Kleo Season 2 is here, and she’s back on a mission to take down her enemies and get the red suitcase! Remember last season when she stupidly gave the suitcase to her Aunt Margot Honecker? Turns out, Sven grabbed it from Margot, handed it to Min Sun from the BND, and Min Sun passed it to the US. This season, Kleo is determined to get that suitcase back, because she knows it’s tied to her past; it’s not just about the deal between first Minister Honecker and President Reagan. Sven wants to win her trust again and team up with her. Surprise, surprise—he’s in love with her, and she feels the same. Unlike everyone else, he never tried to betray or hurt her, but he had no other option. And Uwe? Yes, he’s back from the dead, ready to get revenge on Kleo. This season, we see a more mature version of Kleo. She’s better at handling her anger and getting information from her enemies. Maybe Sven’s influence is finally helping her stay cool-headed, or maybe she just understands now that everyone from her grandfather to her aunt has been deceiving her. They brainwashed her into thinking she was sacrificing her life for the greater good, but it was really just for their power, influence, and money. That’s why, this time, Kleo is doing what she wants instead of taking orders from others. How she manages it all and all the other mysteries will be uncovered in this recap and explainer of Kleo season 2.
Spoilers Ahead
Why did Kleo start searching for the suitcase?
In the new season of Kleo, we were introduced to a woman named Kimberly. She got her hands on the red suitcase from the US by causing an explosion in a car at the Olympic Stadium. She took the suitcase from another woman, but the explosion also killed that woman and a driver who was supposed to be behind the wheel instead of Kimberly. She tried to protect the information about the pact that was held in the suitcase. Sven found out about this from his friend Freddy, who worked in the fraud squad of the German police. He found out that the murder might be connected to Min Sun from BND, to whom Sven worked as an informant before. Sven discovered that Min Sun was staying at a Hotel Tegel, so he went there. However, when he arrived, he found out that she had been killed by a CIA agent named Rose Carmichael. Rose offered Sven a job to work with the CIA to help them find Kleo. By following Kleo’s trail, they hoped to get the suitcase. Sven had betrayed Kleo before, and even though Rose offered him a lot of money and a permanent post in the CIA, he chose his love for Kleo over the offer. He realized the suitcase was important to Kleo, which is why the CIA wanted to follow her. He decided to help Kleo instead by meeting her and teaming up again to support her mission. Meanwhile, Kleo’s mother, Brigitte, who we met last season, came back. Remember in the last season, when Kleo went to meet her mother, Brigitte told her to leave? Well, now we see that Brigitte came to meet Kleo again and warned her that people were following her and urged Kleo to stay safe.
Brigitte gave Kleo a bunch of donuts, and inside, Kleo found a note saying the suitcase had to be destroyed. Kleo was shocked that her mother knew about the suitcase too. Eventually, a KGB agent named Nikolai met Kleo and threatened her to stop looking for the suitcase. Not only that, but he also gave her an old unicorn chained locket that Kleo used to wear when she was a little girl. She remembered that this man used to come to her house and that he snatched the locket from her. She wondered if he was the reason behind her father Fabian’s death. As she recalled her past, she remembered that he had shot Fabian to death, even though her mother had lied to her by saying that her father had died in a road accident. Why did her mother lie? What did this man have to do with her childhood? And why was he suddenly threatening her to stop looking for the suitcase? Kleo thought it might be related to the German reunification issue. The Federal Republic was negotiating the end of Eastern power in Germany, and the Soviet comrades were betraying the Germans. Maybe the suitcase seemed to be the key to saving the Germans. Kleo had so many questions that needed answers. When Sven came to apologize and meet Kleo, he told her how serious he was about her and how he wanted to help her find out what was in the suitcase. Kleo, although hesitant to trust him, decided she might need his help. She gave him the cold shoulder but agreed to work together. They began digging deeper into the mystery of the red suitcase because if so many people wanted it destroyed or kept hidden, Kleo knew they had to do the opposite and look even deeper.
What did they find from Alexandar Belov?
At this point, Kleo knew that her grandfather Otto was the mastermind behind everything. If they needed answers about any deception, they had to find them in her dead grandfather’s belongings. They found a picture of her grandfather Otto Straub, Nikolai, and Kleo’s previous task leader, Rossbach. They thought the suitcase might belong to Rossbach or that he might know who had it, possibly a Stasi agent in the US embassy. So they had to find the information about this Stasi agent first, and they might find the information about him from the KGB station in Berlin. Sven got there too to get the info. But Kleo hadn’t forgotten how Sven had betrayed her before. So, she framed him to get him into the KGB station by claiming he was spying on them and trying to get files on the Stasi agents who worked for the KGB. This plan worked to their benefit, as Alexander Belov, a man we met in the first season who had helped a colonel flee from Germany, agreed to give him the information about the personnel file of the reconnaissance team in exchange for money. So, the next day, Kleo tried to outsmart Sven by meeting Alexander before him to get the personnel file. She got the file, but Belov’s men tried to capture her. Fortunately, Sven arrived just in time and helped Kleo escape with the file. From the file, they discovered something interesting: a Stasi officer with a special assignment, code-named Bear, was hiding the suitcase in the Moni safe house. Now, they had to find the Moni safe house to get the suitcase.
