The Greek mystery drama series on Netflix, Maestro in Blue, is back with more relationship dilemmas and interpersonal complexities in its season 2 presentation. It has always been the crime thriller subplot that has been the strongest element of the show though, and this is where the intrigue is built in this new season. Back in last year’s iteration, the despicable Charalambos had died at the end, bringing a sense of relief all over the island town of Paxos. But when his body is suddenly found afloat on the coast of Italy, and an investigator from Corfu becomes very invested in the case, the central characters fear that their secrets might be revealed after all.
Spoiler Alert
What is Season 2 about?
Maestro in Blue season 1 was set entirely on the overwhelmingly beautiful Greek island town of Paxos, when the annual music festival brought musician and conductor Orestis Emmanuel to the place. Orestis had been appointed by the town’s local businessman and politician, Fanis, who was also running in the mayoral elections at Paxos. Although Fanis and his family members pretended to be just the usual rich folks in a small town, there were numerous secrets that each of them kept away from the others. Fanis himself was involved in a major drug smuggling ring, and his cellar was home to loads of unaccounted euros. His wife, Sofia, knew about this secret but never bothered to do anything about it since she had no option, and she was instead more invested in her affair with the local doctor, Michalis. The couple’s eldest child, Klelia, was just nineteen and yet got romantically involved with Orestis, a man significantly older than her, and continued to be in love despite knowing that he was in an unusual relationship with his divorced wife, Alexandra. The younger child, Antonis, was a closeted gay, strongly in love with his childhood friend, Spyros.
The whole situation took a wild turn at the end of season 1, when Spyros’ abusive father, Charalambos, discovered the young man in an intimate position with Antonis and was about to beat him to death. Out of fear and desperation for his love, Antonis shot Charalambos dead, and Orestis witnessed the whole matter. The maestro decided to help the boys out of his love and admiration for them and for Spyros’ mother, Maria, who worked as his assistant in the town. With the help of Fanis, Charalambos’ dead body was thrown into the open sea with an anchor tied to it, and it was believed that it would never be found. Although the man’s boat, which was an integral part of his profession as a fisherman, was found, the police were clueless as to where Charalambos had disappeared. Maestro in Blue season 2 begins shortly after the end of the previous season, and the central characters are seen getting used to the sudden changes that the events from the recent past brought in.
Although Klelia was devastated when her beloved teacher Orestis suddenly left Paxos one fine day, she now has to travel to Athens and get enrolled in the same music college where the man still teaches. Along with the difficult emotions that she has every time she runs across Orestis, Klelia also has to deal with her brother Antonis’ guilt-ridden panic attacks since he, too, moves to Athens with her. On the other side, Maria learns to cope with the sudden absence of her husband and abuser, while Sofia decides to part ways with her insensitive husband, Fanis, who has become the new mayor of Paxos. However, the whole situation and the lives of the characters are shaken up once again when a certain retiring police officer from the island of Corfu starts an investigation into the death of Charalambos.
How does Maria come to terms with the loss of her husband?
Maestro in Blue season 2 is way more focused on the characters and their changing mindsets than it is on the actual mystery regarding the police investigation of the drowned Charalambos. Most of the investigation is actually kept away for the next season, which will seemingly arrive this very year, and so we spend most of the time at present with the different characters of the drama. While season 1 had Maria as more of a side character, playing the perfect assistant to the music maestro Orestis and also bearing through the horrific acts of her husband Charalambos, she takes a much more central role in this year’s presentation. Maria is undoubtedly the one most affected by the shocking events that took place a few days earlier, even though she has no idea about them. She thinks that her husband has gone away somewhere for a few days, as he had done earlier as well, and does not initially suspect anything wrong. Eventually, though, Maria starts to suspect that Charalambos is actually dead, although she does not really mind this either, since he was always a cause of trouble for her. Her only concern is whether her son had anything to do with it, and when Spyros denies any involvement, she remains content with the whole scenario.
However, the ghost of Charalambos’ memory keeps haunting the docile woman, as she is really not used to life without constant torture and abuse. Maria initially seeks comfort and consolation in religion, more specifically in the priest at the local church, to whom she tells all of her struggles. But the apparition of her husband, which is a projection of her own conscience, keeps troubling her, trying to question her choices and reminding her of the helpless condition she is in. Often, in cases of individuals getting used to regular abuse in a marital relationship, they also grow unhealthily attached to and dependent on their abuser. Maria’s condition at present is the same, and even though she tries to live her life on her own accord, she is still made to feel guilty by her own tortured conscience. It is commendable that she realizes the need to seek help from others with regards to her worries, since Maria belongs to an older and more conservative generation, and many of her acquaintances also look down upon her for her free thinking. The cycle of abuse is not even new to her since her own father used to hit and abuse her before her marriage, and she admits to her therapist that this upbringing stopped her from ever questioning her husband’s terrible behavior.
In this while, Maria also finds a stash of money hidden by Charalambos and decides to donate it to an unofficial charity that looks after abused women and children. Seeing the place makes her realize even more that she, too, needs help psychologically, and she starts to consult a therapist via video calls. Her conscience, in the form of Charalambos, once again begins to appear and pull her down into a depressive void, but Maria comes out to be strong enough to fight off her demons. She questions her own negative thoughts and wards them off, reinstating the belief that she was truly a tortured soul who could not do anything about her earlier situation. Therefore, when Charalambos’ body is eventually found and brought back to Paxos, she initially refuses to attend the funeral, as she has completely flushed her treacherous husband’s memory from her mind. It is only in order to avoid any suspicion from the investigating police detective that Maria attends the funeral, even though her mind is evidently not with her late husband.
How is Charalambos’ body found?
