Under a Dark Sun Recap ‘Someone Knew’: Arnaud, Alba, Beatrice

In the second episode of Under a Dark Sun, currently airing in Netflix, Alba fights back, and Beatrice makes her an offer.

Under a Dark Sun Episode 2 Recap and Review

Who killed Arnaud Lasserre? Alba’s father – the one who raised her, not her biological father – was ready to believe it was her. Apparently, he was the man Alba and Leo were running away from in the first episode. He wanted to apply for custody of Leo, and Alba’s mother supported him. Alba’s father told the police that he believed her capable of murdering Arnaud because she had done it before. The man Alba was suspected of killing 10 years ago was a junkie named Dimitri Ravel, who happened to be her boyfriend at the time. 

Alba may not receive support from her family, but an unnamed man saved (or appeared to save) her life. I recognised him as a man who was at the chapel last episode during Arnaud’s funeral. When she woke in the hospital, he told Alba that he had come to see Arnaud when he heard sounds coming from the ground. He dug it up and found her unconscious in the coffin. Alba insisted on going home to her son, who only had Manon to accompany him. 

It is on times like this when I wish Netflix had the feature that Prime Video and Apple TV+ have, where we could see the character names as they appear on screen. I understand, of course, that there are times when the story necessitates that a character’s identity remain a secret, temporarily. Was that necessary here, though? Did it not make more sense for Alba to demand to know who the man who claimed to have rescued her was? I’m watching this in the original French and relying on English subtitles, and I don’t remember Alba getting the man’s name. It was also only in this episode that I heard the name Hadrien, which I assumed was Mathieu’s son’s name. An x-ray-esque feature would go a long way to helping address little challenges to the script like this. 

Alba’s experience of getting buried alive turned her even more defiant, and she marched to the Lasserre home to lay claim to what was hers. Believing that one of the family tried to have her killed, she decided to annoy them by roping off a part of the flower farm that she claimed was hers. She even tried to entice some of the workers by offering them a 50-50 split (there were no takers). Prior to this, Alba has only done one shift. She has only learned how to pick the flowers properly. How would she even know what to do with the flowers that she did pick on her purported parcel of the farm? Where would she take all those sacks of flowers she gathered? How did she intend to make money off them? 

What made a bit more sense was Alba’s move to try and gain information from Arnaud’s lawyer Jacques. She was rather aggressive in her approach of him in a cafe. Of course she got no information from him, but what she really wanted, and did get, was his phone. So there are people in the world who don’t passcode protect their phones? Let’s buy that and accept that Alba was able to access his phone records, and learned that on the same day that Arnaud changed his will to add Alba as a beneficiary, Jacques called Beatrice. Alba’s assumptions were that Beatrice had known all this time about Alba and the change in Arnaud’s will, and that it was Beatrice who killed Arnaud and framed Alba. She planted this suggestion into Lucie’s head, Lucie, who was already struggling with finding a gun in a toilet in her mother’s home. Lucie finally brought Mathieu into the secret that she had been carrying since the day of the funeral. 

Beatrice was too busy trying to keep her family afloat to mourn her husband. She learned that on top of the 500 thousand euros they knew Arnaud owed, he had additional debt of 100 thousand euros. Their financial issues would be solved if the deal with Omar and Maison Oris pushed through, but Omar refused, not now when the deal had been complicated with the additional beneficiary in the will. 

Beatrice, who seemed to be a gambler, went to a casino and won big. When Alba woke to an anonymous message and the plot of roses she claimed burned down, she charged to Beatrice’s house and tried to choke her alleged father’s wife. Beatrice’s face did not even move. She remained calm and directed Alba to the money in her wallet, nine thousand euros for Leo in an account under his name, along with additional deposits to ensure that he would have a nice start in life. She wanted Alba to sign a confidential agreement where Alba would confess to killing Arnaud and Beatrice would take care of Leo as her own until he came of age. Whilst this was happening, back in their cabin, young Leo found the gun inside Alba’s bag.

In general, I don’t mind shows where the characters are not exactly morally upright. I am currently recapping The Day of the Jackal, which is a show whose protagonist is a sniper for hire, a serial killer, and I love it. I don’t need to root for a character to truly enjoy a show, but when I don’t feel even a little invested in what happens to a character, or any character in a story, that often means that something is not quite clicking in the story for me. That’s where I’m at here in the second episode. Alba is a woman fighting to clear her name against a family that was closing ranks to protect themselves and their business, and a police force that was all too ready to suspect her of murder. I should be rooting for her, or at least feeling for her. I’m not really there yet. I don’t much care for Beatrice or any of the Lasserres too. I can see what they’re trying to do with the story, but the main characters have not yet pulled emotional involvement out of me. 

Of all the revelations here, the one that made me curious was Noor, a young worker at the farm. Noor told Alba that she thought she knew who killed Arnaud, but she could not tell her right there in the fields because they were being watched. Noor promised that she would send Alba a message. 

‘Someone Knew’ showed a show that had more secrets to serve as lure. Whether its characters were drawn well enough to sustain the intrigue, I suppose we’ll see. 

Rating: B-

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

Strays

🌷Alba’s mother told her she was adopted, and that her biological mother made them swear never to tell anyone. 

🌷Arnaud’s lender was Grasse Horizon and the Lasserres did not know who ran it. Hmm.

🌷Manon was Mathieu’s daughter. She asked her brother why their mother left them.

🌷The police served a search warrant to look for the murder weapon in the estate. This led to the police disassembling the tanks where the flowers needed to be processed, or they’d be ruined. This represented a major loss of revenue to the family.

🌷Beatrice was making the farm workers work longer, which naturally upset them. 

🌷Young Leo was mad at Alba for not explaining what was happening to him. Beatrice spent some time bluntly telling him what was what, poor kid.

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