The Missing 23/11/2016

Last night’s episode of The Missing had Twitter exploding, as viewers struggled to handle their shock. After last week’s blog entry where I said I felt slightly disappointed with the episode, I began to feel ashamed of myself for even thinking that once I was five minutes into last night’s episode. It was phenomenally good. It was BAFTA worthy. Absolutely brilliant.

Now, as always, if you didn’t manage to catch last night’s episode of The Missing (why the hell not?) and you plan on watching it without any spoilers, this is your warning – DO NOT READ AHEAD.

As we all know, last week’s episode ended – rather limply – with Nadia, the butcher’s wife, accepting that she did know something about what happened to Mirza Barzani’s sister in Iraq, 1991. Last night’s episode opened with her version of events.

We were taken back to Iraq and it was everything we’d imagined it would be: hot, dry and deserted. Nadia, despite her youth, was a more senior ranking officer than Adrian Stone and Henry Reed. Nadia was also ill, although trying desperately to hide it, as she barked out orders that Stone and Reed were forbidden to look for Adam Gettrick, who had been missing for days.

Going against her wishes, the two young officers formed their own search party as the two of them snuck off to find him. They’d heard a rumour that Adam had been caught in bed with a thirteen year old girl, so the first place they checked for his whereabouts was the girl’s house. They met her father, who told them that he was well aware of Adam’s behaviour and had sent him packing. The soldiers smelt a rat and waited in a car until they were certain the girl had left and her father had gone to sleep.

They discovered the young Mirza Barzani, who they ushered out of the house as they found what they’d suspected – that the young girl’s father was keeping Adam hostage. Barely alive, Stone and Reed dragged his body through the house and were discovered by the girl’s father, who Stone shot dead. To cover their tracks, Stone poured petrol in the house and set it alight once they were all safe outside.

Or so he thought.

It turned out that there was a nine year old girl trapped inside the house. Needless to say, she perished. Reed, seemingly more guilt stricken than Stone, got Mirza Barzani’s details and presumably, this is when he began to send money over to him, as a way of saying “Sorry we killed your dad and your sister and blew up your house”.

So, what was the relevance of knowing about this story? Well, originally, we all suspected something more sinister had happened. I for one was beginning to picture a horror story unfolding of three twisted soldiers and a nine year old girl, so in a strange way, even though a child and her father ended up dead, it was somewhat of a relief. Furthermore, we got to see that Henry Reed appeared to be a decent person. And more importantly, we saw that even as a man in his early twenties, Adam Gettrick was a monster.

Nadia found out about what happened, presumably after seeing the state Adam was in once they’d returned to camp. Desperate not to tarnish her reputation, she decided not to tell the powers that be what had happened. As such, the story remained between the four of them. Could it be that Adam was bitter about Nadia telling the other two not to search for him? If so, is this why he framed her husband for the abduction of Alice and Sophie?

It seems incredibly extreme. Why wait all those years? And why frame him and not her? There’s got to be more to it, which is why I suspect Sophie asked Matthew to tell Christian that she was sorry.

Speaking of which, we see Adam leaving Germany to meet Sophie (formerly known as Imposter Alice – which, ironically, I’ve called her since the start of the series and last night, Gemma Webster called her! I actually cheered.) in Switzerland. He brought little Lucy with him and it was uncomfortably clear how vulnerable she was, sat in the back of the car in total silence, with what can only be described as a predator looking after her.

We got to see more of the relationship between Sophie and Adam and it appeared more apparent than ever that Sophie was awash with a combination of disgust, hatred and fear for Adam. I started to wonder whether Sophie was playing a game. Is she going along with his little plan to ensure the safety of Lucy, so that once they were reunited, she can kill Adam or run away?

Whatever she’s planning, fingers crossed she doesn’t forget about Alice. Yes, that’s right, you read correctly. Last night, we saw the real Alice Webster for the first time since she disappeared in 2003. In the creepiest sequence of events, Adam decided to buy Lucy a toy to replace one she had left behind in Germany. He chose a creepy monkey that no one in their right mind would buy. He realised he had left some cash at home, however he still purchased the monkey, so did he buy it using a card? Potentially linking himself to Switzerland for anyone looking for him?

