Aahana Swrup
With season 2 of the Turkish show ‘Midnight at the Pera Palace,’ Esra and her friends face new complications as they continue to mess with time at the celebrated titular hotel in Istanbul. After abandoning 1919 behind them, Esra and Ahmet hope to return to their time, only to somehow get stuck in the 1940s. Coincidentally, it’s the exact era the woman needs to be in to find her elusive mother. However, once the duo ventures out into this new world of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with Halit. As it turns out, in his quest to reunite with his love, Esra, Halit has used the mysterious Gateway of Truth. Thus, as the three time-travelers get stuck outside their own times, trouble brews, putting the fabric of reality at risk.
With the second season, the show continues to expand upon its complicated time dynamics as multiple characters seek to solve their problems through Pera Palace’s nifty time-traveling abilities. Nevertheless, everything comes with a price—a fact that Esra and the others quickly realize as their misadventures bring them to a confounding conclusion. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Midnight at the Pera Palace Season 2 Recap
After Esra and Ahmet disappeared from Pera Palace in 1919, Halit refuses to let his chance at true love go. As a result, Sonya ends up telling him everything she knows about the hotel’s time-traveling secrets and Esra’s role in it. Naturally, since Halit doesn’t have the magical time-traveling room keys, he uses the Gateway of Truth to hop into the future, recklessly disregarding its dangerous side effects. Meanwhile, where Esra and Ahmet had been aiming for the 2020s to return to their own time, they instead get stuck in 1941. Still, the former is all too happy with their predicament since it allows her to look for her mother—the woman from the photograph Esra found on her infant self.
Consequently, while Ahmet remains weary of the entire endeavor, Esra begins following the trail of clues that might lead her to answers about her heritage. However, the more time the duo spends at the place, the more they realize certain facts from the past have changed. Still, the biggest surprise comes back in Pera Palace, where they run into Halit, unaged in a way only a time traveler can be. Although their union is interrupted by a bomb blast, Esra wakes the next morning safe and sound in Halit’s room. As the two reunite, finally able to be together and in love, a new problem looms over them in the form of Ahmet’s arrest.
As such, Esra finds herself running around town searching for the culprit behind the Pera Palace bombing to prove Ahmet’s innocence. She quickly realizes that in the time Halit was in 1941, he managed to build a reputation and influence for himself. Yet, he has also gained new adversaries, including Meliha, a reporter pursuing the cases of missing women. Eventually, the couple manages to win Ahmet’s freedom with the help of Leyla, Peride’s daughter, who has grown up to be a spy. Still, complications persist as they realize something is blocking the hotel’s time-traveling abilities.
Thus, Ahmet has no choice but to remain in 1941. Esra begins her search for her mother only to find Leyla has bizarrely gone missing, becoming one in the long line of recently abducted women. Around the same time, she also learns about Mumtaz, one of Halit’s enemies from this time. As it turns out, after Halit first arrived in 1941, he shared the hotel’s secret with Mumtaz, who stole his bag of keys and messed around with time at his whim. Now, Mumtaz is looking for a way to gain access to the Pera again, as it remains under Halit’s vigilant ownership. As Halit shares the truth of his past, Esra and Ahmet grow concerned over the Gateway’s influence over him. This results in an argument between the couple, as Esra questions Halit’s involvement with the kidnappings.
With the couple embarking on different missions, Esra finds herself working for the same publication as Meliha. However, soon after the publication of her first article, the kidnapper responds by killing Leyla and threatens to kill the other hostages unless the government takes women’s rights away. The new development causes further damage to Esra and Halit’s relationship as her suspicions grow. Although her suspicions aren’t unfounded, Halit has nothing to do with the kidnappings. Nonetheless, his social standing allows him to infiltrate the organization behind it—helmed by Mumtaz.
Midnight at the Pera Palace Season 2 Ending: Do They Rescue The Women?
Although Halit attempts to keep Mumtaz’s troubling presence a secret from Esra and Ahmet at first, the truth eventually gets out—especially as the missing woman’s case grows. Due to his initial dodginess and clues pointing toward his association with the kidnappings, he ends up losing Esra’s trust. Realizing the only way to prove his innocence is to catch the real culprit, Halit decides to move against Mumtaz, no longer able to delay the inevitable after Leyla’s death. Therefore, as he infiltrates his former friend’s organization and successfully holds him hostage, Esra realizes the error in her assumptions.
Yet, Halit could not pry out the location of the abducted women from Mumtaz. Nevertheless, Esra and Ahmet had found another solution to the problem. Where Mumtaz himself refused to talk, his wife, Halime, strikes a deal with the duo. A while back, she had given birth to a daughter born from an extramarital affair. As a result, Mumtaz took the baby away, putting her in one of the hotel rooms to send her to another time. Halime agrees to cooperate with Esra if she brings her baby back. The similarity between Halime’s daughter’s fate and Esra’s beginning makes her think the other woman must be her mother.
