Aahana Swrup
The Netflix Turkish show ‘Asaf’ chronicles the life of the titular character who unwittingly gets entangled in a web of corruption and conspiracies. Asaf Erdem, an Uber driver, is used to living life with his head down, avoiding confrontation and conflict. As such, he’s facing down the barrel of a seemingly unavoidable divorce—while dealing with the declining health of his child. However, a new threat enters his life after an unfortunate fender bender introduces him to the world of Payen Kuyern, a mysterious organization with shady business dealings.
Consequently, the driver finds himself in the middle of Captain Argun’s police investigation against an enemy with eyes and ears everywhere. As Asaf straps in for this unexpected and unwanted ride, his life quickly becomes a ball of mysteries, inviting the easy intrigue of the audience. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Asaf Recap
Despite his best efforts, Asaf’s career as an Uber driver continues to go downhill due to his low rating on the app. One morning—after running late for a pickup—the driver ends up getting caught in an accident after a car crashes into his bumped while taking him over in traffic. When he tries to confront the perpetrator, the latter just gives him some cash and asks him not to involve the police. Furthermore, he gives him a card to Payen Kuyern, telling him to call the company if the cash doesn’t cover his insurance. Asaf is already caught in a bad financial situation. His wife, Sema, is threatening to take full custody of Atlas, their young son suffering from a heart condition, due to Asaf’s dwindling career.
Therefore, Asaf has to inevitably reach out to Payen Kuyern when the driver’s compensation falls short for the repairs. However, once he shows up at the organization’s office, he realizes he can’t do anything without knowing the driver’s name. As the myriad of frustrations around his life mount, Asaf loses control of his temper once he spots the driver’s SUV at the company building’s parking garage. Consequently, he impulsively takes a pipe to the car and completely wrecks it. As a result, he ends up in police custody, where the Captain, Kemal Argun, informs him that the car he attacked belongs to Nasuh Alphan, a bigshot businessman and shareholder at Payen Kuyern.
Argun suspects Asaf knows more about the company than he is letting on. For the same reason, he asks the driver to inform him if he wants to share anything more about Nasuh or his dealings. Afterward, once he leaves the police station, Nasuh’s men take him to the businessman to settle the score. Although Asaf attempts to explain the situation, he realizes he can’t spot the same man in a black suit who had hit his car among Nasuh’s drivers. Therefore, the driver has no choice but to run a job for the businessman to make up for his actions.
Thus, Asaf gets embroiled in the dangerous world of Payen Kuyern. After he’s initially instructed to pick up a package, the driver finds himself saddled with a young, nameless kid and Argun’s dead body. Additionally, when he attempts to go to the police, his paths cross with the same man from the accident, Cuneyt Bozkurt, who turns out to be a police lieutenant. After Cuneyt threatens him, he’s forced to get rid of Argun’s dead body. However, he finds a stashed USB drive on Argun’s body beforehand, which houses investigative research on Payen Kuyern’s dealings. Using the same information, Asaf moves against Cuneyt, risking the latter’s illicit relationship with Nasuh.
Shortly afterward, a journalist, Rüya Deren, enters his life and asks questions about Argun’s disappearance. As it turns out, the captain had been working with the journalist to uncover secrets of Payen Kuyern’s connection to illegal activities. Furthermore, Nasuh begins using Asaf’s family to blackmail him into carrying out other jobs for him. As a result, Asaf agrees to help Rüya carry out a meeting with one of Argun’s contacts, a Payen Kuyern informant. Nonetheless, the mission ends up being one of Nasuh’s traps set to catch the informant. Meanwhile, the mystery of the kid whom Asaf picked up persists.
Asaf Ending: Who is The Kid? Why Did Cüneyt Kidnap Him?
The kid, who refuses to share his name with anyone, continues to remain a point of intrigue for a long time. Initially, it appears Payen Kuyern wants Asaf to pick him up, but instructions about what to do with the kid afterward remain unclear. As Asaf attempts to look after the kid himself, the boy tries to replace Atlas from the driver’s family on multiple occasions. Eventually, this compels Asaf to leave the kid with child protection services. However, once the kid faces the threat of going to Cüneyt, he agrees to reveal the truth of his origin to the driver. As it turns out, Cüneyt was the one who kidnapped the kid.
Cüneyt has been a part of Payen Kuyern’s “system” for a long time, collaborating with them in quid-pro-quo deals. Therefore, he picked the kid up from the orphanage at Nasuh’s behest. Since Cüneyt was a cop with roots in the Child Protection Services, he could easily kidnap the young boy from the orphanage without raising suspicions. However, while he was driving the kid into the city, the cop got into an accident with Asaf, the Uber driver. For the same reason, Cüneyt was adamant about staying away from the police and tried to brush the incident under the rug.
However, once Cüneyt took the kid back to the police station—and Asaf ended up there at the same time after attacking Nasuh’s car—the kid quickly recognized the driver. As a result, through a series of coincidences, Argun, who was already suspecting Cüneyt of working with the organization, got confirmation about the same. Additionally, he also realized that the cop was trafficking the kid for Payen Kuyern. Consequently, he took the kid back with him to his apartment. This put both the organization and Cüneyt at risk. Thus, Nasuh came up with a solution.