Back at the cabin, Sophie, Adam and Lucy are reunited and once Lucy falls asleep, Sophie spots the toy monkey. She assumes, naturally, that it is for Lucy. In a jaw dropping moment, Adam announces that the toy is for “her. She’s been good. I didn’t hear a peep out of the boot the whole way here”. Chillingly, he unlocks a padlocked door and out crawls the emaciated figure of Alice Webster, dragging her lifeless body across the floor like a dog.

It was pitiful to watch. I was sat eating a Toblerone at the time and I felt sick to my stomach as it was clear that this poor girl hadn’t eaten a morsel in weeks. Her skin was sallow, her hair was lank and greasy and she was filthy. Heartbreakingly, she promised Adam that she would be good. Again, the treatment of her and the way she was behaving seemed more like an abused animal than anything else.

Really, we shouldn’t have been shocked. This is The Missing, for crying out loud. Nothing is impossible. As the penultimate episode, we should’ve known something huge was bound to happen. Somehow, I don’t think any of us expected to feel as thoroughly repulsed as we did. I was accompanied by my The Missing buddy, my mum, and we just sat in silence for minutes. It was sickening, as if for a brief moment we thought what did we just watch?

It makes you wonder why Adam has chosen to treat Alice in such a degrading demeanour. Is it just purely down to his psychotic behaviour or has Alice done something during her years in captivity which has given him “cause” to lock her up? (I say that lightly, for obvious reasons.) As in, has she attempted to run away? Or did she alert Henry Reed of her presence, meaning Reed had to be taken care of?

Thinking back to little Lucy two weeks ago when she’d drawn “me and mummy in the basement”, we all presumed she was referring to herself and Sophie, but could she really be Alice’s biological daughter? As Henry Reed is a medic, could he have been on hand to assist with the birth? Which would account for the blood on the floor in his house. We know Sophie has given birth as this was reported shortly after her return but does it have to have been with Lucy or could there be another child somewhere?

And now we bring ourselves back to the age old question: WHO WAS THE BODY IN THE SHED? Presumably, it was Lena. The third missing girl, from the rollercoaster, who we’re none the wiser about because only poor Jorn had linked her to the storyline at all. If it was Lena, then someone had to have rigged the DNA test results. Either that or Sam Webster has been sowing his seed a lot more than we realised.

Speaking of which, Eve Stone is still pregnant with his child. We didn’t see a great deal of Eve last night, other than a little surrounding her father’s attack. She was referenced in the 1991 scenes in Iraq, though, for those of us with hawk like eyes. When Stone and Reed were discussing Adam’s exploits with a thirteen year old, Reed pointed out that she wasn’t “much older than Eve”.

Perhaps our suspicions that she was also an abducted girl, brought up by Stone, are wrong but there’s still something fishy there, I just know it. I started to wonder whether Eve was also subjected to abuse from Adam. If so, now that Adam has been accused by Baptiste of being the girls’ abductor, will Eve come forward to convince the authorities that Adam is a bad man?

Let’s not forget that Adam’s uncle, also working for the military police, previously owned the cabin in the woods in Switzerland. Is he in on the whole thing? Will anyone work out the link between the two of them?

Before I call it a night, I just want to reiterate my thoughts on Adrian Stone. He is not to be trusted. Don’t forget that Stone recognised Sophie when she returned as Imposter Alice and intimidated her in the garden, away from prying eyes and ears. She asked him “how can you live with yourself?” What was she talking about?

It seems unlikely that she’s simply referring to the story of the young girl in Iraq, which she could only have heard from Adam. Unless of course Adam has filled her head with years full of nonsense and perhaps pretended that Stone was the one who had raped a thirteen year old.

Regardless of what’s happened, I don’t like him and I am desperate to know if his dementia is genuine or not.

Next week is the very final episode of The Missing and we have high expectations. I read an interview with Tcheky Karyo, the actor behind Julien Baptiste, where he said although there are shocks, the final episode is more about putting the final pieces of the puzzle together. Hopefully we will find out more about the body in the shed, Henry Reed’s suicide, the blood that Daniel Reed cleared up, the transvestite, the bald twins, the apology to Christian Hertz, the flowers on Reed’s grave, where the girls stayed all those years, who else knew about it, when people will realise that Jorn is missing and most importantly – will Julien Baptiste live?