Stella Blómkvist (Heida Reed) is back, and Iceland will never be the same. To be fair, that’s because the country’s been in turmoil ever since the events of season 1. The hard-drinking, hard-loving lawyer blocked a massive conspiracy while sharing a bed – and then breaking up with – one of the government’s top power brokers. That’s enough to put a person (and a country) on edge.
Now that government is led by her ex-lover, Prime Minister Dagbjört (Sara Dögg Ásgeirsdóttir), and she has sealed a deal with China that gives the foreign country the right to build a massive naval base on the island. Dagbjört’s government has used the proceeds from the deal to create an entirely new police force, which basically serves as the private army of the Prime Minister’s Office. This has not gone down well with a lot of Icelandic society, and social unrest is now a serious problem.
If you think that would turn a crusading lawyer like Blómkvist against her ex, you don’t know how good she is at making bad decisions. Stella Blómkvist has always put the “noir” back into Nordic noir, with its stylish sets, hard-boiled plots and a sexy (and sexually fluid) lead hiding the pain in her past with booze and quips. Adding a broken heart into the mix is like throwing petrol on a fire that’s already out of control.
So yes, she’s hurt about how things ended. Yes, she’s unhappy with the way Dagbjört is running the country. Yes, she’s now a blonde, and we all know that means she’s trying to put her past behind her. Yes, she’s now pregnant and her ex’s new laws limit her options regarding her own body. But does that mean she’s actually moved on? Not likely.
This unrequited… well, “love” isn’t quite the right word (let’s go with “obsession” for now), has only pushed Blómkvist closer to the edge. Booze and cigarettes are never far from her side in her noir-ish neon-soaked apartment. Her biting wit and distrust of authority are still on show, but this season increasingly it seems like they’re the only things keeping her together. Well, that and her best friend and landlady (who is also a nerdy computer hacker who can get any information she needs to crack a case) Gunna (Kristín Þóra Haraldsdóttir). And yes, Raggi (Thorsteinn Guðmudsson) is back this season as well.
This season is loosely divided into three densely plotted stories, with a number of subplots – and Blómkvist’s increasingly intense personal dramas – running throughout. Iceland itself, or at least this noir version of it (neon and steam and a synth soundtrack add a lot to the series’ gritty mood) is not in a great place socially, and the cases she tackles shows a nation in trouble in an increasingly global and right-wing world.
The first episode kicks off with her looking into a human trafficking case that’s linked to a murder. Seems straightforward enough for her, until that leads her to a multinational criminal gang with its tentacles everywhere – they may even be involved in the mysterious death of an Instagram star.
Blómkvist then takes on the case of a Palestinian asylum seeker suspected of killing an Israeli diplomat. Turns out the diplomat is linked to Mossad and there’s a collection of missing antiquities with possible Nazi connections out there. That’s more than enough to make everyone just that little bit more on edge even before Dagbjört’s new police force starts throwing their weight around.
When there’s an attempt made on the life of the PM, Blómkvist finds herself in the middle of things – which is not a great place to be both personally and professionally. Her tortured feelings for Prime Minister Dagbjört are one thing; it rapidly becomes clear the botched assassination was merely the start of an attempt to overthrow the government, and those behind the scheme are more than willing to add a few more bodies (including Gunna and Raggi) to the pile if they have to.
Will Blómkvist be able to save Iceland from itself one more time? If not, at least she’ll always have cigarettes and whiskey to fall back on.
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