and the little girl herself, during a giggly game of hide-and-seek.

Softening towards the new-look Baptiste – thankfully, he’d shaved off that bushy beard, which gave him the look of a dishevelled Santa Claus who’d consumed a few too many sherries – Celia invited him to stay for a drink. As the camera pulled away outside the window, Baptiste edged towards her, as if for a tentative kiss, hinting at a happy ending.

Solid end to a middling series

Creators Harry and Jack Williams constructed another darkly compelling thriller. Their twisting six-part drama was an emotive examination of grief, far-right extremism and online radicalisation. It was pleasingly literate too, sprinkled with quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche and J Robert Oppenheimer.

However, the coronavirus pandemic meant the siblings had to rewrite the scripts four times to adapt to production shutdowns and logistical challenges. Sadly, it showed. Switching between two timelines was clever but often confusing. There were powerful scenes here – notably Baptiste’s near-death and that rooftop farewell – but a suspicion that the strong performances by Tchéky Karyo and Fiona Shaw were propping up a wobbly script. Some of the moralising was clumsy. Dialogue sometimes seemed to be straining for topical resonance.

It was gripping enough but on reflection, this finale was full of plot holes. What was supposed to happen at the refugee camp? Was Will banging on those pipes to start a gas leak? What was Andras’ wider plan, his “seven trumpets of Revelation”? Did he deliberately get himself arrested? Why involve the Chambers family so centrally in his evil plans? And what was the significance of that trademark neck tattoo? Was he a fan of zebras, Newcastle United or rudimentary barcodes?

Ex-police officer Zsofia Arslan (Dorka Gryllus), who was scapegoated after the Józsefváros massacre, played a peripheral part in this finale. It was a shame this likeable character didn’t get a satisfying resolution to her story arc. The fact that saucepans and spatchcocked poultry played such a part in this finale was also inadvertently amusing. Anyone else feel like chicken tonight?

Is Baptiste really ending?

It’s been announced that this will be the second and final outing for the slow-burning spin-off from BBC One stablemate The Missing. The Williams brothers originally envisioned Baptiste as a trilogy but have since said they want to “do right” by the character, avoid becoming formulaic and not let him become “just another detective”.

Tchéky Karyo has teased that he’s not ready to say goodbye to the character just yet. However, his creators’ minds seem made up. We doubt that dear old Baptiste will don his black peacoat and rimless spectacles again. Enjoy your well-earned retirement, Monsieur.

Baptiste series two continues on BBC One on Sundays at 9pm, and is available on BBC iPlayer as a boxset. Check out our Baptiste series two review, take a look at the rest of our Drama coverage or browse our TV Guide to find out what else is on television this week.