Dear Child – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

The House

Episode 3 of Dear Child begins with The Woman (previously referred to as Lena, but now we know it’s not her) waking up to find herself tied to a sink, in what looks like a storeroom. The man comes in and calls her Lena. When she doesn’t respond, he leaves and shuts the lights. At present, Aida argues with someone on the phone. She wants the appropriate authorities to deal with the explosives as soon as possible.

Benedikt gets Hannah inside his clinic and she’s allotted a room. She goes to sleep but as soon as they leave, she gets up. After locking her door, she tells herself that she did everything exactly as she was told.

Back to the past. The man comes back into the room and tells The Woman she’ll get water if she dyes her hair blonde. Pushed to her limits, The Woman agrees. At present, Gerd sits by The Woman and tells her how Lena got the scar on her hand. She was ten and grabbed hot barbecue tongs at Gerd’s birthday party. The flashback shows the man give The Woman that exact same scar after dying her hair.

As the explosives team do their work at the military field, Jonathan hides under his bed. The only object with him is a miniature model of a house. Aida gets ready to go in as soon as possible. She finds out that the mines definitely do not belong to the military.

Karin goes home to find Matthias cleaning up Lena’s old room for Hannah. He is adamant that Hannah is his granddaughter. Karin asks why Hannah recognised him but Matthias gives vague answers.

In the past, The Woman wakes up in the ‘living room’. The man tells her about the house rules. She must stand with her hands out every time he enters. They even have set timings for the toilet. At present, she wakes up to find Gerd calming her down from her nightmare. She asks for the date and her reaction reveals she was locked up for five months.

The flashback shows the man introducing The Woman to ‘her children’. He tells her she is Lena now. And he is her husband. They are a happy family.

The SWAT team and their dogs can finally enter the military compound. One of the dogs finds something. Gerd gets a call from Aida, she thinks they found the house but they don’t know if there would be someone else inside with more explosives. The Woman says that ‘he’ would be inside. But she hit him with a snow globe.

The team enters the house and Aida finds the body of the man but his face is completely shredded. Gerd, still on the phone, tells her to look for the boy. The Woman suggests the children’s room, under the bed. Aida finds him. The Woman tells them to tell Jonathan that he did everything right. She does so and Jonathan reaches out a hand towards Aida.

The Woman looks relieved that Jonathan is found and ‘he’ is dead. She reveals her name is Jasmin Grass from Dusseldorf. She says so despite the man’s voice in her head. Her father’s name is Ulrich Grass. Gerd leaves to get in touch with him. Aida walks out with Jonathan wrapped in her arms.

Gerd comes back in to tell Jasmin that they are looking for her father. When Gerd reveals what was done to the man’s face, Jasmin insists it wasn’t her. She only hit him once with a snow globe. She screams that the snow globe broke before the doctor gives her a sedative. Gerd calls Karin and gives her the news. Matthias is hanging up a new swing in their garden. Karin says Gerd must find Lena.

Jonathan is taken to Benedikt’s clinic. Somebody sitting inside a car watches him go inside. When Jonathan is brought inside Hannah’s room, she quietly asks him if he told them about the baby — about Sarah. He shakes his head.

A flashback shows the kids singing a carol for the man who’s wearing a Santa Claus costume. He gives them gifts. Jonathan gets a snow globe with a small house and some trees inside it. Hannah gets a stuffed cat, Miss Tinky. The man reveals to the kids that Lena’s gift is a baby. Gerd arrives at the location of the house and meets with Aida. Thanks to the mine debacle, Aida is going to be suspended. But Gerd agrees with her decision anyway.

At the clinic, Jonathan’s DNA swab is taken and he, too, gets his own sunglasses. But when one of the workers opens the curtains, he throws the glasses away and runs to his bed. We then see a memory of Hannah and Lena running and playing on a beach.

Inside the house, the team finds security cameras in the house. And somebody is still watching them. Gerd goes to the children’s room and finds drawings on the underside of the bunkbed — a cat, a lighthouse, and Matthias and Karin’s faces. A voiceover says that Hannah always wanted to hear stories about her grandfather and his garden full of flowers.

Gerd sends a picture of it to Karin, explaining how Hannah recognised Matthias. Gerd walks through the house and pictures what kind of life they were living here. A flashback shows the man abusing Jasmin when she refused to go to the toilet at the set time. Another shows the kids reading books when Jonathan asks Jasmin what happiness feels like. She hugs them to show how warm it should feel.

Somebody finds the router connected to the cameras and unplugs it. The screens go off where the man was watching them. At the house, somebody finds that a bomb has been activated. He rings the alarms and everybody rushes out before the entire house blows up.

Later, the coroner tells Gerd and Aida that the snow globe attack killed the man. But the other marks on his face were made post-mortem by a piece of glass that’s missing from the remains of the snow globe. The missing piece is exactly the one Hannah gave Jasmin.

He then reveals the DNA of this person does not match either of the children. Moreover, while the kids have the same mother (Lena Beck) they do not have the same father. So there isn’t one, nor two, but most likely three perpetrators.

The Episode Review

This episode is definitely faster than the first two. Not only do we get to see more of Jasmin’s first days as a captive but we also learn her real name! It is fascinating to watch her actively battle the voice in her head while nobody on the outside can see it.

I have to admit the mines around the house served as a good ending for the previous episode. But here, it only stretched out the episode’s run time. While I appreciate the difficulty Aida faces, watching the bomb squad and the SWAT team search through the compound isn’t particularly engaging.

Otherwise, episode 3 has some interesting elements and keeps the ominous atmosphere going. Once again, the episode ends on a gripping cliffhanger. The reveal of multiple perpetrators not only sets the tone of the investigation but also works as a solid midway point.