What happened to Kimberly?
Kleo went to Yugoslavia, and once again, Sven followed her trail. There, Sven met Kimberly, and after their meeting, they ended up spending the night together. In her room, Sven found the red suitcase, but it turned out to be a trick—it was full of undergarments. They realized Kimberly had fooled them. Kleo and Sven decided to team up to defeat Kimberly because they realized she was the same person who had carried out the assassination at the Olympic Stadium and might know all the important information. And it turned out that Kimberly was actually the “Agent Bear” that they got to know about earlier. During a physical confrontation between Kimberly and Kleo, Kleo discovered the existence of something called Operation Ludsch. This plan aimed to create a Soviet Republic of Germany by the Stasi and KGB by merging the Federal Republic and GDR into the Soviet Union. Also, the pact file was being kept with the comrades in Berlin. After revealing this information, Kimberly once again tried to kill Kleo but our hero managed to save herself and pushed Kimberly off the roof, which led to her death.
How did Uwe trick Nikolai?
By this point, Nikolai had taken control of the KGB headquarters in Moscow by killing the previous leader Olga and become the supreme commander. He had teamed up with Kleo’s aunt Margot, her husband Erich Honecker, and Rossbach, and previously Kleo’s grandfather joined their cause too. Together, they aimed to execute Operation Ludsch. Rossbach arranged a meeting with his comrades to plan an anti-imperialist counterattack and work on the integration of the Federal Republic into the GDR by establishing West German contacts. In this process were helping: Uwe, who had survived being shot by Sven when he tried to kill Kleo, and Jutta, who had been Kleo’s friend but was now working as an agent. Uwe, after sensing that Kleo was after them again, kidnapped Sven to lure Kleo into a trap. With no other option, Kleo sought help from CIA agent Rose Carmichael, who had been following her to find out more about the suitcase. Together, they managed to save Sven. But it might feel like Kleo now owes Rose. But guess what? Even though Kleo had finished her business being a Stasi agent, she could never bring herself to work for capitalism in the CIA. So she was clear that she wouldn’t do as they pleased but do what she liked. And for now, she’d like to know her mother’s whereabouts to find out about Nikolai’s connection with her past.
Meanwhile, after the rescue, Uwe felt like a failed soldier, was ashamed and demanded Margot to kill him. Instead, Margot told him she needed him to successfully complete Operation Ludsch. After a long time, he felt like he might belong somewhere. Maybe he just could not handle his emotions, and that’s why he ended up kissing Margot. She was surprised and laughed at his face seeing this. In a fit of rage and humiliation, Uwe ended up killing Margot and her husband, Erich Honecker. When Kleo went to see her aunt to find out where her mother might be hiding, she was shocked to find her aunt dead on the floor along with her husband. Uwe had gone into hiding and did not want anyone to know he was responsible. Meanwhile, Jutta arrived at the scene and revealed that she was working as a double agent for both the CIA and in favor of Operation Ludsch. She also knew that Kleo’s mother was hiding at Lake Krewitz. They went to find her, but Uwe, coming out of the hiding place, shot Jutta dead for treason. When Nikolai called Margot’s home to ensure the documents were not sent to the Americans, Uwe answered the call. To save himself, he falsely blamed Kleo for the deaths of Margot, Honecker, and Jutta. He then passed on the information that Kleo was heading to Lake Krewitz to find her mother.
Who was Nikolai?
When Kleo and Sven finally met Kleo’s mother, Brigitte, they were shocked by the truth she revealed. They learned that Kleo’s grandfather Otto and Nikolai Zhukov had created Operation Ludsch together. Nikolai had shot Fabian, Kleo’s father, and Otto had covered for him. The reason Nikolai shot Fabian was because Nikolai was actually Kleo’s biological father. He killed Fabian because Brigitte had left him for Fabian, and Nikolai couldn’t handle the betrayal. Brigitte had kept this secret from Kleo all these years. While they were talking, a plane dropped a bomb on them, as ordered by Nikolai. The attack killed Kleo’s mother, but Kleo and Sven survived. Even though Kleo finally learned the truth about her father, she saw him as a monster. After all, Nikolai had taken away everyone close to her and left her alone. She knew she could never forgive him for what he had done.
