The Missing series 2 episode 6 recap: Can we trust Julien Baptiste?
The picture is finally becoming clearer as The Missing nears its climax. SPOILERS
After last week's shocking reveal, we had suspected that The Missing would finally start to reveal what's going on. Episode six on BBC1 delivered more answers than any episode so far – but that doesn't mean we've had the whole story yet.
But just as the case is becoming clearer, French detective Julien Baptiste is becoming more unreliable. His brain tumour is compromising his investigation, and even we're not sure whether the great French detective is entirely trustworthy anymore.
- The Missing episode 1: what really happened to Alice Webster?
- The Missing episode 2: what is Brigadier Stone up to?
- The Missing episode 3: what do Gemma's rollercoaster photos mean?
- The Missing episode 4: is there is a third missing girl?
- The Missing episode 5: has the shocking ending revealed a new suspect?
No wonder this episode was called 'St Julien' – the man has martyred himself for the case, sacrificing his family and his health for one last solution.
So, can we offer poor Julien any help? It's time to delve in to what we learned this week – and what's still to be solved... SPOILERS
Do we finally know what happened to Sophie Giroux and Alice Webster?
"If were going to make a life out there it has to be off the grid, so just think, Sophie. You ring me at the right time. Morning, afternoon, evening – have you got that?"
– The Missing's Adam Gettrick
Sophie. The French girl who was taken just before Alice. Sophie, the girl who 'came back' to the Websters after years in captivity, claiming she was Alice. Sophie, the girl who faked her own death to be with her terrible captor. Sophie, the girl who has travelled to Switzerland to wait for her kidnapper and daughter to follow her...
Can it be true? Can it be that Julien was right all along, that the girl who came back was not Alice Webster? And does this mean that the real Alice Webster was killed in the fire, in order to buy Sophie and her captor their 'freedom'?
It certainly seems that way. This week's episode saw the girl in Switzerland call the press officer as he was cleaning up the blood from last week's horrifying finale. She asked after her daughter, Lucy, the little girl who gave the game away last week, before the action shifted back to 2015, when Sophie and her daughter are locked in a bedroom with windows blinded and boards blocking the exit.
"We can't live like this," she tells Adam. "It's not good for you, or me. It's not good for Lucy."
It appears she has been in league with her captor all along, returning to the hospital in order to try get people to 'stop looking' for her. By pretending to be Alice and then staging a suicide, she could return to her tormentor, press officer Adam Gettrick. And Alice? The sad truth is she could be dead after all, killed in the fire instead of Sophie.
In 2015, Sophie and Adam hatch a plan to escape to Switzerland and hide out in Adam's uncle's hut, but Adam isn't so sure. "It's not that simple. Our lives are here," he tells Alice, spookily echoing what Gemma told Sam when he suggested moving back to the UK.
They agree she she will go ahead, with Adam following with her daughter once he has claimed his pension – and after she has won his trust.
"This is what you wanted. To see the stars again. Isn’t that what you always said you wanted?” he tells her while cutting her hair. It's horrifying, and horrifyingly domestic, with their child drawing pictures of them together.
What happened to the other girls?
In the present day, Gemma meets Julien to discuss the case. She shows him the rollercoaster photo, still believing that the girl in the red top is the woman who came back, the blurred girl is her daughter Alice, and the third girl is someone else wearing Alice's necklace.
This much is true, as far as we can gather. But what then? Well, if our theory above is correct, Sophie somehow managed to put Alice's body in the fire before escaping. And the girl in the glasses, the one German detective Jorn discovered was called Lena Garber? She could well be dead too – in last week's episode, we saw Sophie in Switzerland put her pair of red glasses in the fire.
There are a couple of other things to notice. Remember the scene in 2015 with Adam unlocking Sophie's bedroom? There were two boarded up doors. Were the other girls locked in the other room? It doesn't have a lock on the door anymore, which presumably means they are not there any more.
The other giveaway is the scene with Sophie speaking French to Adam. "You know I hate it," he tells her, slapping her round the head.
A sign of her past life? Proof of her French origins?
Is Julien Baptiste too ill to investigate?
By the end of this week's episode, Julien is suspected of assaulting Brigadier Stone and cannot control his hallucinations. Eve Stone doesn't trust him, and German detective Jorn, the one man on his side in 2014, is dead.
Gemma Webster is his only ally, but given what we've seen about her state of mind that's hardly a comfort. In the standout scene of episode six, Julien imagines his wife and daughter confronting him, taunting him. His wife says...
"You failed. No one here believes a word you say. What are you doing? To yourself? To us?”
And yet, Julien has discovered that Nadia Herz, the wife of the butcher Kristian, is almost certainly the third person involved in a crime in Iraq 1991, also involving Stone and Henry Reed.
Where is he going with all this? The only way we know for sure that his investigation is connected is thanks to the unnerving conversation between Stone and Sophie all the way back in episode two. Oh, and Sophie putting flowers on Henry Reed's grave in episode four. Do the military officers know that 'Alice' is in fact Sophie? If so, why? And does it get Julien any closer to the murderous press officer?
What does Nadia know – and who is trying to frame her husband?
This episode sees Nadia emerge from hospital, following the attack by masked intruders (who we later learn were the German brothers Matthew Webster has befriended). She goes home, only to discover a camera belonging to her husband Kristian with photos of the missing girls.
She confronts him in prison just before his trial, but he is adamant that he is not guilty.
“This is somebody trying to make it seem I’m guilty," Kristian pleads. "One year now they have nothing, no proof. Only the words of a poor girl who was driven to madness and suicide, and now, with trial weeks away, this camera shows up out of nowhere.”
Nadia doesn't believe him – and we know in the present day that Kristian is still in prison, so evidently neither did the courts.
Could this be something to do with what Nadia, Henry Reed and Stone did in Iraq?
How will all this end?
Matthew has become a violent criminal, egged on by his dangerous German friends and protected by his father. Kristian is rotting in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and his wife is being held at knife point by an increasingly desperate Julien.
In the warped world of The Missing, the relationship between captor and captive felt at times like the most stable family unit of the lot this week – until you realise exactly what he's done and who he has killed to maintain this "stable" relationship.
Series one of The Missing offered lots of answers, but no closure for James Nesbitt's tormented character, and the latest twist suggests this series could be heading in the same direction, with Gemma and Julien trying to find Alice Webster – when the truth is she is long dead.
“Endings always divide people, but will the ending answer all the questions people have?" executive producer Willow Grylls said. "Yes, I think it will.”
Only two episodes left to find out.
UPDATE: The Missing series 2 episode 7 has now aired. Click here to read our recap