At the end of Maestro in Blue season 1, the dead body of Charalmbos had been buried at sea, with a heavy anchor tied to his legs to ensure that it would always remain under water. His boat had been left at some other place to give the police the idea that he had willingly run off somewhere else. However, the heavy currents in the sea had an effect on the corpse, as the knot with the anchor got lost over time, and it finally detached one day. This resulted in the body floating up on the sea surface and traveling along with the current, and it eventually landed up on the shores of Italy. Based on some prior experiences of a similar kind, in which dead bodies involved with the Albanian crime syndicate were washed up in Italy, the corpse was sent over to Albania for investigation. However, with no information about it found in the country, it was then transported to Greece because the countries shared the same water space, and it ended up on the island of Corfu.
It was here, at Corfu, that an elderly police officer named Demosthenes Kouvas stumbled upon the case, despite his having just retired from the department. The man takes a special interest in the matter as he unofficially investigates the missing persons’ files and realizes that the body belongs to the missing Charalambos from the neighboring island of Paxos. Demosthenes checks on the dead body as well, figuring out how the man had been shot twice with a Remington rifle and had then been thrown into the sea. The senior officer reveals that the murder had distinct stylistic links to killings committed by crime syndicates running in parts of Italy, Greece, and Albania. He admits that during his time as an officer, he overlooked many such cases because of the bribes that his department received from the gangsters and also out of fear for his life. However, at the end of his professional career and also at a stage where he is alone and without any burden in his personal life, Demosthenes decides to pursue the case with full sincerity. He finally reaches Paxos to talk to all the individuals who were present during the music festival, which was also the last time that Charalambos was seen alive.
Can Orestis and Klelia really stay away from each other?
Much of Maestro in Blue had been about the romance between the music teacher Orestis and his young adult student Klelia. While Klelia was just nineteen, Orestis was in his late forties when the two started their love affair last season, despite all the warnings and obstacles that were thrown their way by the society around them. By the end of the season, Orestis’ estranged ex-wife, Alexandra, had also arrived at Paxos bearing the news that she had just become pregnant from an embryo that the couple had frozen while they were still together. This resulted in Orestis suddenly leaving Paxos without even informing Klelia, and the young woman was devastated by her only true love abandoning her. Therefore, Maestro in Blue season 2 has way more scenes from Athens, where Orestis lives with Alexandra in the same house, with the only intention of raising their child together.
Although Orestis is often absent, Alexandra manages to give birth to their daughter safely, and the man is extremely caring for the baby. He is the one to take care of the baby’s needs while the mother suffers from terrible post-partum depression. But through this entire time, the thought of Klelia evidently lingers on his mind, especially since she gets admitted to the same college where he teaches. On the other side, Klelia manages to get over her grief and discomfort regarding Orestis with the help of a new friend she makes at the college, Zoe. She is left all alone once again, though, when Zoe tragically passed away in a road accident. Nonetheless, Klelia gets used to the existence of her ex-lover, and she and Orestis also meet a couple of times. During this whole time, Klelia had been in a relationship with Thanos, the medical student who initially seemed to be the perfect lover, but he gradually turned out to be an ideal representation of toxic masculinity. All while having an affair at the medical school in Athens, Thanos grows insecure about Klelia’s love for Orestis, and he makes an anonymous report at the music college, informing them of the maestro’s earlier involvement with the student. As a result, Orestis is temporarily barred from the college.
Although Klelia does not find out about Thanos’ infidelity, she decides to leave him because of his controlling and manipulative behavior, and at the same time, the police investigation makes both her and Orestis return to Paxos. As the two meet once again and Klelia offers to help Orestis set in at his rented house, it is very evident that both of them are still quite in love with each other and are perhaps the best companions to each other out of all the options they have. Therefore, at the end of Maestro in Blue season 2, Klelia and Orestis once again get involved romantically as they spend a night of intense, passionate lovemaking.
What happens to Fanis and Sofia?
The ending of Maestro in Blue season 2 has Demosthenes’ investigation closing in on the truth, and most of the characters in Paxos sense trouble heading their way. The mayor of the town definitely has the most to lose, as Fanis is determined to protect both his own reputation and his son’s, and he desperately asks Sofia for help. Despite having separated from him, Sofia agrees to be a part of his plan only for the sake of their children’s safety. The Italian mafia or gang that Fanis works for had also grown heavily concerned about Charalambos’ disappearance since the fisherman was also part of the criminal enterprise, and his case was bringing unwanted police attention to them. One of the bosses of the gang, Giovanni, had already visited Fanis, demanding clarification regarding the matter, and now Sofia convinces her husband to seek help from Giovanni and the very mafia against the police investigation.
Maestro in Blue season 2 ends with the police investigation still ongoing, suggesting that the matter will ultimately be solved in the season 3 that will surely follow. Fanis and Sofia take a boat to meet with Giovanni and discuss the problematic situation with him, and the mobster seems to agree to help them, too. However, during their return, the mafia henchmen on the boat suddenly shoot and kill Fanis, and they are also seen pointing their guns at a shocked Sofia. Whether she, too, is killed is not certain since we only see the body of Fanis being thrown into the sea. This sudden turn of events could have either been Fanis’ plan all along, as he had been thinking of ending his own life for quite some time now, and he might have asked his boss to kill him and solve all their problems. Or, it can also be that Giovanni ordered his men to kill the politician and smuggler since he was now becoming a liability for the gang. Back at Paxos, Demosthenes is seen interrogating Michalis now, asking about Fanis’ secrets, and this probably ensures that the detective will investigate the sudden death, or disappearance as he would know it, of Fanis as well.
Read More: ‘Maestro In Blue’ Season 3 Expectations
