Feedback Season 1 Ending, Explained: What Happened to Piotr?

Netflix’s Polish crime-drama series, ‘Feedback,’ takes the audience on a riveting journey where a desperate father looks for his missing son. In just five episodes, the show delivers many twists and turns, keeping the audience on the edge of their seat. The clues are thrown about at every step, but it isn’t until the final episode that everything comes together, and things start to make sense. While focusing on the crime and the investigation, the show also invests in the characters and their emotions, which play a more potent role in the story than it appears on the surface. In the end, the truth is the most obvious thing and not what you expected at all. SPOILERS AHEAD

Feedback Season 1 Recap

Marcin Kania meets with his son, Piotr, for dinner at a nice restaurant. The next day, Marcin wakes up at Piotr’s apartment with little to no memory of what happened between them. He discovers that he was beaten up by someone, and there is also blood on the sheets in the washing machine. There is no sign of Piotr. The case is reported to the cops as missing persons, but Marcin and his family are disappointed because they think the cops are not putting the required time and effort into the case. Dissatisfied by this, Marcin decides to embark on his own investigation, and what he discovers changes everything he thought he knew about his son, as well as himself.

Feedback Season 1 Ending: Who Killed Piotr?

According to Sherlock Holmes, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It holds true for Piotr Kania’s case as well. Marcin’s inability to remember the night he last saw his son alive leads him on the path to uncover the reason behind his disappearance and then his death. The police conduct an investigation, and all signs suggest that Piotr died by suicide. However, Marcin doesn’t accept that. He believes that there is a greater conspiracy behind the death of his son, and the cops are not chasing all the obvious leads because they are either incompetent or in league with the people responsible for Piotr’s death.

The truth eventually comes to light for Marcin, and he has to accept that he was chasing false leads all this time. Or at least the leads that were not directly connected to Piotr’s death. He did, in fact, kill himself, and this is confirmed by the recording on his phone, which he left for his father. In it, he reveals exactly what he told Marcin in their final meeting and why he decided to end his life. He knew his father was too drunk to remember anything, so he left the message as a parting gift so that his father wouldn’t run around for explanations other than the obvious thing.

Why Did Piotr Kill Himself?

One of the things that Marcin remembers about his meeting with Piotr is that the latter confessed that he’d done something terrible and the people he was involved with were very dangerous. This leads Marcin to think that these dangerous people might have something to do with Piotr’s disappearance. But, in the end, it all boiled down to Piotr’s own guilt about the things he’d done and what he’d lost in the process.

Piotr was a brilliant programmer. He showed talent for all things computer at an early age, and while Marcin might not have paid any attention to his son’s life, he did like to brag about how Piotr once hacked into a government website and wasn’t sent to prison simply because he covered his tracks too well. In one instance, he made this claim at a party at his friend Zbyszek’s house. Later, Zbyszek offered Marcin to buy cheap apartments that would pay off in the long run. Marcin accepted the offer, believing it to be easy money, but wasn’t sober enough to think about the hidden cost that others might have to pay for it.

It turns out that Zbyszek was involved in a scheme where a private company bought the apartments to renovate and then leased them at a higher price. This was a great business deal for them, but for the people already living in those apartments, it was not such good news. The buildings were government-owned, and the people living there belonged to the marginalized and poor communities. The private company, called Gigaplex, which bought the buildings, pushed these residents out by illegal methods, which led to a few deaths as well. Marcin, however, was never aware of this.

People like Ewa and her mother, Bozena Orszanska, fought against the privatization and wanted to bring their illegal actions to light. Gigaplex was scared of what they might have against them and if it could prove fatal for them in the long run. They needed someone to infiltrate their group and get that information. For this, Zbyszek approached Piotr, offering him money in return.

By this time, Piotr was already too disillusioned with his life. His father was alcoholic and abusive; his wife didn’t love him, and he didn’t feel like he belonged anywhere. So, he didn’t really think about the consequences of his actions. He presented himself as Homer Zork and offered to help Ewa and their group with computer things. He embedded himself within them and, unexpectedly, fell in love with Ewa. He kept spying for Zbyszek, but his love for Ewa made him feel bad about the whole thing. So, he decided to help her in turn. He broke into the Bugajski house and recorded their conversations to get incontrovertible evidence of their guilt. He succeeded at it, but soon after, Ewa discovered the truth about him.

Naturally, she was angry about it, so she broke up with him. This broke Piotr, who believed that Ewa was the only one who truly understood him and loved him for who he was. His despair threw him on a path where the guilt started to get the best of him, and he slit his wrists. He was saved by his friend, Lolus, but the next day, he went forward with his second attempt to end his life.

