Fortitude has plenty of people who could use a healer, from recently blinded Vincent (Luke Treadaway) to Freya Lennox (Michelle Fairley), who’s dying of ALS. So it’s probably good news that there’s a shaman in town, Vladek (Robert Sheehan). Or is it?
Freya seems to know Vladek from before, and given the severity of her illness and her husband’s desperation to try any treatment to get her better, it’s no surprise she turns to Vladek for help, after he explains he’s a shaman - not a witch doctor, but more like a spirit healer who communes with spirits, walks among the dead and heals the sick. Is he up to anything else, we wonder?
Vladek isn’t the only one communing with the dead: the police get a call that there was a fire in the cemetary and a child’s grave was desecrated: an ancestor of Tavrani’s. He’s now in the hospital, having suffered a heart attack.
Petra (Alexandra Moen) puts two and two together and goes to his bedside, explaining that the child’s remains have been stolen and telling Tavrani to act before it’s too late. He pretends to be sleeping but later marches out of the hospital.
Meanwhile, the detectives have found a link between the victims: the hallucinogenic muscimol, a local drink made by feeding poisonous mushrooms to reindeer, collecting their urine and then drinking it.
Tavrani (Ramon Tikaram) the taxidermist made it, Hindemith drank it (Rune revealed that Hindemith gave him drugs, and the faceless stranger in snow goggles would often be there lurking, cold and death-like) and Bianca Manchio (Jessica Henwick), the girl beheaded in the last episode, was killed where they took it.
The bureaucrats have their own issues this episode: Hildur (Sofie Gråbøl) and temporary Governor Munk (Ken Stott) butt heads as she tries to alert him to the neighbouring town’s disaster and he dismisses her as being sad and ridiculous, calling her lucky to escape her “freezing sewer” of a job when she did.
She convinces Michael (Dennis Quaid) to help distract the Governor so she can break into his hotel room (she’s left Eric and is staying at the hotel in the room opposite Munk’s) so she can search his emails to find out why exactly she lost her job. She has been offered a job with better benefits in Oslo - and a car - but she can’t let this go.
Unfortunately, an angry Eric (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) storms into the hotel bar after finding out Hildur went on her trip with Michael and gets into a brawl with him. This almost gets Hildur caught out, but she manages to escape Munk’s room, with some ingenuity on Michael’s part. And she also overhears a tasty morsel when an official calls Munk on the phone to discuss the situation in Fortitude and Munk pleads for more money after insisting that Hildur and Eric “know nothing.” Nothing about what?
Dan (Richard Dormer) is a man on a mission: he breaks into Dr. Khatri’s (Parminder Nagra) home, surprises her with a fully cooked dinner and tries to figure out what she’s up to with Elena (Verónica Echegui).
Khatri’s past is checkered - there was a scandal with her research involving healthy human beings - which may explain why she’s trying to test Elena’s tissue regeneration. She’s got some questions of her own - ones that we’d like answered too, please - like how did Dan recover so quickly, and where he was when he disappeared for nine weeks?
Vladek is seen at a sleeping Elena’s bedside, asking her for everything she knows about Dan Andersson. Looks like everyone wants to know how he’s survived - and thrived.
Things aren’t improving for Vincent, either: he’s stranded in a tent on the glacier with Natalie (Sienna Guillory), waiting in vain for the chopper they’ve requested. A storm is raging, Vincent hears a noise and Natalie goes to check outside to see whether an animal is there.
Someone comes into Vincent’s tent: it’s a man with no eyes.
Help.
Fortitude series 2 is on Sky Atlantic Thursdays at 9pm, or watch every episode ever before anyone else only on Sky Box Sets.