Luther: Season 2, Episode 2

Having kidnapped Ripley, the killer tortures him, trying to find out what Luther and the police know about his final crime – a finale he’s planned intricately. Ripley manages to keep himself alive – though battered – by playing on the killer’s vanity.

Luther’s personal life crisis starts to affect his professional life when Baba, a woman who claims to own Jenny, forces him to intimidate a man in witness protection so he won’t testify against her grandson. 

Meanwhile, Schenk interrogates a master forger, who’s procured a large amount of supplies for the killer and they get wind of what he’s doing. Sadly, it’s too late for the bus of 14 primary school children, he’s already abducted.

They find the bus abandoned on the side of the road and it looks like they’ve lost again, until Ripley manages to crawl out of the sewer he was being kept in and with the help of Luther, they use the killer’s car’s GPS to figure out that he’s been to an industrial park 8 times in too short a time to be a coincidence, and with the amount of chemical he’s bought they’re not sure what he’s planning.

Luther and Ripley get to the industrial park in time to get the kids out of the van, the killer was gassing them in and because the kid he’s holding his knife to the throat of pulls off his mask, he can’t follow through with his threats, and Ripley takes him down.

Luther get’s Jenny back from Mark and takes her home to her mother, who tells him that they won’t leave, and that Jenny is her property, so she can’t go on her own, and Luther claims he’s done enough, leaving her there, though Jenny begs him not to.

Alice, broken out of the hospital (thanks to Luther, last episode) comes to see him and tries to convince him to come away with her. He tells her he can’t because he is who he is. And then he goes back and get’s Jenny.

***

I think this is the last we’ll see of Alice, at least for a while. I didn’t think I’d say this (back when we first met Alice in episode 1), but I’m going to miss her. I have a feeling they’re trying to put Jenny in as his next unlikely accomplice and I’m not sure how that will pan out if they do.

I enjoyed Mark as a sidekick, he’s a little too taciturn to show up often within the series, but I definitely like him, as an almost reluctant advocate for Luther.

There is something intriguing… and yet disappointing about the killer in these two episodes. I think it’s that his MO is absence… so I just felt let down by his grand finale. Even if he had managed to pull it off, it felt hollow, and I have a feeling that’s what they were going for, but I’m not sure how I feel about it.