This episode contains spoilers for Detective Forst episode 4. Detective Forst is a chilling Polish Netflix crime thriller that follows Detective Wiktor Forst as he tracks down the "Beast of Giewont", a brutal serial killer who is targeting people in the Podhale region of southern Poland. After being thrown off the case, a determined journalist called Olga comes to his aid.
Episode 4 sees Forst's journey going from bad to worse. After his journey to Slovakia ended in tragedy, he rushes back to Poland to reconvene with Olga and share his findings. Later, the pair go on a fact-finding mission to a nearby museum which ends with Forst discovering he's got a close connection to the killer. Here's everything that happened in Detective Forst episode 4.
Forst's return
The fourth episode of Detective Forst picks up right we left our dogged detective: lying beaten on the floor at The Black Dolphin. Once he regains consciousness, Forst rushes back to his and Frana's hideout and swallows some of his pain relief tablets.
In the dark, he fumbles his way to the safe and, remembering a clue from Frana just before she died, figures out the safe combination. He retrieves his phone and weapon but finds evidence that Frana was involved in human trafficking locked inside, too. With all his belongings together, he begins to make his way back to town. Meanwhile, Łowotarski's body is left suspended on the mountain, from the same kind of rope that's been used to hang up all of the Beast of Giewont's victims thus far.
Elsewhere, Halina receives a phone call from Iwo, the killer, who ominously lets on that he's uncovered her "memory problems" whilst dealing with Łowotarski. The long-haired man we saw her with back in episode 2 once again tells Halina to cut ties with Iwo, before reaching out to Staszek and telling him he knows where to find the man who murdered Maks Rozdakowski.
At the police station, Wadrys-Hansen meets with Edmund Osica. Maks' father has passed over a list of the 205 people Maks had been in contact with before his disappearance. Edmund is horrified when he spots Staszek's name on the list. He goes into the bullpen to speak to him, only to find out that Staszek's not turned up for work.
Olga takes a cab over to Staszek's place for the meeting he invited her to. He's not home, but she finds his laptop and watches the clips of him with Maks. She leaves in a hurry, which is precisely when Staszek shows up. She refuses to stop and speak to him... which is when he realizes she must have seen the footage. She speeds off back home in a cab, and he chases after her in his minivan.
A familiar face
Olga arrives at her apartment complex and runs up to her door, with Staszek in hot pursuit right behind her. She manages to slip inside and locks the door just in time. Staszek pounds on her front door and begs to be let in; Olga only relents when Staszek says he knows where to find the killer.
Inside, Staszek admits he didn't want to say anything about the victim. He recognized the tattoos as those on Maks' body and was terrified that he had a connection to one of the serial killer's targets. After asking Olga not to tell Forst about what he knows, Staszek sets out for the killer's location... alone. He arrives and begins searching the building; whilst in another room, he hears the door lock behind him; he's later seen locked in a cage.
Forst reaches out to Olga and tells her he'll be at her place in half an hour, and they spend the night together at his trailer upon his arrival. Unbeknownst to him, Agata had dropped by and knocked on the door whilst they were together.
The following morning, he tells her what he learned about Łowotarski and the photo they took from Mountain Remembrance HQ whilst driving to a local museum. On the walk up, he says that Łowotarski was the leader of the group of people who were "paying for old sins". Olga is confused as to why the killing only started over 60 years after the photo was taken; Forst posits that the group may never have ceased operations... or maybe it just took this long to track everyone down.
At the Tatra Museum, they speak to a curator about the photo. He takes them into a room where people were incarcerated by occupying forces. Inside, he shows that prisoners had scratched final messages and calls for justice into the bricks of the building.
Many of the messages were left to their children, and the worker apparently started trying to track down the people named. Many of the orphaned daughters were taken in by Łowotarski's gang and never seen again... except for one. He goes on to tell the story of Miroslawa, the one woman who turned up years after the war in Zakopane,
Miroslawa was nine months pregnant and gave birth on the steps of the church. Miroslawa was looked down as an unmarried woman with a child at the time and was incessantly complaining about a "one-eyed devil" (which must be Łowotarski). She was found dead just a couple of years later, leaving Halina (her daughter) all on her own.
Forst recognizes the name Halina. The curator tells them that Halina is a prominent figure in the local area, but mostly keeps to herself. When he reveals her full name to be Halina Krol, Forst looks horrified.
Confronting the past
After a flashback image of a younger Halina, we cut to Forst speeding erratically down the highway, with Olga panicking in the passenger seat. Forst tells her that he's not actually from Kraków, he's from the local area, and Halina Krol was the director of the orphanage he grew up in. What's more, she wore a coin just like the one found with the bodies as a necklace!
Forst and Olga arrive back at Mountain Remembrance HQ to confront Halina. Forst has his weapon confiscated as he enters, and quickly launches into the case, asking about the victims and their families. She says they know nothing about what's going on, before recalling an incident from Forst's time in the orphanage.
This is the event we've been shown in broken flashbacks throughout the show. As children, Forst broke into Halina's office to try and steal Halina's necklace. Forst says he wasn't alone; Halina acknowledges that he was with his best friend, and Forst's friend took the fall for the whole thing. Whilst speaking, Halina moves across the room and swings a door open.... allowing Iwo, his best friend (and the killer!) to walk in.
Iwo picks up Forst's gun and shoots the other man standing behind Forst. Iwo then recounts a story of what happened to him as a child; Forst's parents were also about to adopt Iwo, but when they learned he was a 'common thief', they backed out. Halina tells Iwo to calm down; he turns the pistol on her and kills her for being Łowotarski's daughter.
We cut to a hazy sequence which sees Forst being bound to a chair and drugged. Whilst out cold, he remembers when a young Iwo cut his throat in the orphanage for 'betraying' him.
He manages to free himself from the chair and manages to kick the door down, finding the whole building ablaze. He fights his way through the building and finds Olga has been knocked out, stripped naked, and bound up with the other bodies. He grabs a fire axe from a nearby panel and uses it to cut her free, and the episode ends with Forst holding her in his arms, looking for a way out.
Detective Forst is now available to stream on Netflix. For more series to enjoy, check out our picks for the best Netflix shows we think you should be watching right now.
