'Van der Valk' Recap: Season 3 Episode 6

Van der Valk is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous episode.
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Lucienne is at the hospital to visit Isaak Engelhart, who is under supervision after his friend Nik Delacorte was murdered during a magic ritual led by Isaak. In Isaak’s room, she finds an orderly bleeding from the neck where Isaak stabbed him with a syringe before fleeing, mentioning a night club. Lucienne gets help for the orderly then tells her team to find Isaak.

Citra and Hendrik are already at the night club, where there’s a kind of wake for Nik. Citra sees Isaak say something to Hans Lansing, the owner of the club, then walk away. Angelique Rousa, the woman Isaak cited in ramblings as a rival, is at the club. Lucienne, Van der Valk, and Eddie arrive. Suddenly there’s a scream, and the detectives rush to find the source. Isaak is bleeding, and soon dead.

He was stabbed by something thin and sharp—perhaps a wand.

The police question everyone at the club, but learn nothing. Hans simply says Isaak wanted to speak in private, and spouted gibberish: an anagram of the magic square tattooed on his back that is supposed to protect him from demons. Angelique says she came to pay her respects to Nik, and that she thinks she already told Lucienne what all of this was about—even if she doesn’t know who the killer is.

Nik’s wife Isabelle was also at the club, and the police bring her in. They learn from her phone that she obsessively called or texted Valentijn Meijer, another member of the magic order, the day before Nik was killed. She admits that she and Valentijn were having an affair, but that he had ended it. She was at the club to ask him to come back to her. But Valentijn admits to the detectives that he doesn’t care much about her.

She met Valentijn because he was a client of Nik. She knew Nik had had an affair with Mila Manderfeld, another member of the order and also a client. Isabelle hated Nik’s magic; their marriage was fine before he got into it. So she snuck into his office and left a dead cat, “666” written in her blood, and other items to try to scare him off.

The detectives manage to find an address for Mila and go in. It’s empty, although an open window suggests someone saw them and left. Mila is there, catatonic and hooked up to a bunch of medical equipment. There’s a scar on her head—and Isaak was a brain surgeon.

Mila’s nurse arrives and explains that she never sees anyone else there. She doesn’t know what happened to Mila; she is simply paid to care for her and bring a specific variety of floribundas to brighten the room. She believes Mila can hear, even though her body is paralyzed.

The detectives look into Mila and learn she has an ex-military brother as well as a sister. Perhaps this is why Angelique thinks she already told Lucienne what this is all about, by bringing up Lucienne’s own siblings. Maybe Angelique does have some supernatural powers.

Van der Valk and Lucienne go to Angelique, interrupting a ritual invocation of the goddess Hecate. She explains that Isaak’s ritual to summon a demon would have taken place at 5:15 am, for astrological reasons.

That lines up with the time of death for Nik. But Valentijn called the police later, at 5:37 am. And Hendrik has realized that Valentijn had cleaning fluid on his hands when everyone in the order was tested after Nik’s death. He had to clean off viscera from gouging out Nik’s eyes. Plus, his fingerprints are on the wand that killed Isaak.

Valentijn left the ritual, snuck upstairs to kill Nik and frame Isaak, then went outside and called the police. He killed Isaak when he escaped from the hospital and became a liability.

Valentijn wanted to punish Nik and Isaak for trying a controversial surgery on Mila and leaving her catatonic. He visited Mila at night and told her his plans for revenge. The flowers her nurse was told to leave are a variety called “My Sister.”

He explains all this to Van der Valk, whom he has tied up after knocking him out on his house boat. Van der Valk’s ex Lena is there, too: Valentijn appeared on the boat as she was returning Van der Valk’s keys after Van der Valk told her he didn’t want to try to date her again.

Valentijn planned to pull the plug on his sister after enacting revenge on her doctors, but then Van der Valk found her and put guards on her. So now he needs Van der Valk to help him.

He goes upstairs to steer the boat to a new dock, and Van der Valk gets Lena to open a drawer with her foot and grab his old cell phone. She tries calling his friend Cliff, the bartender, but he doesn’t pick up. Valentijn comes back down as Cliff is calling back, and smashes the phone.

But Cliff calls Lucienne and tells her about the call from Van der Valk’s old phone, which he never uses. Something is wrong. She gathers the team and they go to Mila. They know Valentijn is the murderer, and suspect that he will go to his sister. Hendrik has gotten Mila’s nurse’s number in the meantime, and calls her.

She has already been sent out of the house by Valentijn, who gets past the guards with Van der Valk and Lena. Van der Valk stands between Lena and Valentijn’s gun while they are in Mila’s room—Valentijn has already called Van der Valk’s bluff that he doesn’t care about Lena and shot near her on his boat.

Lena tries to convince Valentijn that medical advances could save Mila; there’s always hope. But he turns off all of Mila’s machines. Van der Valk hits him with a gas tank while he is distracted and grabs his gun. Lena turns the machines back on as the rest of the team arrives, but there’s no guarantee that Mila will survive.

Valentijn kneels at his sister’s side, and the machines once again show signs of life in Mila.

The team and Cliff gather for a drink on Van der Valk’s boat—Hendrik has also brought Mila’s nurse, and Lena is there, too. Both Lena and Van der Valk want to give their romance a second chance.