The Chestnut Man – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

Would The Real Chestnut Man Please Stand Up?

Episode 5 of The Chestnut Man takes us back in time to 1985 in West Zealand. Three children sit around making chestnut men, singing that same ominous tune we’ve heard before. As we soon come to learn, these three are Rosa, Astrid and a boy called Toke. Rosa’s parents decide to adopt the two children, given they’ve had a hard time, as Rosa smiles wearily.

Friday 23rd October

Fast forward to present day and it’s been three days since the double suicide. Rosa has decided to clear out Kristine’s room. Vogel is there though, fresh off his questioning with Hess last episode, and remains fixated on making sure Rosa is ready for her meeting. After supporting Steen in his ploy to find Kristine, he’s concerned for how much support she’ll have.

With the case all but wrapped up, and Hans now found and arrested, Thilus rings Hess and learns that he’s due off to Bucharest for his next assignment. It would seem like everything has been wrapped up but given we still have 2 episodes left, it’s fair to say there’s another twist to come in all this. And it doesn’t take long before we learn what.

En-route to Bucharest, Hess ends up searching through old archival photos, including those from Orum’s farm. Studying the crime scene, he notices a chestnut man on the side of one of the bodies. Alarm bells immediately ring for Hess as he realizes this is far from over.

Back at Rosa’s, Rosa notices a series of chestnut men laid out in a circle on the floor in her house. This comes off the back of clearing out Kristine’s room and it certainly rattles her. With Rosa’s career hanging in the balance, she’s flustered and distracted when she shows up at work. She tries her best to keep it together but she certainly has a hard time doing that.

If that wasn’t enough, Genz feeds back big news about the chestnuts found at the crime scenes. Now, it would seem like the chestnuts found in Hartung’s garden are a completely different species to those found at the crime scenes. This means they’re not Kristine’s chestnut men and presumably someone else’s, backing up the notion that these fingerprints have been planted rather than naturally found.

Hess shows up at the police station and begins chasing clues surrounding the Orum farm incident. Marius obviously called this in (hence the opening scenes) but then met a grizzly fate himself. The two dead children found inside were Orum’s kids. Orum’s wife was in the bathroom, while Marius was found in the basement, still warm despite being murdered.

Orum’s body was actually found out back, having shot himself with a shotgun, presumably in guilt after slaughtering his family. It’s worth noting too that the whole basement was full of chestnut men.

As Hess continues to investigate, he learns about Toke and Astrid, remaining determined to track them down. Now, Toke is somewhat of an enigma but Hess does learn that he was an adopted son for Rosa’s parents, which we found out at the start of this episode.

In the wake of all this, Rosa receives a message telling her to “come tonight if you want to know what happened to your daughter.” This is enough to completely rattle her, but with shaky hands she messages back “where”. This could well be Toke, whom Rosa has expressed concerns about in the past.

But who is Toke? Well, Hess finally uncovers the truth and learns that Toke is actually Simon Genz. That’s particularly bad news given Thulin is actually out alone with Genz in the woods, investigating the chestnut lead. As they drive together, Genz lets slip that he knows who Thulin’s grandfather is.

However, Thulin doesn’t clock that he’s the killer and stops by the side of the road to check out more chestnuts. These could well be the same species as the ones used in the murders. And guess what’s nearby? A farm.

The Episode Review

The penultimate episode of The Chestnut Man brings everything around full circle to the past, uncovering the truth about who Toke is and how he fits into all of this. It make sense that someone within the police force is responsible, something we had an inkling about earlier in the season.

Only someone with inside knowledge would be able to outsmart the operations and unfortunately that’s then brought to light that Genz is the one responsible, which is a pretty big twist to be honest.

The decision to split up Hess and Thulin is a good one too, with the investigation taking on an extra dimension as the pair head off and figure out more details about the past and Rosa’s connection to this.

The ending also hints that this final episode is going to end on a bang, and it’ll be interesting to see how this show wraps up all its plot points or if everything is left with the dreaded Netflix cliffhanger! Either way, this finale looks set to be an unmissable chapter.