Atiye (The Gift) – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

Markings On The Wall

Episode 2 of Atiye opens with a strange woman scratching the familiar symbols into a wall. As we cut back to Atiye, wedding preparations get underway while she struggles to concentrate given what she found out last episode. After buying flowers from a small boy approaching her car, Atiye sees the strange girl again and decides she needs to find out what it all means.

Meanwhile Erhan arrives at the school as a newfound celebrity after his discovery in the caves. He gets up and begins his lecture, answering questions from the group before turning the attention to Atiye, who sneaks in and sits in the middle of the room. He asks her outright what her interpretation of the symbols are but she shrugs, telling him she feels a connection to them.

Without much to go on, she and Erhan speak to the Professor about the symbols and learn one of them means “Who are you?”. However, a call from her Mother sends Atiye back to the bridal shop to try on dresses. There, she speaks to Cansu about what she’s experiencing but her friend simply brushes it off, chalking it up to pre-wedding nerves. However, as they go from the shop to dinner, Atiye begins hearing a frightening noise, one that distracts her from what’s going on and sends her into an adjacent room where she sees a vision of a coffin. Inside, her own dead body crawling to break free.

Erhan heads out for dinner and is given his Father’s notebook by Professor Oner, where he finds the same strange drawing of the star-symboled girl inside. Back home, we learn a little more about Erhan’s past, including his tragic backstory involving a car crash. Obsessively, he begins researching but falls asleep at his laptop. When he awakens, he finds strange writing scrawled in the notebook reading “Atiye Zuhre”, which only becomes clear in the dark.

A stressed Atiye awakens in hospital where Ozan sees her and tells her she’s been referred to a psychiatrist. Telling the truth, Atiye tells the woman about her vision and goes on to admit she believes herself to be special. Unfortunately the therapist makes the assumption she’s a paranoid schizophrenic. Her family take the side of the doctor too, and, realizing she’s alone, Erhan arrives and shows Atiye his father’s journal, the same one with her name in. On his way out, Ozan flexes his muscles and tells him to stay away from his girl.

Back home, Atiye notices that the colours on one of her paintings appear to have faded. As she keeps looking, she sees a symbol of a crane within the paintings and phones Erhan, informing him about the Zuhre name and how Professor Oner had papers with that very name recorded down. As it turns out, she’s right and even more so, the strange older woman she’s been seeing happen to be one of the pictures in his Father’s journal too. As Erhan phones Atiye and lets her know, he’s ambushed by someone who steals his folder. Someone doesn’t want him finding out what’s happening. As the episode closes out, an abandoned house appears to hold the strange old lady called Zuhre inside.

Having not read the book I can’t tell you how accurate the story is in following that but much of the episode feels bogged down with wedding planning and familial drama rather than substantial suspense and mystery building. There are still snippets of progression here though, mostly in the form of Zuhre and Erhan’s journal but beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot else to write home about. Even this early it appears like the familial drama is going to take centre-stage but ultimately this all feels a little slow as you’ll inevitably wait impatiently for more of the mystery to be revealed. Still, it’s early days yet and who knows what will happen next in this one.