How did Ramona die?
This part of the series felt rushed because, suddenly and out of nowhere, we saw Ramona bringing the red suitcase to Nikolai. She told him she would give it to him if he gave her the order to kill Kleo with her own hands. Nikolai agreed, perhaps because he knew that he couldn’t kill his own daughter, and realized that witnessing her mother’s death wouldn’t frighten Kleo but would make her more determined to get the suitcase and take revenge against her own father. So he needed someone else to kill her. When Kleo and Sven arrived in Moscow to take the suitcase, they met her grandmother and heard her childhood stories with her “father” Nikolai, which were too good to be true. These stories did not change Kleo’s hatred for him. She knew she had to take care of Nikolai. When she went to kill him at the KGB headquarters in Moscow, Ramona attacked her. Remember how, in the last season, Kleo had saved Ramona in Chile and helped her give birth to her child in the middle of the desert? So here we see a different version of Ramona who wanted to do what was right instead of taking orders from others and wished she could be like Kleo. So her taking permission to kill Kleo was a pretense; that was clear. This showed that Ramona might owe Kleo and appreciated her bravery. But then, out of nowhere, Uwe appeared and killed Ramona for being a traitor. This made me wonder why Ramona didn’t just give the suitcase to Kleo directly if she wanted to go against Nikolai and the other higher authorities; this really did not make sense.
What happened to Uwe?
Anyway, Kleo couldn’t bear Ramona’s death and ran after Uwe to take revenge. She tried to make him understand that they had become mere pawns in the higher-ups’ games, where people like Uwe and Kleo were used to get what the powerful wanted. She urged him to stand against them and act of his own free will. But Uwe still wanted to kill her, and Kleo realized that. Even though she had promised not to kill anyone, this time she had to kill Uwe to save herself.
What happened to Nikolai?
Previously, when Kleo managed to enter the KGB headquarters and entered Nikolai’s chamber, she found a photograph of herself, her mother, and Nikolai together in front of the Monument to the Conquerors of Space. Kleo realized that the pact inside the suitcase, which Nikolai desperately wanted, must have been hidden at that place after he got it from Ramona to keep it secure. She remembered visiting the monument with Nikolai when she was a little girl, and their shared fascination with rockets and aircraft. So, Kleo and Sven went there disguised as Stasi agents. At the monument, they found a safe and managed to open it using Kleo’s birthdate as the password. Inside, they finally found the pact! It should have been a moment of victory for both of them, but they were confronted by Rose Carmichael, who wanted the evidence of the pact in exchange for a secret letter. Even though Kleo would never betray her country and shake hands with the US, she didn’t get the chance to make that choice because Nikolai appeared out of nowhere and shot Rose from behind and ended up killing her.
This led to a father-daughter clash. The ending felt like typical emotional drama, with Kleo’s hands trembling at the thought of killing her father. Despite seeing him as a monster, he was still her father. To provoke Nikolai, Kleo burned the papers of the pact documents. Naturally, Nikolai got angry, and by showing his true power-hungry nature, he shot Sven in revenge for Kleo’s actions. Kleo couldn’t bear the thought of losing Sven, the only person who had never been afraid to sacrifice himself to save her time after time. Overwhelmed with grief and anger, Kleo did not waste any time. She killed her father, the monster Nikolai, in the end. But guess what? Sven was very much alive, and the document Kleo burned was fake—the real pact was still with her. This truly felt like the perfect moment for a cinematic kiss, and when they finally shared it, as the audience, not going to lie, I cheered for this couple. I’d rooted for them from the very beginning, so it seemed like a perfect ending.
What Happens In The Mid-Credits Scene?
In the mid-credits scene, we saw something strange. Kleo has a twin brother—Harald Straub, who is an astronaut. When he found out that their father was killed by his twin sister Kleo, he said he would come back from his mission in outer space. Will he seek revenge against her, or will he join forces with her to change the world—the dream Kleo always wanted to achieve? The chance of the latter seems almost zero because we have previously seen Nikolai talking to Harald on the phone about his space mission and showing his admiration and pride for Harald, which proved the strong father-son bond. Also, guess what? Uwe is still alive! It seems like Uwe has nine lives like a cat. When Kleo shot him, his bulletproof vest might have saved him. So, we all know he will seek revenge against her for sure. How it all turns out, we will find out in the next season. But knowing Kleo, and now with her support system, Sven, we can be more certain that she will defeat her enemies and do what’s best for her and the country.
