'Before We Die' Recap: Season 2 Episode 1

Before We Die airs Thursdays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. WTTW Passport members can stream the whole show now. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Now that the conflict between the sons has played out, the mothers take over. Christian has escaped to Costa Rica with his lover Bianca after serving as a police informant on Bianca’s family, the Mimicas, while they imported a huge stash of cocaine into England. Davor Mimica, the head of the operation, is dead, shot by Christian’s mother Hannah in an off-the-books operation to save Christian. Davor’s mother, Dubravka, is now in charge of the cocaine and the Croatian family’s criminal doings in England. Hannah has been secretively assigned by her boss, Kane, to find the mole in the police force who has been feeding information to the Mimicas.

Hannah goes to the Mimica restaurant and demands to see Dubravka, then stabs her when Dubravka says that she will find and kill Christian.

Except that it’s all just a recurring nightmare that Hannah is having. When she recounts it to her police-mandated therapist, the doctor says Dubravka symbolizes obstacles in Hannah’s way, unless she is someone that Hannah knows in real life. No, Hannah replies. I’ve never met her.

With that, she’s done with her mandated therapy.

Her colleague Billy, no stranger to PTSD, urges her to process everything that has happened—three months may not be enough time with a therapist. But all Hannah wants is to put Dubravka in jail and ensure that Christian is safe.

Christian is doing his best to survive. He wants to leave a beach when he hears two men speaking Croatian, upsetting Bianca, who is tired of his hyper-vigilance and fear. As Bianca storms off, two men in a car photograph her.

Kane’s patience is also running out. A DCI Harris has been assigned to look into the whole Mimica investigation and the deaths of policemen that accompanied it and is about to issue a report that dismisses claims of a Mimica mole in the police force as well as the charge that the Mimicas are distributing drugs. The family has been under intense surveillance the past few months and nothing suspicious has turned up.

Kane doesn’t know the whole story—for instance, that Davor is dead, killed by Hannah. He half-believes Harris’s report, and tells Hannah that she has a week to tie up loose ends before he reassigns her from investigating the mole.

Hannah goes to Billy for help. She thinks that Christian will be killed if she can’t find the Mimica’s police source and nail Dubravka. Neither she nor Billy know about Christian’s life since he fled, and she is constantly afraid that he is going to be caught.

Dubravka also doesn’t know about her son’s fate, although the length of his absence suggests he is dead. Goran, a cousin of the family from Croatia, has arrived in England to investigate the “disappearance” of Davor and Goran’s own father, Zvonomir—and to make sure that Dubravka sells the cocaine. The family back in Croatia is growing restless for their business to pick up again.

Dubravka is moving forward with things. She meets with a woman, Nicky, who has found a buyer for the cocaine. But first Dubravka requires Nicky to end the police investigation into the Mimica mole, and find Christian and Bianca—then the deal can go through and Nicky can get her ten percent of it. Nicky assures Dubravka the investigation will end this week, and shows her photos of Christian and Bianca. Dubravka asks her to bring Bianca back safely, and to kill Christian and supply proof. Goran, unaware of any of this, will stay until the deal is done. He also doesn’t know that the cocaine is hidden under a new pool that Dubravka had built at her home.

Oblivious that danger is imminent, Bianca tells Christian that she is pregnant. Despite their fugitive life, Christian wants to make it work, and promises to find a way for their family. He heads to the market to buy Bianca fruit, and notices at the last second a man approaching him with a hidden gun. He fights the man off and flees, calling Bianca with a warning. He tells her to go to their rendezvous point. She agrees, hangs up, and is grabbed by someone.

Billy suggests to Hannah that she step away from the whole Mimica case, for her mental wellbeing. He lost a best friend while in the military, and then lost everyone and everything dear while he spent years intent on revenge. He doesn’t want the same thing to happen to Hannah, but when she explains that she can’t walk away, he agrees to help her. He has missed her, he tells her—but she tells him she doesn’t currently have any space for good things in her life right now. They agree to let a possible romantic relationship wait—for now.

Billy tells Hannah that she has to make Dubravka think she has given up on investigating the Mimicas; then Dubravka will make a move. But Hannah only has a week, so she decides to target a low-ranking cousin of the family, Jovan. She approaches him on the street and plants drugs on him before searching him. She brings him in to the police station, making sure her colleagues see. Billy is surveilling any cellphone activity around Dubravka's house.

She puts Jovan in an interrogation room and begins questioning him while some of her colleagues enter a hidden attached room to listen in. Hannah turns off the audio recorder, cutting off her colleagues’ audio feed, and tells Jovan to nod along to her. When her colleagues come in to say that the recorder is broken, Hannah says that Jovan is going to talk, but has asked for his lawyer.

Marcus, the policeman who is the Mimica mole, goes outside and calls Dubravka to warn her, then disassembles and throws away his burner cell phone. But Billy has heard and recorded the phone call. It was illegally obtained and is inadmissible as evidence, so Billy warns Hannah to be careful in introducing it to the by-the-books Kane.

Jovan is released, thanks to a lawyer sent by the family. Kane asks Hannah about Jovan’s allegations of misconduct, and she hands over the recording of Marcus and Dubravka.

At the same time, DCI Harris is at a press conference to discuss her report into the Mimica family and a possible mole in the police force. She claims there’s no evidence of crime or a mole—as she would, given that she is the Nicky working with Dubravka.