Piotr knew that the buildings his father bought were a part of Gigaplex’s plan, and his friend, Zbyszek, was involved in it. He tried to tell everything to Marcin, but then he was not surprised to be disappointed. Marcin showed up drunk to their meeting, and even when he found out that his son had tried to kill himself, he was too drunk to provide the support that Piotr needed. In the end, Piotr walked into a forest and hung himself from a tree.

Why did Marcin Forget? Why did He Have Hallucinations?

Once we get the entire picture, we have to admit that the cops were pretty on point about everything that happened in their investigation into Piotr’s case. Marcin didn’t accept it because he couldn’t believe that his son could kill himself or that he could be involved in any criminal activity. He would’ve had an easier time accepting it only if he remembered his last conversation with Piotr. The fact that he didn’t remember it pushed him on a path that opened his eyes to everything that was wrong with his life.

The reason Marcin didn’t remember the meeting with Piotr was that he was a raging alcoholic. Marcin had always been an alcoholic, as is apparent from the flashbacks that go back to the time when Piotr was still a little kid. The man was so caught up in his addiction that he didn’t see how he was destroying his family. He was verbally abusive, but when he hit his daughter, his family implored him to get help. He agreed to it, but it was just a facade.

Marcin does go to the support group every week, where he talks about his struggle with addiction, but it’s a bunch of lies. He lies to the support group, and he lies to his family, excluding Piotr. His string of lies extends so far and goes so deep that he starts lying to himself. The alcohol starts to meddle with his mind, and instead of what happened in reality, he starts to see things the way he wants them to. So, even though he drinks all the time, he convinces himself that he has been sober for two years.

Marcin was drunk the night he met Piotr, and he was drunk the entire time he searched for his son and then looked into the circumstances surrounding his death. This altered his memory, which is why he thought he saw his son getting kidnapped and being taken through the subway when, in reality, there was no one else. He thought he was beaten up by a man in a mask when it was Piotr who punched him. Later, when he and Jadzia visit Ewa’s place, Marcin thinks they are attacked by two men in masks. In reality, it was Marcin who beat Jadzia to a pulp because he was just that drunk.

Throughout the series, Marcin is in denial about being an alcoholic, which is why he struggles to see the truth even when it’s right in front of him. Eventually, when he has a drink with Slawek, who he thought was behind his son’s death, things start to come back to him. He remembers Piotr telling him about Zbyszek, but even then, the whole truth doesn’t come back to him. It is when he hears everything from Piotr, in the recording he left, that Marcin is forced to come out of his denial and has to accept responsibility for all of his actions.

Does Marcin Remain in the Therapy Group?

In the final scene in ‘Feedback,’ Marcin is seen at the therapy group meeting, where he confesses that he had been lying to them all this time. He tells them about what happened with Piotr and how he couldn’t save his son, who desperately needed help at the time. Marcin’s confession is supposed to suggest that he is finally ready to live with the truth. The tragedy has shown him the error of his ways, and he is ready to get better, to leave alcohol, and to stop his family from being destroyed any further. He asks for the group’s forgiveness, but things are not so easy.

The group is a serious place for people who are trying their best to get better. So, Marcin’s lie of being two years sober while being drunk all this time severely breaks their trust. Even if Marcin now claims that he will really try to put that life behind him, how can they believe a word he says? Two years later, how would they know that he wasn’t lying to them again and fell off the wagon soon after he promised not to lie to them ever again?

Then there is also the thing with Jadzia. Perhaps his lies can be forgiven, but the way he beat up Jadzia isn’t something that they can forgive and forget so easily. They are appalled by this act, and this is one of the reasons why they don’t want to have him around anymore. Surprisingly, Jadzia comes to his defense. She doesn’t exactly forgive him for what he did, but she does confess that getting beat up by an alcoholic showed her what her husband must have felt like when she attacked him while she was drunk. She understands where Marcin is coming from, which is why she isn’t so quick to dismiss him from the group.

In the end, the group takes a vote on whether or not they want Marcin in the group anymore. He decides to close his eyes so he doesn’t see who has voted against him. He just wants them to give him their verdict. When he opens his eyes, he looks at the audience, who are also unaware of the result. The series ends without an answer. What does it mean for Marcin? It is up to you to decide.

As the audience, we have seen everything from Marcin’s perspective. We have seen the kind of person he wants to be, but we’ve also seen how far he has fallen in the past. In its final scene, the show puts the audience in the place of the people in the therapy group, questioning whether or not they would like Marcin to stay in the group. In a way, the question is posed on the audience’s desire to forgive or not forgive Marcin’s transgressions. Whatever the audience decides will lead them to ponder upon a real-life situation if they have come across something like that. If there is a real-life Marcin around you, how would you treat them? It’s quite a loaded question, and the answer is not so simple, which is why the show leaves it hanging, giving the audience something to think about.