A Netflix original Polish mystery thriller, The Mire, aired its first season, set against the backdrop of the 1980s, and the second season followed in 1997. The series revolves around two investigative reporters, Witold and Piotr, who dig deeper into some mysterious murder cases taking place in the forest of Gronty while also dealing with their personal issues. The series is all set to release its third season, The Mire Millennium, but before that, let’s revisit the previous two seasons of the saga to get an introduction to the characters and to know more about the central storyline of the show.
Spoilers Ahead
Season 1 Recap: Who Killed Lidia And Grochowiak?
Season 1 of The Mire opened with a woman stumbling onto two dead bodies in Gronty Forest in the night. The two dead bodies belonged to a prostitute named Lidia and the Chairman of the Socialist Youth Board, Grochowiak, who were brutally slain in the forest. The two reporters, Witold and Piotr, were soon assigned to cover the story. However, initially, the town’s prosecutor, Andrzej Warecki, told the reporters that the murderer had been found and that he was none other than Lidia’s boyfriend, who was mentally unstable. Even though Lidia’s boyfriend confessed to the crime and elaborated on the crime scene, Piotr had a hunch that it wasn’t him who killed these two. Realizing there was something more to the story, he began to look into the case.
Meanwhile, Piotr and his wife Teresa were having a child, but the couple were not quite happy in their married life, which led Piotr to have an extramarital affair with Helena, Grochowiak’s grieving wife. On the other hand, a lonesome old man named Witold had been dealing with the mysterious past linked to his old beloved Else Koepke, whom he desperately wanted to find. But season 1 didn’t shed much light on the issue, which further deepened the mystery.
In the meantime, two more murders took place in Gronty Forest and this time the dead bodies belonged to two school students, Justyna and Karol, who were from the same high school. Piotr believed the two incidents were interconnected, so he began to dig deeper and met Justyna’s father, Kazik, who wasn’t quite cooperative.
Soon it was found out that the chairman was not at all a good guy, as it was already revealed he was a womanizer, as evidenced by his association with the prostitutes. However, it was also revealed that he was a serial abuser who used to sexually assault young women. Justyna was one of his victims, who had been targeted and molested by Grochowiak, and thus she committed suicide. Karol, who was deeply in love with Justyna, couldn’t bear the pain his beloved had been going through, so they both took a drastic decision to kill themselves.
At the end of the first season of The Mire, it was finally revealed who actually killed Lidia and the chairman, and it was proved that Lidia’s boyfriend had nothing to do with it. Some people from law enforcement were involved in these incidents, which was the reason the prosecutor had come up with the plot to frame Lidia’s boyfriend in order to cover up their own crime. When Piotr looked into the location where Lidia lived, he stumbled upon a man who was a butcher. This butcher was Lidia’s landlord, so thinking maybe the butcher had a hand in Lidia’s murder, Piotr sneaked into his truck and hid himself there. As the butcher approached the forest, he was soon captured by two police officers, one of whom was Kulik. Kulik and his partner hanged the butcher and placed the murder weapon in his hand in order to frame him for Lidia and Grochowiak’s murder. Piotr witnessed everything from inside the truck, but he managed to escape. Later, in the night, when he and Witold met with the prosecutor and Kulik, Piotr confronted Kulik, saying that he had witnessed how he had killed the butcher. Kulik pulled his gun out and tried to kill Piotr to silence him, but Piotr managed to escape, and in the shootout, Kulik was killed and Witold was injured.
Piotr later found out that it wasn’t only Kulik; Helena was also in on this scheme to kill the chairman. Helena was another of the victims of Grochowiak, who had assaulted her numerous times. Therefore, when Helena learns the truth about her husband abusing other young women, she decides to team up with Kulik in order to help him hide the truth. Piotr still didn’t understand why Kulik would want to kill someone like Grochowiak if he hadn’t any connection with Helena, so when he asked Helena if she had had an affair with Kulik, she denied it. It became quite clear that Helena had been in a brief affair with the prosecutor, Andrzej, who was the mastermind behind these killings. He was the one who’d tasked Kulik with killing the chairman, but to punish the criminal, he committed another crime, which was to kill an innocent person, Lidia. Season 1 left a lot of loose ends, and it also concluded with a bewildered Piotr, who realized that he couldn’t get the prosecutor arrested as he held a powerful position in the hierarchy.
Season 2 Recap: Who Killed Daniel And Waldek?
Season 2 of The Mire, set against the backdrop of the late 1990s, opened with a flood that ruined almost all the townhouses and the dark and mysterious forest of Gronty. But in the midst of the flood, there was another murder of a young boy named Daniel Gwitt. Daniel was actually Helena’s son, who was in the town of Gronty to find out who his father was. In the previous season, Helena had affairs with both Piotr and the prosecutor, but the prosecutor turned out to be impotent, so it can be concluded that Daniel’s father was none other than Piotr. Daniel wanted to meet his father, and that’s why he ended up on the estate of Oaza, which was owned by the prosecutor, Andrzej. Andrzej was already revealed as the major antagonist of the show, as he was the one who orchestrated the killing of Lidia and Grochowiak in season 1. In season 2 as well, he had blood on his hands. He was the one who killed a young boy named Waldek, who’d taken his assistance in staging his own kidnapping to get a hefty ransom from his father. But after the ransom was taken from his father, Andrzej betrayed Waldek, and his men killed him. When Andrzej and his accomplices had been talking about their criminal atrocities, Daniel happened to be hiding in the forest. However, when Daniel tried to flee the scene, Andrzej and his men spotted him. To silence the young boy, they drowned him in a bathtub, taking his life.
In this season, another lead character named Anna has been introduced. Anna was a homosexual woman and a fierce police officer who had an affair with Piotr’s wife, Teresa. Teresa felt hesitant to confess her affair with Anna, but she eventually did. She was utterly confused about whether to live with her family for the sake of her young daughter or to settle down in a completely new town with her love, Anna, with whom she shared a genuine bond. Witold came to her rescue and shared his side of the story of leaving his beloved, Else Koepke, long ago, which he still regretted. Teresa didn’t want to have the same regrets, so she would probably make the decision to leave Piotr and move away with Anna to start over. Let’s see if the upcoming season of The Mire sheds some light on this issue.
Who Was Else Koepke?
Else Koepke used to be a German woman with whom Witold fell in love in his youthful days. During the aftermath of World War II, German residents were taken as prisoners and sent to a camp, where many of the prisoners lost their lives due to hunger and the tortures inflicted upon them, but others survived. She probably managed to get out of the camp and became a painter who often depicted the forest of Gronty in an ominous form in her art. As Witold stumbled upon her paintings, he realized that the woman he had loved was still alive somewhere in Germany. In both of these seasons, Witold tried to move back to Germany in order to find his lost love, but his quest was interrupted by these ongoing murders that took place in the town, leaving him occupied with the investigations. Therefore, we can expect that in the upcoming season of The Mire, there will be a window for Witold to find out about his beloved, Else Koepke. Similarly, we’ll probably get to see a new dynamic in Piotr’s character, which will probably go through some shifts after Teresa leaves him. Let’s hope for another thrilling storyline in the upcoming season of the saga.
