'Mortel' Season 1 Episode 4 and 5 review: Obé pulls a surprising move to save Sofiane, but will it all end here?
This article contains spoilers for 'Mortel' Season 1, Episode 4 & 5
Voodoo God Obé (Corentin Fila) is one such entity that pops up the second Sofiane's mind begins to fizzle out on all the nasty things. Mostly, he comes around when Sofiane is thinking of killing somebody or hurting them. Afterall, Obé is just a soul transporter and all he needs is a soul for a soul. He does not care about what Sofiane (Carl Malapa) was going through and is keen on getting his work done.
We have seen Obé make random appearances around Sofiane and Victor (Némo Schiffman). There is a point when Obé talks about how empty his life is and that he could use some friends. But since he has a major evil side to him, the boys pass the idea of friendship as they are scared of Obé. At one point in time, we even get a peek into his funny side, but he is practically an evil God, so staying away from him should be in their best interest.
Obé is portrayed as a dumb God who has a cough and doesn't know the difference between murder and suicide. He tells Sofiane during one of their conversations that he stays in a world that looks exactly like the one Sofiane lives in. Who knew that he was being literal! We are taken into the dimension where Obé comes from and we see that darkness is his only friend. The weather there is sultry and it feels like a storm is approaching the city. He is the only one living there and there is nobody else to talk or even look at. Which is quite sad and it explains Obe's random appearances in the mortal world.
Towards the end of Episode 4, we see Laurine reveals that Reda is nothing but a terrible person. She tells Sofiane and Victor that he drugged her and a lot of other teenagers including Modibo and Luisa. Reda used to smuggle teenagers and sell them to a masked figure who wanted to summon and kill Obé to obtain his powers. Those kids ended up being vessels of communication. It was the same masked figure who also went on to killed Reda. Sofiane begins to rethink if he still wants to avenge Reda's death after all that nonsense Reda was up to.
Remember when Obé turned up the boys' power? It can be assumed that he did it out of a one-sided friendship with them but again, selfishly to get his work done. It is evident that Obé is very lonely and he is only trying to seek friendship in the mortal world. But since his evil side is too much to deal with, he mostly resorted to terrifying other teenagers.
Anyhow, in episode 5, we see the big chase - the masked killer who was on the hunt to kill the voodoo God. As Obé gets into Sofiane's body, the masked killer captures him and ties him to the tree, similar to the way he had tied up Reda. Obé is possessive of Sofiane and he demands the killer to not hurt Sofiane. It is perhaps a spark of dying friendship which was always one-sided. The callous killer is just about to stab Sofiane to defeat Obé, but he jumps in and sacrifices his life.
Maybe it was friendship and that Obé was lonely. He had spent too much time in the mortal world to start feeling things like humans. But at the same time, he was evil and spiteful. So we can assume that his sacrifice is nothing but an act of pseudo sympathy to gain Sofiane's trust. As the masked killer stabs him in the heart, he burns to ashes and fades away. But, we know for sure that a Voodoo God as powerful as this one cannot just die of a stab. He is definitely coming back in the season finale for the big showdown.
Meanwhile, Victor jumps into Laurine's memories in the hospital and compels her to reveal the masked killer instead of jumping out the window. Will he succeed in unveiling the masked killer? The answers lie in the season finale of the 'Mortel'
Catch 'Mortel' on November 21, only on Netflix.