Fall
Fatma episode 6 begins with the Author meeting two prospective publishers, Su and Faruk. They’re excited about working with him and claim his first story was groundbreaking. This second transformational story regarding Fatma however, has them concerned. The publishers aren’t sure whether people will connect to this or not. Bayram shows up and sits in Mine’s car. Officers show up though and arrest him, just as Bayram looks at her and calls Fatma a killer. Interestingly, a flash from the past shows her pushing Mine from behind, hinting that the woman has always had this ruthless edge to her. Fatma is driven back into town by the truck driver, where she rocks up at Argah Law Office. She speaks to Sidar and asks him about Oguz’s lawsuit. It turns out the letters she’s been holding off reading claim she needs to pay for damages to the car that hit her son. As upset and shocked as she is, Fatma was warned this could happen earlier in the season if you’ll remember. Fatma is distraught and struggles to work out what to do next. Sidar is not happy and he decides to resign from the law office, especially when he notices them valuing a car over a boy’s life. This single action sparks Fatma to go on the warpath again, turning on the gas, hitting the fire alarms and spilling cleaning chemicals all over the floor. Fatma is determined to teach them all a lesson and lights the place on fire. As we cut across to Mine, she’s told that Fatma is dead and she needs to identify the body. Now, it’s not really Fatma who’s dead, it’s Kadriye. Surely the coroners would have known this at the time of death with DNA results but we march on. Seeing Fatma’s ID in the woman’s pocket however prompts Mine to realize her sister is a killer. Mine heads in to see the Author, where the pair sit together and discuss Fatma. Mine ran away as a kid and left Fatma behind. In fact, she blocked her out completely and this is what’s presumably caused Fatma to build up all this rage. The real Fatma is brought into the police station on the back of her arson attack. Argah decide to close the fire case, but the officers still want to talk. Sidar shows up though and presents himself as Fatma’s lawyer. In the interview room, we cut back to the opening scenes of the first episode. Fatma is told that Bayram is in custody, and is shown numerous pictures of the victims she’s killed. Fatma suddenly heaves and heads out into the main hallway. She starts to lose control, rushing away from Mine and seeing the ghosts of all those people she’s killed across the season. She heads up to the roof, seeing images of Oguz standing before her. Mine eventually catches up and now we see what happened in the past. Fatma pushed Mine to protect her, unable to accept her family allowing her to get married so young. She was afraid of losing her innocent sister and this is why she pushed her. Mine looks at her sister with teary eyes and tells her what happened in the barn wasn’t her fault. They were kids at the time. As Fatma pushes her sister away, the truth surrounding Oguz is shown. Fatma shoved Oguz away and that’s what caused him to be hit by the car. Unable to deal with the grief anymore, Fatma throws herself off the roof. The next scene, we cut to her lying on her back after falling onto a car, opening her eyes and moving her hand.
The Episode Review
Fatma bows out with a final episode that attempts to tie everything together, eventually settling on a very sombre and reflective final chapter. Despite some of the big plot contrivances and issues this season, that was at least a good way to close everything out. This season has really been about grief and how one deals with past trauma. From that angle, Fatma has actually been quite a good watch and Burcu Biricik has done an outstanding job bringing this character to life. However, it’s hard to look past the numerous plot contrivances and issues with the script. The whole Author subplot feels like a convenient way of exuding exposition but doesn’t do a lot else to actually progress the story forward. Likewise, the Ismail, Yusuf and Ekber murders don’t really get much of a resolution beyond Fatma’s very obvious guilty lunge out the door. This episode does work as a character-driven piece though, showing that Fatma is struggling emotionally to move past what’s happened to her son. We’ll have more to say about the ending and the final scenes in our “Ending Explained” companion piece. For now, this finale does do a pretty good job closing out most of these plot points with a suitably bittersweet conclusion. However, this is unfortunately not a revenge thriller to remember.
