Netflix's Fauda: Here's a quick recap of season 1 before you start bingeing on season 2
Netflix's Israeli political thriller Fauda (meaning "chaos" in Arabic) is a television series that is doing extremely well at the moment.
The most fascinating part of this drama is that it’s not a black-and-white overview of rigidity between the Palestinians and Israelis. The focal point of the story is on an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) unit re-assembling in order to obliterate a Hamas terrorist who was assumed dead in a previous operation.
Satellite network Yes picked up the second season of the show in the summer of 2016 and said that they will make sure the series focuses on real-world events happening right now.
The trailer for the second season was released in the fall of 2017 and it is set for release on Netflix on May 24.
The show won multiple awards starting in 2016, where it took six awards, including Best Drama Series, at the Israeli Academy Awards. In December 2017, The New York Times voted Fauda the best international show of 2017. In 2018, the show took 11 Ophir Awards, including best TV drama, best actor for Lior Raz and also best screenplay, casting, cinematography, recording, special effects among others.
Recap of Season 1
Played by Lior Raz, Doron is a commander of the undercover IDF unit operating inside Palestinian territories. Eighteen months before the actual show started, Doron and his unit were hailed as the ones behind the killing of Taufiq Hammed.
After the successful mission, Doron retires from the service and he grows a vineyard in order to make wine. The first season of the series starts and Doron is visited by an old colleague, Moreno.
Played by Yuval Segal, Mickey Moreno is a commander of Doron's former unit, who pulled him back in.
He tells Doron that Hammed is still alive and that he plans to finish the job once and for all at Hammed's brother Bashir's wedding.
Doron immediately agrees that he wants to be a part of the mission as well and he joins the team to go undercover at the wedding.
They are found out after some time and Bashir is killed in the incident. This happened just a few moments before Hammed himself is supposed to have arrived. Doron was somehow able to shoot Hammed but the man escapes.
Hammed barely survives the gunshot wound and is forced to have an emergency surgery in secret so that people won't find out if he is alive or where he currently is.
Doron, in the meantime, manages to convince Moreno to allow him to stay for longer with the mission so they can finish the job once and for all.
Bashir's family all mourn him as a shahid or martyr and his wife, Amal, has sworn revenge for the death of her new husband. Hammed's right-hand man, Walid, has convinced Shirin, his cousin, to help the wounded terrorist escape from the hospital he was at just moments before Doron and his team get there.
Amal has volunteered to bomb a nightclub where one of Doron's men, Boaz, goes to often.
The aim of this was to send a direct message to the Israelis that she was out for revenge for the death of Bashir, and specifically Boaz's role in the murder (he was the one who pulled the trigger that killed Bashir).
The initial plan was for Amal to arm the bomb that was in her purse and leave the club before the 3-minute mark was up for the bomb to explode but she decides to stay inside and die as well.
The bomb goes off but the mission was a failure as Boaz survived. His girlfriend, however, did not and he immediately starts spiraling into a dark place. He ended up in jail after he drunkenly trashes his apartment before getting pulled over by the cops on the road where he attacked one of them.
Boaz, who is also Doron's brother-in-law, gets captured while they were out on a mission and is being held hostage by the Hamas. Doron and the rest of his team then decide to start planning an unapproved mission to kidnap Sheik Awadalla in a desperate attempt to get Boaz back.
The team leader then finds out that Hammed had implanted a bomb into Boaz so the team makes a snap decision to kidnap Hammed's daughter to use as an additional leverage point. Unfortunately, both Boaz and the Sheikh are killed in the encounter and Hammed's daughter was left badly wounded.
Doron then hatches a plan to interview for a position to be the next Shahid in Hammed's main plan and he is successful in being recruited. Hammed tells Walid that they have received the sarin nerve gas that is to be detonated inside a synagogue. This will make Israel retaliate with force and commit war crimes which will ultimately lead to other Islam-oriented states joining forces and attacking the Jews.
Walid is able to find out the true identity of Doron and he immediately calls the Hamas men and tells them to kill the Israeli spy but it's too late. Doron's team arrives and slaughters the Hamas men. The season ends with Walid showing Hammed the real identity of the man he just recruited as the same man who tried to kill him in the past. He then shoots Hammed in the back of the head.
Catch the second season of this gripping series only on Netflix airing May 24, 2018.