Arka Mukhopadhyay
The teenage mystery drama series ‘Dive Club’ will be your eye candy if you are an adventurer at heart. Created by Steve Jaggi, the story of the Aussie series revolves around the titular dive club and the covenant of four lifelong diver friends in the small island town of Cape Mercy. However, after the club’s founder Lauren’s mysterious disappearance, the other friends embark upon a treasure hunt that will eventually reveal a secret rooted in the history of their hometown. After some drastic revelations, the cliffhanger ending brings the story to an impasse. If you are still scratching your forehead to add two and two, let us take you to the bottom of the water. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Dive Club Recap
On the small Australian island-town Cape Mercy coast, lifelong friends Anna, Maddie, Stevie, and Lauren run the titular dive club. Anna is the local mayor Renee Volkov’s daughter, Lauren is the local sheriff’s daughter, Stevie has an elder sister in Lucinda, and Maddie has a grandfather, the local harbormaster Sea Dog. In the early moments, they take the boat Indy for a dive down to the coral reef and find a seemingly old treasure box, but a storm is coming, and the friends head back to the harbor.
They reach the jetty on time, but Lauren has forgotten her cell phone on the boat, and she excuses herself. This is the last that is seen of Lauren. After her disappearance along with the boat Indy, the other club members are plunged into a mystery that would unearth deep dark secrets about the town. The sheriff is scouring the seas, searching for his daughter. Meanwhile, the power grids are down following the storm, and a structural engineer and his daughter arrive in town. The daughter, named Izzie, becomes a close friend of the group.
Izzie divulges to the rest of the club that she saw a shipwreck from above on their way to the island. They head out to the seas, but thankfully, the ship is not Indy. However, local boy Henry finds the boat and retrieves it, but there remains no sign of Lauren. Henry was Lauren’s boyfriend till two weeks before her disappearance, and he is visibly upset. But sparks fly between Izzie and Henry. Henry’s best friend, Hayden, dated Maddie until he drowned a ship and earned himself three months’ jail time. Hayden comes back from jail, but his debt is too hefty.
The friends dive into the ocean to find Lauren’s phone and scour the phone to retrieve a distressing video of Lauren. Lauren thinks that someone is after her, and she does not even trust her own father. They also find correspondences between Lauren and an L. K. on her phone, and Maddie texts him back, hoping to get a lead. As L. K. enters the lair to look for Lauren, he falls directly into the trap laid by the girls. L. K. turns out to be Leonid Komarov, a world-famous diver, explorer, and author. Maddie is a fan, and they get along fairly well.
The mayor pressures the sheriff to close the investigation. The girls break into Lauren’s house to look for her diary, but Stevie finds the love coin she once gave to Hayden. Stevie confronts Hayden, but he does not have a reply. From Komarov, the girls know that Stevie’s love coin is a coin of East India Company, minted in 1840. Hayden comes around with the diary of Lauren, showing (and singing) them the heartfelt piece of music that Lauren composed for the Annual Salvation Day festival. Probing into history, the girls reveal the vacuous foundations of this age-old ritual.
Dive Club Ending: Is Lauren Dead or Alive?
The girls are determined to do whatever it takes to find their beloved friend Lauren. Lauren is a fearless soul, and Leonid Komarov agrees with that. Lauren asked Leonid for help, and that was the reason he came to the island. The island town holds sinister mysteries, which are apparently tied to the imperial history of Russia. In an early scene, you may see Anna’s grandmother Viktorya confronting Sea Dog in the church. She says that as the priorities have shifted to recovery after the storm, the ritual of lighting the old lighthouse is not as integral a part of the Salvation Day Festival as it once was.
They find the ship Indy with its mast up, which suggests Lauren has drowned. Furthermore, they later discover Lauren’s jacket. This development seemingly seals the fate of Lauren for the residents of the town, especially the family of Anna. Anna’s mother Renee already puts much pressure on the sheriff to close the case, and the discovery of the jacket consequentially leads to Lauren’s funeral. However, Izzie has a hunch that Lauren did not wear that jacket, a view that the girls second.
Later in the plot, Anna overhears the conversation between her grandmother and her mother. Anna’s grandmother Viktorya scolds Renee since apparently, Renee placed the jacket in the sea. When Anna confronts them, Viktorya changes the narrative by saying that Renee did not issue a storm warning, and thus she holds Renee guilty. However, on the day of the awaited Salvation Day Festival, further revelation ensues. The lighthouse lights up as usual, and the girls are intrigued by the sight after knowing that the lighthouse was inoperative. They rush to the lighthouse to find Lauren, safe and sound. Therefore, we firmly conclude that Lauren is safe.
What Is the Secret of Cape Mercy?
The island town of Cape Mercy holds a sinister secret underneath its idyllic surface. And we have come to know that history is directly related to Anna and her family. As per the familial myth, Anna’s great-grandmother Mercy was the one who found the island and settled there. Mercy is apparently Anastasia Nikolaevna of the Romanov dynasty, who fled the country in 1918 with the proletariat revolution. This makes Anna the heir to the imperial throne.
From Leonid, the girls come to know of Anastasia’s treasure. Apparently, four pieces of jewelry are missing from the fabled Russian shipwreck, which attracts treasure hunters from all over the world to Cape Mercy. The fabled treasure comprises the midnight brooch, the Meridien necklace, the nightingale bracelet, and the royal sapphire crown. Later, we come to know that Lauren found the midnight brooch and kept it as an ornament on her diving suit. The other three pieces of treasure are missing.
However, as the girls dive into the formidable muddy water of the Russian shipwreck, Stevie finds the necklace. On the other hand, from Sea Dog’s personal tapes, Maddie comes to know of a pirate ship called Nemesis, which was sighted on July 26, 1918. The mystery further muddies with the discovery since the island was also discovered in the same year. The bracelet belongs to Anna’s family heritage, and Anna inherits it from her grandmother. The last piece, namely the royal sapphire crown, waits to be discovered.
Maddie finds a key from the lighthouse, and she instantly recognizes it to be the key to the only mausoleum in the local cemetery. The mausoleum belongs to one Nikolas Tana Avanasie, but no family of such name resides in the town. They conclude the name to be an anagram of Anastasia Nikolaevna, the crown princess of Russia.
They find the sapphire crown hidden in the dress of the princess. They also find that Anastasia died in 1918 without a royal heir. As the pirate ship Nemesis crept up on the crew by surprise, most of them died in the pirate attack. The female captain of the pirate ship stole the jewels of the crown princess, as well as her identity, and became a settler on the island. As it turns out, Viktorya is the pirate captain of the ship Nemesis, and Anna is not a princess. Moreover, the foundation and culture of the town are based around a lie.
Are The Friends Safe?
With the disheartening discovery, the friends get on a boat. The boat is shortly captured by none other than Viktorya. Among her crew are the sheriff and Hayden. Presumably, Hayden had a lot of debt following the shipwreck, and the sheriff forces him to be a part of the pirate team. Viktorya seeks to retrieve the jewels and Anna. After Hayden takes Anna on the Volkov boat, the other friends are tied to a mast and stranded in the ocean.
On the other hand, renowned explorer and globe-trotter Leonid Komarov finds himself in a perilous situation. Viktorya drugs him at the festival, and his vision gets gradually blurred. After all, his nonchalant assumption that “there are always pirates” has come true, although he thinks of the girls’ safety just before falling unconscious. With this criminal cliffhanger, the season signs off, but we are to believe that there’s more underway.
Read More: Where Is Netflix’s Dive Club Filmed?
