End of Summer, on Viaplay, is a Swedish series about an unstable therapist in Stockholm who returns home to re-examine her brother’s disappearance 20 years earlier. When Isak (Eric Enge) comes to Vera’s (Julia Ragnarsson) group session, claiming he is having flashes of a childhood that he doesn’t remember, Vera becomes convinced that he is the friend of her brother Billy (Akay Jasarovski), who disappeared from their family farm in 1985. As her curiosity grows into obsession, Vera returns to her small home town, asking questions and ripping open old wounds.
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The Present
As a therapist, Vera is on thin ice. She is trying to re-establish herself professionally after she was fired for having an affair with a (grown) patient, Leon (Ruben Lopez). This group session that she leads is a trial period for her, and she is being observed by a supervisor. After swearing she has no more contact with Leon, we cut to her sitting outside his apartment, watching him through the window. When Isak shows up in her group, she questions him aggressively, raising the antenna of her supervisor. He disappears into the night, but Vera is already triggered, and begins investigating her brother’s disappearance. When she returns home for her father’s 60th birthday, she can’t help but ask about Billy, which irritates her brother police officer Mattias (Vilhem Blomgren), and torments her father, Ebbe (Lars Schilken). Her combative uncle Harald (Torkel Petersson) is the only family member willing to talk to her about the past, but he is inflexible about his version of events.
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The Past
End of Summer opens with young Vera watching in agony as her mother, Magdalena (Ida Gyllensten), drowns herself in the nearby lake. Earlier flashbacks take us to the day Billy went missing. Vera was supposed to be minding him as her mother slept, but left in a huff when Magda emerged, proclaiming Billy her “beloved child”, and ignoring Vera. Young Vera is smart and reliable, but has been completely rejected by her mother, who is a depressive. As the town searches for Billy, Harald finds ne’er-do-well Tommy Rooth (Linus James Nilsson), and accuses him of kidnapping the boy. Tommy soon disappears from town, so the narrative that Tommy took or killed Billy was accepted as truth, and the police stopped investigating. In the present, as Vera digs around, secrets come to light that may be relevant to the case, but may also rip apart her family.
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Our Take on End of Summer
End of Summer uses a device that I enjoy: the unreliable narrator. The series quickly establishes Vera as someone who makes unwise decisions, and who suffers from PTSD around Billy’s disappearance. But she is also widely respected as a grief counselor, and is able to get people to open up in ways that others can’t. And who is this Isak? Is he a con artist, as Mattias believes, or Billy himself? Or simply a young man with amnesia about his early childhood that Vera gloms onto? The long lasting effects of family dysfunction lead to some powerful scenes, one of which caused me to choke up. It’s sad to see the capable, confident young Vera turn into a shell of herself after losing both Billy and her mother. If you like a compelling mystery with explosive family secrets, End of Summer is for you.
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