Teresa reviews Metamorphosis (2021): Hjerson’s last episode

Teresa reviews Metamorphosis (2021), the last episode of Hjerson, and despite the cancellation, thinks the series is worth watching.

(c)2024 by Teresa Peschel

Agatha Adjacent? 2 handguns

What looks like murder a la “Murder in the Mews” isn’t always murder.

Quality of movie: 3½ handguns

Too many unanswered questions, both in the murder and in the larger arc.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

I’d have given this film another ½ handgun because even though the murder of Axel Sterner had some plot issues, the film set up very nicely the next arc of Hjerson where we learn what happens to Klara’s marriage and maybe about her past (who is Olivia’s father? Was the story she told Sven about being discovered as a child with her murdered parents true?), Sven learns more about his parents and might discover what happened to his birth mother, and we might even learn why Sven was discredited and kicked off the Stockholm police department and how the mysterious CG fits into that story.

But no.

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The production company didn’t renew the series so by the end of this episode, you’ll be left wondering what happened to Sara. Did she run away? Fall off a cliff? Get murdered? Why did Oscar hang around when he’s clearly a bad father and that adoring note he gave to Sara was blather that he didn’t mean when it counted? Does he have an explanation? That’s just the beginning of the answers waiting somewhere in a writers’ room in Sweden that will never be revealed.

But the lack of a finished story arc shouldn’t keep you from not watching the show. Perhaps more people watching it and talking about it might yet persuade the production company to film a few more episodes. TV series have been resurrected before due to audience demands. As with Axel’s death, what you see isn’t always the final answer.

Which leads us to Axel Sterner, famous in-series Swedish actor, roué, alcoholic, and all-around jerk. When he’s shot on set in a scene because the prop gun was loaded with a real bullet instead of a blank, everyone’s convinced it’s murder. (The American film shooting they refer to in the dialog is Alec Baldwin’s accidental shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on 12 October 2021 on the set of Rust. They must have added that line at the last minute.)

Klara is agog with the possibilities. A famous actor murdered by his costar, the glamorous Rita van der Horn! Or someone on the set who hates him like the producer, the director, or the entire crew! On the same island where Sven lives! Where she already knows the local chief of police, Frank Oskarsson! This won’t just be easy. It’s the perfect pilot episode for Sven’s “solve the murder” reality TV show.

A high-profile celebrity murder will also allow her to escape her domestic responsibilities to her daughter and to her increasingly unhappy husband. What Klara does to tease Niklas is disturbing, humiliating, and cruel. It’s not a surprise when he walks out. Olivia’s not his daughter so why should he stick around anymore?

But the drama on set becomes increasingly convoluted, to match Klara’s domestic drama. Since Sven’s busy discovering what happened to Sara, his beloved and suddenly vanished childhood nanny, Klara’s been working with police chief Frank. It’s an uneasy partnership, made more so by Sven’s jealousy whenever Klara updates him on the investigation.

Klara and Frank discover that Rita, who has plenty of reasons to loathe Axel, had been sick for two weeks with an intestinal bug. Director Inez is caught between being bullied by her star, Axel, and pushed into getting the damned picture done by her producer, Lukas, despite her own desires to make a quality, artistic film instead of schlock. Axel harassed every woman on set, zeroing in on Lotta the tea girl and all-around gofer and Veronika, higher in the food chain but still a gofer. Axel doesn’t limit his abuse to the women. When Adam, the sound engineer, comes to his rescue, he abuses him too.

Worse, no one on the film set has been paid for weeks. Producer Lukas is desperate for cash. The death of his problematic star isn’t necessarily a tragedy, not if it means an insurance payout letting him pay salaries, keep filming, and cobble together a finished movie in editing. Does he care how Axel treated the crew? Nah, that’s normal for a Hollywood production. The higher up the food chain you are, the more abusive you can be. For a while.

While Klara investigates a high-profile murder in a way that’s only possible in Hollywood, Sven discovers that Sara fled with him when he was about eight and, and, and vanished. You get no answer as to what happened to her. Nor, when Sven eventually learns that Sara’s teenaged lover and his father was Oscar, do you get an answer as to why Oscar sat on his hands rather than learn what happened to Sara.

Sven gets roped back into the current murder when he notices a clue in a selfie Klara took of her and Rita. Rita’s skin condition says she’s being poisoned. That leads to Inez, the director with a tropical fish hobby (don’t ask how she moves her aquariums from set to set). Is Inez guilty? She wanted to slow down the film for poorly explained reasons but she’s not a murderess.

Lotta, who got forced into being the gun keeper, isn’t the murderer either. Nor is Rita, who fired the fatal shot although she’ll have to live with killing Axel even if he had it coming. Even Veronica, a firearms novice, harassed by Axel into practicing her revolver skills next to him in a completely idiotic fashion (what if she’d shot him instead of the tree?) isn’t guilty.

She is his unacknowledged daughter whose mother he abandoned, a fact he learns after he tries to seduce her. This ties in nicely with the theme of the episode and the series: what is the value of children? Not much when careers and reputations are at stake!

Axel didn’t care about his one-night-stand, leaving a daughter behind to grow up in a series of foster homes. Sara loved Sven dearly, but Oscar? Not too much, other than staying on the island to be friendly from a distance. Niklas, after swallowing one final humiliation, told Klara goodbye but who’s taking care of Olivia? Not him, not anymore. Since Klara’s got her career as a reality TV show producer on the line, she’ll have to find a full-time nanny for Olivia quick. Like the rest of us, Klara can’t be in two places at once and like the rest of us, her choices show what’s most important to her.

So who killed Axel? It was suicide. He decided he was too awful to live. But, being a miserable excuse of a human being, he wasn’t man enough to do the job himself. No, he punished Rita whom he’d used decades before when she was a drama student and he was already somebody, Rita who then humiliated him earlier that evening. He let Rita take the blame.

Then, compounding Axel’s sin, Lukas realized at once that the insurance company would pay out for murder but not for suicide. Like Axel, did destroying Lotta’s life, Rita’s life, or Veronica’s life matter? Not when money’s on the line.

A word about Adam’s retaliatory squirrel (which was crude, but funny). I don’t believe that’s possible, even on an unconscious drunk, not without severe trauma that would have kept Axel off the set the next morning. It made for a joke, but from the position of the squirrel’s tail, he used duct tape. It’s good for everything!