‘Undercover’ Season 2 Ending Explained: While the Berger brothers are dealt with, is this Bob's swansong?
Spoilers for ‘Undercover’ Season 2
The second season of the Belgian-Dutch Netflix crime drama, just like the first one, had a somewhat bittersweet ending. We see our flawed hero Bob Lemmens (Tom Waes) and his daughter Polly (Emma Verlinden) share a moment of melancholia by the grave of Kim de Rooij (Anna Drijver). It’s not a bad last scene. But there’s a whole lot that happens before that.
‘Undercover’ for the most part is a very formulaic crime thriller series that moves through too many twists and turns and employs a bunch of TV tropes to move the story forward. Despite flaws like these, however, the actual end of the story in season 2 is pretty straightforward. This season saw Bob infiltrate into a black market arms organization run by two brothers -- Laurent (Wim Willaert) and Jean-Pierre Berger (Sebastien Dewaele). And while the season 1 villain, drug kingpin Ferry Bouman (Frank Lammers), is still in the story, the finale had nothing to do with him. Instead, it had to do with another character introduced this season: Nathalie Geudens (Ruth Becquart).
Before we explain the finale, one has to know that Nathalie and Laurent share a son called Jackson. And all throughout the season, Laurent had been trying to legitimize his claim over the boy. At the same time, Nathalie had become an accomplice to Bob (out of fear and desperation). When Laurent found out, he tried to kill Nathalie. She acted in self-defense and cracked his skull, leaving him an invalid.
So, as things build towards the end, we see Jean-Pierre and Laurent communicate without words and the former understands that his brother’s “accident” had more to it and that both Nathalie and Bob were involved. So, he gets his man Vinnie (Mourade Zeguendi) to capture Nathalie and Jackson. And once at home, he drugs Nathalie and gets her to sign papers saying Laurent was her son’s legal guardian. Meanwhile, Bob was suspicious of something going on because Jean-Pierre had canceled their arms deal (after finding out he was a cop). When Bob finds Nathalie’s place a mess and she is nowhere to be seen, he rushes to Jean-Pierre’s place where the two get into a confrontation and Bob gets shot in the stomach.
Vinnie takes both the drugged Nathalie and the heavily-bleeding Bob to a secluded location to kill and bury them. But through sheer will-power, the two fight back and overpower Vinnie. After that, Bob forces Vinnie to tell where the weapons are -- a necessary thing because otherwise, they would not have that huge charge against the Berger brothers.
When Bob calls Jean-Pierre to tell him he’s lost, Jean-Pierre does the unthinkable. He takes a gun and shoots his brother, saying that he knew Laurent would not be able to survive prison, especially in his condition. But before he could shoot himself, the gun jams and the police arrive and arrest him before he could fix that.
The season thus ends with a tragic scene for Jean-Pierre. He not only lost his brother, whom he dearly loved, even if they did not always get along. He also was sent back to a place where he never wanted to return. And it would also seem like a tragic end for Bob, who was briefly shown on the verge of meeting death. But Bob recovers. His police career may not survive, but he does. So, bittersweet all around.
While a large chunk of the second season of ‘Undercover’ has been very underwhelming, the finale makes it worth it. There wasn’t one loose moment, and all things seem to end up neatly tied. For the time being, of course. You never know what the writers may untie, should there be a third season. But for now, one has to wonder if Bob is, in the legendary words of Roger Murtaugh from 'Lethal Weapon', just "too old for this s***".
‘Undercover’ Season 2 is available on Netflix.