That night, Cüneyt went to Argun’s apartment, where he choked him to death. Afterward, he stashed the dead body in Asaf’s car as the “package” for the driver to pick up. However, the kid ended up witnessing the entire scene between all of this. As such, he ran away and hid inside Asaf’s car, pretending to be the package so that the driver would have to take him along for the ride. After that, the kid tries multiple ways to make himself a fixture in the older man’s life—mostly by trying to replace Atlas—so that he wouldn’t have to return to the orphanage or Cüneyt.
Nonetheless, in the end, after the driver stashes him in his apathetic mother’s house, Nasuh ends up taking the kid with him. By then, Nasuh and Cüneyt’s partnership had become too unstable. For the same reason, the businessman plans on using the kid as collateral against the cop since he witnessed the latter’s crimes.
Does Nasuh Get Arrested?
Cüneyt can’t have Nasuh use the kid as leverage over him. Therefore, he turns on Nasuh and plans on using the driver to bring the businessman down and erase all of his own crimes. In order to do so, he fixes a bomb inside Asaf’s car with the intention of having him drive it to a “boat,” where Nasuh will meet his end. However, to ensure the driver does as he’s asked, Cüneyt rigs the bomb to explode if his car is left unattended for more than five minutes. Furthermore, he also hides another phone inside the car to use as a detonator in case Asaf fails to answer his check-in calls. Consequently, the driver finds himself in a precarious situation—made all the worse by his phone’s poor battery life.
Nonetheless, in the chaos that follows, Asaf attempts to ensure the car doesn’t blow up because once his phone dies, he discovers a peculiar feature about Cüneyt’s bomb. A tracker has been attached to the underside of the car to alert Cüneyt about the vehicle’s location. He plans on using this system to ensure Asaf brings the car to Nasuh’s boat, where he’s having a meeting for the newest members of Payen Kuyern in the wake of the mass shooting at their previous event. Once Asaf drives the car to the boat, Cüneyt plans on detonating the bomb, clearing Nasuh and the kid from the table at once.
Yet, Asaf comes up with a different idea. Once the driver receives the boat’s location, he removes the tracker from the car. Afterward, he drives it to the construction site, which he had puzzled out to be Nasuh’s burial ground for all the dead ex-members of his company. Asaf knows that Cüneyt will seek out the same place to use these bodies as evidence against Nasuh to implicate the businessman further while erasing his own accountability. Thus, he leaves the car there and takes the tracker with him to the boat. As a result, when Cüneyt activates the bomb—under the assumption that the car is on the boat—he ends up sealing his own fate.
Meanwhile, on the boat, Asaf negotiates for the kid’s life, which he has just saved by diverting Cüneyt’s bomb, which was partly meant to take him out. Nonetheless, Nasuh claims that the driver had arrived to save the wrong kid’s life. As it turns out, he has sent out his best killer, Asil, after Atlas. Nasuh wants to kill Asaf’s kid to punish him for going against his organization. Even so, the driver refuses to give up. As Nasuh leaves the boat, Asaf follows after him, a car he steals from Sema’s boyfriend, Harun. Before Nasuh can arrive at the airport to skip town, Asaf chases him down and crashes his car right into the other man’s SUV.
This gives police officer Akif—who has been tracking Asaf since his phone call to his brother—enough time to track him down. Thus, in the end, the authorities are able to arrest Nasuh. Ruya uses all the evidence she has collected to bring the truth about the organization into the light, proving they have been using illegal methods to provide privileges to the members of their “system.” Ultimately, thanks to Asaf, the elite organization meets its ugly end.
Does Atlas Die? Does He Get His Heart Transplant Surgery?
One of the more emotionally driven aspects of Asaf’s story comes from his relationship with his son, Atlas. Atlas has a heart condition that requires a heart transplant treatment. Nonetheless, he was robbed of his place on the hospital’s waiting list due to unknown circumstances. Eventually, it was revealed that since the Payen Kuyern had connections in various industries, they often pulled strings to boost the standing of certain members on waiting lists. Therefore, Atlas loses out on the chance for the surgery, which puts a strain on Asaf and Sema’s marriage. Sema is driven to separate from Asaf, blaming his passiveness for the injustice.
For the same reason, Sema wants full custody of Atlas after a divorce so that she and her new partner, Harun, can sue the hospital and take the kid to Germany for surgery. However, Harun has a different plan. Apparently, the lawyer becomes a part of Payen Kuyern in the second recruitment process. Therefore, he wants to use his benefits to get Atlas the treatment using the same cheating system that denied it to him in the first place. On her part, Sema isn’t happy with the turn of events. Consequently, she leaves the organization’s boat with Atlas and returns home.
Still, greater danger awaits Sema and Atlas at home, where Asil awaits with his sniper. However, before Asil can take out his target, the police surround Nasuh and arrest him. Asil, who has been on the comms with Nasuh this entire time, hears the altercation and decides to give up on his mission. It’s possible that part of his hesitation stems from the fact that he had formed somewhat of a bond with Atlas after shadowing him for weeks. Thus, Atlas survives the assassination attempt. Months later, once things settle down and the truth about Payen Kuyern emerges, certain systems—including the medical industry—get free of corruption.
As a result, Atlas is able to get the heart transplant treatment without traveling to another country. Meanwhile, Sema and Asaf work through their differences and once again come together as a couple. The only difference remains the new addition to their family: the kid, who still refuses to tell anyone his name but is happy to have found a new family. Similarly, Atlas—no longer troubled by his ailment—is happy to have gained a brother.
Read More: Asaf: Is Payen Kuyern a Real Company?
