'The Woods' Ending Explained: Pawel Kopiński finds his mum and sister — one alive, the other dead
Spoilers for 'The Woods'
The 45-minute 6 episode binge-worthy series 'The Woods' takes you through a roller coaster of emotions as we see prosecutor Pawel Kopiński (Grzegorz Damięcki) and professor Laura Goldsztajn (Agnieszka Grochowska) re-live the disturbing events of a summer camp they attended in 1994. Artur Perkowski, Kamila Kopinski (Pawel's sister), Monika Sowik, and Daniel Kotler had gone into the Woods the last night of camp that year but the next few days saw the bodies of Monika and Daniel surface, and Artur and Kamila were never found.
Years later, Pawel is pulled back into the case of his missing sister, and he finds more than his childhood sweetheart Laura — he also finds answers to questions he's had since he was a teenager. The entire premise of the series, believe it or not, is one fact: Parents will go to dire lengths to protect their children.
In the year the murders took place, Detective Lubelski, the officer in charge of the case used racial discrimination against Jews and tried to pin the murders of all four children on Dawid Goldsztajn, Laura's father. He was the principal of the school that the children attended and was also the lead in-charge of the camp where the terrible events had taken place. That night, Pawel and Laura had been in the woods having sex when they had heard a loud scream. Terrified, both had run back to their respective cabins. Neither told police why they were in the woods but Pawel did tell Lubelski he had heard a scream that night.
Lubelski had fallen short of leads and had found a T-shirt in the woods that belonged to Pawel, making the teenager a suspect in the case as well. Pawel had questions that while he and Laura were able to get out of their wing at the camp because he had the keys, how had Monika and Daniel left the camp so late at night? Knowing something was up, Pawel followed Wojciech Malczak, another chaperone who had been in charge of the wing that Monika and Daniel had left from.
Pawel alerted cops to the box he had seen Malczak hide in a dead garden that contained objects that belonged to the dead victims. Lubelski had lied to Pawel that his shirt had Monika's blood on it, and actually had nothing to pin the crimes on Pawel. Lubelski had arrested Malczak for another murder he was a suspect in, and also decided to pin the murders of the four children on him to close the case.
Fast forward to the present, where Pawel gets a call from a detective named Jork who had discovered the body of a man named Marek Kowalski. Turns out the man had newspaper clippings of Pawel and because he was using a fake identity, Pawel was asked to come in and identify the body. Pawel ended up identifying the body as that of Artur, one of the two kids that weren't found in 1994 — he identified Artur by a scar on his left arm. Unfortunately for Pawel, Artur's parents lied when they identified the body with his mother Bozena Perkowski saying her son's scar was on his right arm, and not on the left arm like the corpse.
Finding pictures from the camp in 1994, Pawel was able to confirm that Artur's scar was in fact on his left arm. Pawel also took it one step further by stealing hair samples from the Perkowski household and having the DNA compared to the corpse — it was a match. With Artur showing up dead in his 40s, Pawell had one question, did his sister Kamila make it out of the woods as well? What had happened that night?
Meanwhile, on the Laura side of things, she receives an essay that had detailed the night in the woods and was confused as to who would know the details so well. She decided to give Pawel a call and the duo exchange their woes about how the past has come back up. As Pawel becomes engrossed in his determination to find his sister, he finds out that remains of a woman were found at the same site his sister had gone missing all those years ago. Fearing it could be his sister, Pawel uses Laura's help as they try to figure out the truth of what happened that night in 1994.
The flashbacks revealed that all those years ago, Pawel's mother Natalia was having an affair with Laura's father, Dawid, and Natalia's relationship with her husband was on the rocks. In the present scenario, Pawel always spoke of having resentment against his mother who his father had told him abandoned them as a family. The entire series uses the events of the past and present to tell us exactly what had happened that night. Artur and Monika were having a fling until she didn't want to be associated with him because he was the son of a cleaning lady Bozena while Kamila was head over heels in love with Daniel.
Bozena, in the present, is confronted by Pawel about why she had lied when she came to identify the body of Kowalski and she tells Pawel the truth behind the horrid night. Turns out that Malczak had known of Daniel and Kamila's relationship but decided to put Daniel in touch with Monika. He then brought Kamila and Artur to witness Daniel and Monika have sex, leaving Kamila and Artur furious.
Malczak added fuel to the fire proposing to Kamila and Artur that they could teach the duo a lesson that night at a bonfire after the camp had finished their dance event. Taking Monika, Daniel, Artur, and Kamila to the lake, Malczak provides them a fun time with alcohol and music before suggesting everyone go skinny dipping. With Daniel and Monika naked in the water, Artur and Kamila had planned to punish them by stealing their clothes and running away.
As they started to do so, Kamila revealed to Daniel that she knew that he had slept with Monika and Monika decides to taunt Kamila telling her all she would be is a number. Kamila's rage took over and she had started to strangle Monika and while Daniel and Artur tried to pull her off, Malczak just stood and watched. With Monika unconscious, Malczak had cut her throat which made Kamila howl in fear — that was the scream Pawel and Laura had heard in the woods that night.
Realizing Malczak was a maniac, Artur, Kamila, and Daniel take off running searching for a place to hide in the woods. As Artur tried to protect himself in the dark with a knife, he had heard footsteps and thought it was Malczak coming after him and so he stabbed the individual multiple times. Turns out the person was Daniel. Freaked out, Artur and Kamila had run home to their mothers Natalia and Bozena who decided that nobody would believe the children. Bozek told Pawel (in the present) that she and Natalia decided to hide Artur and Kamila forever.
Years ago, when he was a teenager, Pawel had seen Dawid and Malczak performing oral sex in the woods and Dawid had threatened him that if he opened his mouth, Dawid would kill him and his mother Natalia. In the present, when Pawel meets Dawid in the old-people home, he finds evidence with the help of Jork, that Dawid had killed Artur who had used the name Marek to keep his identity a secret. Yelling at Pawel that his sister his dead, Dawid ended up committing suicide. While the present case of Artur's death was solved, Pawel asked Bozena if she could tell him where Kamila was and we see Pawel reunite with his sister at the end of the series. While we don't get the satisfaction of seeing her face, we are shown that she had hidden in a convent where she was a nun.
As far as the remains that were found in the woods where Kamila had gone missing, the DNA of the remains had matched Pawel's. That was the buried body of his strangled mother Natalia, who Bozena presumed was killed by Pawel's father after his wife had told him she was leaving him and taking her son. Years of not knowing why his mother had left or where his sister was, this journey of the past and present brought a lot of haunting memories back but also much-needed peace.