Under a Dark Sun Recap ‘Things Fall Apart’: A planted gun, a secret debt, a kidnapping – a packed, relentless, satisfying episode

In the third episode of Under a Dark Sun, currently airing on Netflix, Alba finds a new ally in Valentin, and Beatrice finds herself trapped. 

Under a Dark Sun Episode 3 Recap and Review

It took three episodes, but Under a Dark Sun now has an episode that is both plot and character driven, one that began with a glimpse into Alba Mazier’s history, and continued on fleshing out individual stories through one well-paced scene after another. It was a reminder and a reward of patience in storytelling. In the episode two recap, I wrote that I have not yet reached the point of feeling for any of the characters. Episode three changed that, and how. 

Noor’s tantalising tidbit last episode that she thought she knew who killed Arnaud began the beautiful unravelling of the characters. After Alba tore off the agreement Beatrice tried to make her sign confessing to the murder of Arnaud in exchange for Beatrice ensuring that Leo was financially set when he reached adulthood, she returned to the park and found Samira and Valentin searching for Noor. They entered her cabin and found it completely empty, even of her belongings. Alba immediately connected Noor’s disappearance with her revelation about Arnaud’s death. Valentin dismissed that because he, fairly, pointed out that seasonal workers quit all the time.

Samira shared Alba’s worry, but as a non-documented worker like Noor, she did not think going to the police was an option. She did tell Alba that one early morning, she saw one of Arnaud’s cars drop off Noor. This was the black car with a broken light, the vehicle that Mathieu frequently drove.

Alba did not join Samira and Valentin at the flower fields. Instead, she took her son Leo to Manon’s office. Poor Leo, who had first hand experience in Beatrice’s particular way of speaking to a child, and who discovered the gun probably used in the murder of Arnaud amongst Alba’s things, was upset with his mother. He was getting information he had difficulty processing, and the closest adult in his life was not taking the time to be as honest as possible with him.

Manon, too, was upset with Alba, because she did not tell her about Dimitri Ravel. Forced to address this part of her history, Alba said that Dimitri was a druggie who fell and died. She was in the other room with Leo when it happened. Was this really what happened, though? The flashback showed us Alba and Dimitri fighting. When Alba was struggling to decide what to do with Beatrice’s offer, her vision (hallucination?) of Dimitri and Arnaud both implied that she killed Dimitri.  

Alba left Leo with Manon because she wanted to investigate the vehicle that Samira saw drop Noor off. She found it in the garage and was able to break the window when Valentin arrived with the spare key. Mathieu’s temper tantrum in the fields not only lost him his most valuable employee, it also gave Alba, whom he was trying to frame for the murder of his father, an unlikely ally.

So far, we don’t yet know how all this began. However, we do know that after Lucie gave her brother Mathieu the gun she found in their mother’s house, Mathieu planted  (or had it planted) in Alba’s cabin. He then called in an anonymous tip to the police as to its location. Mathieu had been sleeping with Omar’s associate, he was trying to revive the deal with Maison Oris. Alba’s conviction of Arnaud’s murder would remove the complication of an additional heir to Arnaud’s estate, the very complication that made Omar walk away from the deal. 

With his father gone, Mathieu now assumed that he was the boss on his father’s estate. He was furious at Valentin when he saw the burned roses, the patch of land that Alba claimed. Valentin retorted that the burning had nothing to do with him and had to do with their family quarrel. Mathieu fired Valentin in what looked like an effort to assert his new boss status. Valentin pointed out that Arnaud hired him because Mathieu was an incompetent Daddy’s boy.

And so Mathieu lost the one person who had been effectively running the farm with his father, and for his father following Arnaud’s death. Valentin figured out where Alba would be, given her concern for Noor that morning, and decided to help her. Once inside the vehicle, Alba accessed the GPS which had curious data. What was Mathieu doing in the middle of the forest at three in the morning?

Alba and Valentin followed the GPS data until they found a small dilapidated house in the middle of the forest. They searched it and found a room in a hidden basement. It was a creepy bedroom with what looked like some BDSM chains, a TV, and at least one DVD. Alba played a disc labeled ‘Sleeping Beauty’. It was a video of a woman (Noor?) sleeping on the bed, and a man’s hand. It cut off before we could see what happened next. When Alba took out the disc, the screen suddenly showed a video feed of the surveillance inside the very cabin where she and Leo had been living. Valentin pointed out that the camera in the room moved; someone was watching them.  

