Review: Jordskott (S1 E10/10), Wednesday 12th August, ITV Encore

A couple of our favourite shows have been finishing this week (True Detective on Monday, now this). The very fact Jordskott has become one of my favourite shows is a remarkable thing. At the end of episode one I was ready to move on and had almost decided that this was not for me, its supernatural elements a leap of faith and suspension of belief too far. But I stuck with it because I was intrigued and even though it has been silly and ridiculous in places, it has also been well acted, well plotted and paced and well… pretty addictive. So I came to the final episode of this series eager to find out what was going to happen to Eva, Wass and co. And whether we were going to meet Muns, the forest’s main man. As ever with reviews of finales, please don’t read if you haven’t seen it yet and are intending to do so – it’s a tad spoiler heavy after the jump.

At the end of the previous episode we saw Göran Wass in pretty bad shape thanks to his duel with the bounty hunter Harry Storm. Wass had the presence of mind to dig his hand into the forest soil, his fingers sprouting roots to suck up as much of the natural healing energy the forest could provide as possible. It worked. He took himself to Ylva’s where she took care of him and, not for the first time, got him back up on his feet again. “I’ll have a short back and sides”, Wass should have said to Ylva as she snipped of his newly formed foliage. “And do the hands while you’re at it.”

Harry Storm, meanwhile, was also in a bad way. I thought he had bought it in the last episode, but he staggered his way to young Jörgen’s house, where the teen administered some crude medical treatment on the dying bounty hunter. Enough was enough. Storm decided the only way he was going to survive was to ingest a parasite he had stolen from Ylva’s house (like Eva did). So he did. And it didn’t work. So he necked some more. After a dream sequence in which we saw his late wife Marianne and son, Juuso, he emerged from the table like some sort of Frankenstein’s monster. Thanks to his overly enthusiastic parasite consumption his veins were bulging and his voice was now an earthy growl, and he stomped out into the wilderness to find whoever he could to take down. He was like the Terminator, but with added moss.

There to meet him, thanks to a little help from Esmerelda, was Wass and Ylva. Good old, reliable Wass and Ylva. In Wass’s case so normal you wouldn’t look twice at him on the street but in possession of amazing fortitude and insight. Which was just as well because the Mossinator (Storm) soon had him by the throat and was holding up with one hand against a tree, six feet in the air. Ylva whistled to her water creature (I’m still not entirely sure what that thing is), who came along and pulled the Mossinator under the water and took care of him, blood bubbling to the surface.

Finally, Harry Storm, after so many close shaves was now a goner, dispatched by Ylva’s slippery underwater friend.

But what about Eva and Gerda? The two mothers were locked in combat the last time we saw them – Gerda banishing Eva to the outside of town while she began to get busy detonating the forest. Eva, as we saw, had decided to disobey her and strode purposefully back into Silverhöjd and to the Gunnarsson homestead, finding a stash of anti-cancer drugs in Gerda’s barn. Gerda, who had been displaying signs of an illness in the previous episode, was revealed to be on her last legs, so her haste in getting the silver from the forest depths was understandable.

While she was snooping around Eva was bashed on the head by Nicklas, and Gerda and her son held her prisoner. Things came to a, ahem, head when Nicklas saved Eva from a garage full of car fumes and was told the truth about her mother, father, sister and Josefine, his niece. It was Jordskott’s Star Wars “I am your father.” “Noooo!” moment.

Back in the forest Tom Aronsson was frantically looking for his daughter, Ida, who, he was told at the end of the last episode, was missing. He decided to try a bit of supernatural stuff, and reached out with his mind to try and locate his daughter. It worked. She was in the forest and underground in the Lair Of Muns, with the other abducted children. How did he do this? I’m guessing that when he was attacked – or was made to attack himself – by Esmerelda, some sort of mental imprint was left behind, making him experience visions and almost clairvoyant episodes. I wonder if this was the reason he was able to connect to Ida in this way.

The race was on and the denouement was almost upon us. Gerda was ready to give the order to blow the forest tunnels; Aronsson followed his senses and found the children. He just didn’t know which tunnel to take that would lead he and the abducted children to safety.

In the end it was Nicklas who saved the day, pleading with Gerda to stop all this madness. She, in turn, looked into her son’s eyes and remembered her role as a mother – all those birthdays, proud feelings of motherhood and those snatched, every-day moments of joy parents experience every day with their children. With her last breath she called off the detonations.

The series ended with another mother losing her child. Eva, Aronsson, Ida and Josefine took a ride out to the forest, where, through Ida, Josefine told her mother she wanted to go into the forest for good. There, mother and daughter lay in the undergrowth as the forest slowly started to conjoin and then consume Josefine for good. She left a woody imprint behind, its follicles sensitive to Eva’s touch.

Other things that were wrapped up? Wass was sent to Canada by his shady organisation boss to recuperate who in turn told his boss that he would keep a close eye on Eva, which suggests there’s more to come from Jordskott. There’s more evidence, too – Esmerelda is just starting on her journey to control and hone her powers, young Jörgen could be the next Harry Storm (consumed by vengeance for his brother’s death), and Tom Aronsson and Ida seem to have their own powers to develop, too.

In terms of finales it was a good one – lots of things were tied up, there was tension as Aronsson tried to get the children out before Gerda blew up the forest and there were some emotional mother/son/mother/daughter moments. What there weren’t were any huge plot twists that took your breath away and, of course, we didn’t get to meet Muns. For some this will be a sticking point.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens in Jordskott’s world in the future of course, but for now Jordskott has been a police procedural, a supernatural drama, a family drama and an environmental drama all rolled into one. That’s no mean feat.

Paul Hirons
@Son_Of_Ray

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