Midnight at the Pera Palace – Season 2 Episode 1 Recap & Review

The Gateway

Episode 1 of Midnight at the Pera Palace season 2 starts with Halit breathing heavily, stumbling up the hallway of the hotel. He’s made it to present day Turkey, and this coincides right with Esra talking to Ahmed about her plan. He shows her the key found in the Agatha Christie room, and stuffs it in his pocket before leaving. When he does, Halit shows up at the hotel.

Ahmet obviously doesn’t know how this has happened, but as they talk in confidence upstairs, Halit reveals the truth. He tells Ahmet that Sonya confided in him and he knows everything. Ahmet, spiralling, smashes a vase over Halit’s head. With him knocked out, Ahmet takes Halit out the room and intends to send him back.

With one key on Esra’s bedside and another in Halit’s hands, time hits midnight and we cut through time once more.

We then cut to the 90’s, where Halit speaks to Sonya who points out that there’s another portal – the Gateway of Truth. She refuses to disclose where to find Dimiri, prompting Halit to take off with all the keys from the hotel and show at the Gateway of Truth.

Opening the door, a large open expanse that looks like a well stretches on for what seems like eternity. Halit takes a leap of faith and jumps into the darkness.

In 1995, Ahmet and Esra watch as the young baby Esra is taken in by police, just as she should be in this timeline. Ahmet hopes that Room 411 will send them back to their actual time, but Esra has other ideas. She wants to go back to the 1940’s to find her mother. Ahmet is vehemently against this, and it’s obviously a turbulent period of history too so it’s incredibly dangerous. Ahmet worries that if they continue to meddle with time, it’ll spell disaster for them all.

Unfortunately, the pair struggle to get back to their own time period. Instead, they end up in 1941. Ahmet believes the hotel has gone mad, which may or may not be linked to Halit taking all those keys.

Esra locks Ahmet in the bathroom and sneaks out to look around. The only thing she has to go on is a picture of her mother in her breast pocket, but she’s determined to ask Eleni for answers nonetheless. As for Ahmet, he gets out the bathroom (after a rather embarrassing encounter!) and in the main lobby, finds himself confused. Now, the ceiling was supposed to have exploded 2 months back from a bomb blast but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Has time been rewritten? Not only that, but word is on the street that 3 women have been kidnapped and taken with Eleni.

Ahmet finds Esra and urges her to leave. When they realize they’re being followed, the pair rush through the streets, trying to get away. They hide out at Ahmet’s old apartment. Esra finds a photo of Halit that and wonders if they’ll run into him again.

The pair find and use the password to get into Eleni’s house and question the madam. However, she turns the tide when she brings up Leyla. The pair are rattled, believing they’ve got the case all wrong but when Esra finds Leyla and follows her that night, a gunshot sounds and changes everything. Leyla has a gun and she kill the gentleman she’s with.

Ahmet and Esra rush back to the hotel but there’s a big problem. The suitcase on the ground has dynamite inside and just as Ahmet realizes this, alongside realizing Halit is in the building too, the place blows sky high.

The Episode Review

Midnight at the Pera Palace is back and the fist episode wastes no time getting this twisty-turny time travel drama off to a solid start. Halit’s actions with the Gateway of Truth is likely to have big ramifications going forward, while the drama involving Ahmet and Esra, alongside their growing bond, is enough to keep everything ticking by at a good pace.

It would appear that time is still moving as it should, but some of the timelines have definitely been scrambled with the dates and when events occur. How do the three missing women tie into all of this too?

Quite what will happen next is anyone’s guess but thankfully, we don’t have to wait too long to find out!