Since there are only four episodes of All The Light We Cannot See, by the third part we're almost at the end of this new Netflix novel adaptation, with only an hour of drama to go until the end.
This new Netflix period drama is set in the Nazi-occupied French town of Saint-Malo in 1944, as the American army prepares to liberate the place. We follow a German soldier and a blind French girl, Werner and Marie-Laure, who come from very different walks of life but have a lot in common.
In this All The Light We Cannot See episode 3 recap we find the answers to plenty of questions that we've been asking since episode 1, like "Who is the professor?", "What happened to Daniel?" and "Where is Etienne?".
So here's our All The Light We Cannot See episode 3 recap, which prepares us for the series finale. As a note, we've re-ordered some of the events of the episode, as it jumps around in time a lot and it is easier to understand written out this way.
Werner meets a familiar face
We pick up where episode 2 ended: Werner Pfennig (Louis Hoffman) is being handed a gun by his officer, who tells him to break into the home of Marie-Laure LeBlanc (Aria Mia Loberti) and kill her.
Werner enters, but at that moment Etienne LeBlanc (Hugh Laurie) shows up on a motorbike. The officer prepares to shoot him, but Werner kills his officer instead, as well as the driver. Werner helps Etienne hide the bodies, and then the latter takes the former to the resistance HQ, after leaving instructions for Marie on what code to send in the next radio transmission.
Etienne interrogates Werner, who talks about how his listening to shortwave radio 13:10 and The Professor inspired him in radio. We get a flashback to 1942, when the boy is still at The Institution learning to be a good Nazi. He struggles physically but excels in radio-related tasks, enough so that the director calls him a genius and sends him to the Eastern Front despite him being too young.
After this is complete, Etienne tells Werner that the resistance will conduct a trial for him later, and locks the boy in the basement.
The identity of The Professor
In 1940, Daniel LeBlanc (Mark Ruffalo) and Marie-Laure show up at the home of Madame Manec (Marion Bailey), a relative of the two. Also living there is Etienne, her brother, who spends all day playing on his radio and having war-related flashbacks to World War I.
Since Marie-Laure is great with voices (being blind), she immediately works out that Etienne is actually The Professor, who spends all his time transmitting to the whole world. He asks her to keep this a secret.
Marie-Laure goes to the beach with Daniel, and he decides he's going to make a model replica of Saint-Malo so she can explore it by touch. To make it he begins walking around town counting his steps, in order to get the correct measurements, and carving wood lots of the time.
The Gestapo hears about the man measuring the whole town and thinks he's part of the resistance; they investigate and threaten the family. Daniel gives his papers to get them away, but they're actually faked. At dinner, Etienne tells them another reason he was worried when the Gestapo showed up: his transmissions as The Professor also send codes to London about troop movements and the like. Thankfully, the Gestapo seem to be off their tail for now.
Daniel and Marie-Laure attend a resistance meeting, and it turns out that the other members are all old ladies. Daniel confesses that the Gestapo are looking for the Sea of Flames, which he still has on him, and won't stop looking. After secretly hiding the gem in his model town, they concoct a plan.
Daniel plans to go back to Paris, where he'll be photographed to show he was there; then he'll do the same in Bordeaux and smugglers will pass word to the Nazis that he and his daughter was smuggled into Spain. After bidding farewell to Marie-Laure, he embarks on his quest to throw the Nazis off their scent.
The net closes in Saint-Malo
Gestapo treasure hunter Reinhold von Rumpel (Lars Eidinger) returns to his prostitute friend, and tells her that his body is "eating itself" and that he's been hunting for the Sea of Flames to cure him for three years.
We see a flashback to 1940, where Rumpel interrogates one of Daniel's co-workers at the museum. That's how the Nazis finds out about Daniel, Marie-Laure and her blindness. The prostitute offers Marie's address, in exchange for her being smuggled out of the city, as she knows she'll be killed for sleeping with German soldiers once the Americans arrive.
Werner is prepared for his trial, and he works out that Etienne is The Professor. Just then three resistance members arrive, and they want to kill him for all the killing that he's caused for his radio actions. Etienne wants to spare him, but they prepare their guns for an execution.
At that moment artillery shells start exploding, as the Americans are preparing their attack on the city. A blast hits the room with Werner, Etienne and the resistance members.
Simultaneously, Rumpel arrives at Marie-Laure's house and bashes down the front door.