Because of Mathieu’s anonymous call to the police, the older policeman (sorry, I still haven’t gotten his name by this episode) searched Alba’s cabin whilst his younger partner Lucas Levine followed Alba in his car. When Alba and Valentin burst out of the house, Alba holding the disc, Lucas stopped them with gun drawn. Someone unseen started firing, killing young Lucas. Alba dropped the disc on the ground as she and Valentin ran to her vehicle. 

The hits did not cease for Alba even when she reached Manon’s office to pick up Leo. There, she found her father Thierry, whom Leo called after he handed the gun over to Manon. Leo had reached his limit with his mother who refused to tell him the truth. Alba tried to bring up their dream of Barcelona again, as though keeping their eyes on that longed for prize would somehow make the insane situation they were in any easier. Alba looked very much the young mother who had fire to fight others but who did not realise the damage these past few days and her own actions had dealt on her child. When Alba asked Leo if she could give him a hug, that was Under a Dark Sun finding its heart and its pulsing purpose. Through a myriad of plots and action was this pocket of poignance, a mother who loved her son but whose efforts to preserve his childhood only further stripped it from him.

Once Leo had left with his grandfather, Manon showed Alba the gun that Leo found. They both knew Alba was being framed, but Manon said she could not keep this from the police. There was no anger in Alba when she told Manon she was no longer her lawyer, only resolve. Alba said she would speak to the police.  

Valentin was there with Alba as they waited at the police station. What Alba intended to say, we had yet to find out, because she received a message from the same anonymous number who reached out to her the morning she found the roses burned. It was a warning not to talk to the police, or her son would be killed, followed by a photo of the bound and blindfolded Leo.

Alba’s initial suspect on who framed her for the murder of Arnaud was Beatrice, but it was beginning to look like Beatrice was herself struggling. Her husband’s lawyer Jacques found her at the casino, where she tried to deny her relapse but eventually had to admit that it started after Jacques told her about Arnaud’s secret daughter. So, Alba got this one right, Beatrice has known all these months about the change in the will.

Jacques asked Beatrice how much she owed the casino, and Beatrice demurred giving a figure. It did not matter, Jacques already knew. The one hundred thousand euros that was Arnaud’s hidden debt was actually Beatrice’s casino debt. Jacques secretly lent him the money. Now, the debt was Beatrice’s to face, and though she tried to hold on to the possibility for the Maison Oris deal to still go through, she did not sound convinced. Jacques claimed he found a solution to this mess, and the way he creeped on the visibly uncomfortable and unwilling Beatrice here, Alba’s aggression with him at the cafe last episode might have been warranted. 

Mathieu did not appear to know of his mother’s problems. They had a nice moment early on, and it seemed that Mathieu still thought he was fixing things for the family. He and Lucie had a fight about Valentin’s firing that devolved into Mathieu taunting Lucie over an unkind nickname at school. Lucie had wanted to give the gun she found to the police. Mathieu clearly had no intention of doing that.

An emotional Lucie finally told her boyfriend Oliver via video call that her father died. This was apparently a relationship that she had kept secret from her family, even after they decided that Lucie would move to London to be with him. Later at the restaurant, with Mathieu already drunk and joking that he killed their father (Lucie suspected their mother), Lucie finally told him she was leaving. Before Mathieu had time to process that, Beatrice arrived with Jacques and announced that they were marrying.

‘Things Fall Apart’ is a packed episode that flowed seamlessly, introducing multiple twists without losing its character-driven centre. If the first episode showed promise, this was the episode where that promise was fulfilled, part mystery, part thriller, part soapy family drama, an episode that was peopled with the broken and the determined and the dangerous and the innocent. Let’s hope the series keeps its momentum through the next three episodes. 

Rating: A

You can access Recap Lab’s full coverage of Under a Dark Sun via this link. 

Strays

🌷Since Dimitri was an artist, does this mean the notebook Alba kept with drawings belonged to him?

🌷The policeman who searched Alba’s cabin did not find the gun because Leo had it and had already taken it to Manon.

🌷Valentin said Mathieu was a psychopath. Hmm a psychopath with a secret basement in the forest, perhaps?

🌷Mathieu struggled with the processing plant because of course he did. 

🌷As Thierry drove away with Leo, someone followed their car. Leo was clearly kidnapped, but I could not tell if Thierry was merely unconscious in the car or worse. 

Home