Benjamin gets taken to prison, where Guédira attempts to extract a confession out of him: namely, that he was in cahoots with Assane. Unfortunately for Guédira, despite having been betrayed, Benjamin maintains the ruse that Assane is dead. However, when a frustrated Guédira returns to his office, he's stunned to find Assane inside waiting for him. Assane asks Guédira for help, telling him that if he does so, he'll get the bracelet (which Benjamin had previously sent off to the kidnappers by drone) and the Manet painting as compensation—and, if that wasn't enough, he (Assane) will willingly turn himself in. Guédira is initially reluctant, but being a Nice Guy he accepts after Assane tells him about the situation with his mother.
After making arrangements with Frédéric Lassaire, an ex-convict notorious for setting up black-market art sales, Assane brings Guédira over to his hideout and disguises him as wealthy collector "Justin Avisto," who is supposedly seeking to buy the Manet painting. The following evening, Guédira—wearing a wire through which Assane is passing him instructions—heads to a previously arranged meeting point, where he encounters two of the kidnappers, Manon and Ferdinand. He manages to "buy" the painting from them; however, just after Ferdinand has left with the counterfeit money, Belkacem (having been previously tipped off to the sale by Assane) bursts onto the scene and arrests Manon. Just as she's about to cuff Guédira, he pulls off his disguise and reveals his true identity, much to Belkacem's shock and outrage.
Assane, meanwhile, tails Ferdinand and sees him give the fake money over to a burly, mustachioed man whom Assane recognizes right away: it's Jean-Luc Keller, a man whose boxing gym Assane and Bruno had joined as teenagers in 1998. Flashback sequences across Part 3 depict Assane's history with Keller—he'd forced Assane and Bruno to partake in a robbery of a jewelry store, but their getaway went awry and Keller ultimately ended up being arrested for the murder of a police officer while Assane and Bruno got away. Now he's out of jail, and he wants revenge.
While this is all going on, Claire has continued her personal investigation into Assane's "death." She sets up a meeting with journalist Arnold de Garmeaux and asks him exactly how he obtained the photograph of Assane's body at the morgue that accompanied his obituary in The Objector. Arnold replies that the paper was contacted by one of the doctors, but that he doesn't know the man's name; when Claire asks him to describe the doctor to a sketch artist, the drawing turns out to be a portrait of Benjamin. Armed with this knowledge, Claire visits Benjamin in prison and tricks him into revealing that Assane's death was an elaborate hoax. The Catharsis Factor of receiving corroboration that Assane is still out there somewhere causes Claire to break down in Tears of Joy.
Episode credits:
Tropes that appear in this episode:
- Accidental Declaration of Love: When Belkacem finds Guédira at the hotel, she demands to know what he's doing there. Guédira tells her that the most recent video on his cell phone explains everything; however, instead of finding the intended clip of Assane apologizing for his crimes and agreeing to turn himself in, she winds up seeing footage, secretly recorded by Assane, in which Guédira confesses to his crush on her. When he realizes what she's watching, Guédira is horrified.
- Borrowing the Beatles: Guédira's "Justin Avisto" disguise winds up looking a lot like present-day Ringo Starr.
- A Day in the Limelight: This is very much a Guédira-centered episode: he appears in virtually every scene aside from the flashbacks and the Claire-focused B plot, and even seems to function as something of an Audience Surrogate as he's a non-criminal who gets handpicked by Assane to participate in a fake art sale.
- Enemy Mine: Assane tells Guédira that his mother is in danger and claims that he'll allow himself to be arrested if Guédira helps him out. Although initially apprehensive that Assane will simply trick him again (which ends up being exactly what happens), Guédira agrees to assist.
- Eye Take: Belkacem after she realizes that "Justin Avisto" is actually Guédira.
- Face Your Fears: Claire is initially scared by the prospect of even setting foot in prison and begs "Coach Alex"—or rather, Assane—to accompany her for her visit to Benjamin; however, when Assane turns her down, she ultimately works up the courage to go alone.
- Facial Horror: Sometime after Guédira's attempt to interrogate him, Benjamin appears to have been beaten up, presumably by one or more of the other inmates. When Claire visits him, he has gashes and bruises all over his face.
- Genre Savvy: Guédira's explanation for why Benjamin couldn't have been working alone at the Château de Thoiry gala:Guédira: Diop betrayed him and yet he still won't give him up. I don't understand it.Belkacem: Quit it with all this Diop nonsense, Guédira. Férel is the one who stole the bracelet, okay? He might even be the one who has the pearl.Guédira: Not a chance. Férel isn't the brains, he's the accomplice.
- Hidden Wire: Guédira wears one while posing as Justin Avisto, so that Assane can give him instructions on how to proceed.
- Lighter and Softer: The comedic tone of this episode is in almost jarring contrast to the Downer Ending of the previous one.
- The Matchmaker: Assane quickly deduces that Guédira has a romantic interest in Belkacem and, in his own offbeat way, tries to set them up with one another.
- Mood Dissonance: The Internal Reveal of Benjamin accidentally informing Claire that Assane is not dead has this in spades. On the one hand, there's Claire, having finally confirmed that her and Raoul's suspicions are true, sobbing and breathlessly thanking Benjamin. On the other hand, Benjamin was already struggling to cope with the experience of prison, and now he has to deal with the humiliation of having been conned into revealing Assane's secret as well as the disappointment of realizing that Assane has no apparent plan to spring him free.
- Phantom Thief: Aside from Assane, there's also Frédéric Lassaire, the debonair gallery owner who turns out to be a notorious art fraudster attempting—or at least, giving the appearance of attempting—to go straight. Assane and Guédira rope him into assisting with the sale of the Manet painting after they catch him trying to sell ancient sculptures which turn out to be recently-made knockoffs.
- The Reveal: The Big Bad who's behind Mariama's kidnapping? It's Keller, the guy whose boxing gym Assane joined as a teenager, as shown in the flashback sequences. And The Dragon with the shaved head who assists him is Manon, his girlfriend at the time.
- Super Identikit: The portrait made by the sketch artist at The Objector based on Arnold de Garmeaux's description is an absolute dead-ringer for Benjamin, with Claire knowing exactly who's in the picture the second she sees it right-side-up.
- The Un-Reveal: While interrogating him, Guédira tries to pressure Benjamin into revealing Assane's location. Benjamin begins to give him an address...only to reveal that it's the location of Assane's plot at Père-Lachaise cemetery.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: A brief sequence shows Raoul discovering the underground passage that his father had escaped through following his funeral. However, what he actually finds in there is not shown, nor is there a scene in which Claire tells him that she's proved that Assane is alive.
- You Just Told Me: How Claire outwits Benjamin into spilling the truth about Assane's fate: having more or less pieced together the intricacies of Assane's initial scheme, she claims that he's contacted her and confessed to faking his death, setting up a sham autopsy and tipping off the journalists at The Objector, and arranging his own funeral. Benjamin responds by apologetically claiming that he was against the plan the entire time, inadvertently revealing that everything Claire just said was correct.
