Van der Valk Season 3 Episode 5 Review: Magic in Amsterdam: Part One

On Van der Valk Season 3 Episode 4, “Magic in Amsterdam: Part One,” we leave behind relatively mundane fields like art and parkour. The season finale kicks off with a disturbingly deep dive into the occult.

The trajectory of the plot here is all over the map, jumping from the scenes of bones and strange symbols that we might expect to what appears to be a Buddhist temple—except the magic there is on a decidedly literal level.

I’m not sure what to make of any of it, except that the plot seems determined to scare the living daylights out of both us and the characters on screen.  Did I mention that our murder victim is found with his eyes gouged out?

Different members of the team handle these events with attitudes ranging from gleeful interest to barely disguised panic. Piet and Lucienne keep their cool right until a self-proclaimed magician narrates a detailed story from Lucienne’s past.

That story is…odd. On one hand, there’s a “gotcha” element that suggests she’s playing up an innocent game of tag between siblings. Yet neither her telling nor Lucienne’s reactions line up with that. What exactly could have gone on in that family?

It’s not the only distressing look into a character’s past. Eddie reveals to Citra a moment in which he had to shoot a tattoo artist to save the man’s daughter but somehow hit them both in the crossfire. Though they survived, he’s understandably shaken.

It gives us a sweet moment between these two, who I still believe are being set up as love interests, but for such a “core memory” event, it’s also breezed past quickly. Much more screentime is devoted to wringing out as many horror movie vibes as possible.

Just when the supernatural seems like a legitimate possibility, Piet and Eddie discover a secret passage and the front limbs of a goat (the victim had hoof marks on his body). It leads to the room where he died, allowing for a human killer to have stepped in.

But lest you let your guard down, these scenes are interspersed with ones where an old man who’d led the ritual bashes his head against a wall, uses the blood to paint symbols, and finally stabs his own granddaughter in the neck when she comes to visit.

I’m not going to criticize the level of theatrics. This is technically the first half of a season finale. I would like to have any idea where this could be going.  Thus far, I can’t even guess what a motive would look like for any of the members of this occult club.

The final episodes of the past seasons suggest we’ll be seeing some life-or-death moments with at least one main character in peril. How we’d get there from here will have to be left to the imagination. At this point it seems as though anything could happen.

Van der Valk is adapted from the series by Nicolas Freeling and written by Chris Murray and Maria Ward. This episode was directed by Arne Toonan.

 

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Van der Valk airs Sundays at 10/9c on PBS.

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