Consequently, Esra and Ahmet find a way to restart Pera’s time-traveling abilities and jump forward in time to bring baby Esra to Halime. Yet, once they arrive in 1979, they find themselves in a whole different world where Mumtaz has become President. Under his rule, the man has taken away all women’s rights. The only silver lining remains an older Halit’s presence, who helps Ahmet track down Halime’s baby, who ends up not being Esra. In the end, Esra and Ahmet both return to their time—with Ahmet taking the Gateway route to fast-pace his travel.
Once Esra returns to 1941, she realizes five months have passed, and Mumtaz has gained substantial control over the city. Never one to back down, she concocts a plan with Ahmet to find the missing woman by allowing herself to get kidnapped as well. Even though Ahmet is a little out of sorts due to his experience with the Gateway, he manages to convince the police officer Kadri to help him save the women. In the nick of time, they arrive at the train station where Esra and the other women are being held captive and save them from the bomb blast.
Who is Esra’s Mother? Who is Her Father?
Ever since the conclusion of season 1, the mystery behind Esra’s ancestry has remained one of the plot points at the narrative’s forefront. In fact, it’s one of the reasons she and Ahmet rush to the year 1979 to find Halime’s baby, believing the other woman to be Esra’s mother. Earlier still, she had guessed Leyla to be her biological mother, only for the latter’s death to disprove the theory. After all, Leyla’s demise in the past changes nothing about Esra’s current existence. Thus, by the end, as Mumtaz’s abduction of the women takes precedence over Esra’s family problems, she puts the nagging curiosity about her mother’s identity in the backseat.
Naturally, it’s only when Esra stops looking for the truth that she finally finds the answers. While inside the train, trapped with the other women, Esra finds Meliha among the group—nine months pregnant and nearing her due date. Thus, as the woman goes into labor and gives birth to two twin girls, Esra realizes that Meliha is actually her mother. However, the revelation comes with the ugly truth that her mother never truly wanted her or her sister, who ended up being Peride. Once the women help Meliha deliver her babies, a vision confirms Esra’s blood relation to her. Likewise, as the latter enters a state of convulsion under the vision’s weight, the baby’s heart stops momentarily in tandem with adult Esra, further confirming they’re the same person.
Yet, the discovery is instantly upstaged by an even bigger revelation of the identity of Esra’s father. Once the babies are born, Mumtaz’s men take them away from the kidnapped women. Later, he attempts to use them to set up a meeting with Esra and Halit to lure them away from the hotel and allow him access to its time-traveling powers. Therefore, as Esra confronts him during the same, she realizes that he plans on escaping from this timeline into another to start a new life—with his daughters by his side.
As it turns out, Mumtaz had a brief affair with Meliha, fathering two daughters—who would go on to be Esra and Peride. Even though the revelation is startling for Esra, who has always wanted to learn more about her family, she realizes she and Peride had always been better off as orphans instead of a misogynist like Mumtaz for a father. Consequently, she doesn’t fall for Mumtaz’s manipulative tactics. Ultimately, Ahmet shoots the man, cementing baby Esra and Peride as orphans again, who time travel out of 1949 to separate timelines.
Does Halit Die?
This season brought a significantly higher threat of death for the central trio as each member finds themselves nearing their demise at some point. However, Halit’s fate remains the most taut of them all. Since the beginning, the Gateway’s influence over Halit colored his reality with uncertainty. In the end, a second encounter with the Gateway brings him to his doom. After Esra’s return to 1941, the bombing at the train station loomed over them like a ticking time bomb.
For the same reason, Halit decides to take severe measures to stop Mumtaz. He knew the other man was unstoppable in the current timeline. Thus, he decides to take a trip to the past to stop Mumtaz from ever rising to power. When Halit first came to the 1940s, he had helped Mumtaz survive after a near-death experience. As such, after the future Halit travels to that timeline, he stops his past self from doing the same. While his actions result in Mumtaz’s death in the past, it also creates a paradox. If Mumtaz never rose to power and kidnapped the women, why would future-Halit be here in the first place? As a result, Halit’s hand starts turning black, establishing he has doomed himself to wither out of existence. In the end, after the fight with Mumtaz at the Pera Palace, the tendrils of rot climb up Halit’s arm and to his heart, finally killing him.
After ruining one timeline after the other, putting the future at risk numerous times, Halit’s death finally becomes the nail in the coffin for Esra. She realizes that she shouldn’t have begun messing with time in the first place. For the same reason, she decided to go back to that first night when she arrived at the hotel to work on her article. With Ahmet’s help, she stops her past self from ever entering room 411, nipping her time-traveling adventures in the bud. However, the action leads to confounding results as Ahmet and Esra realize that somehow, timelines of the past and present have collided together at the Pera Palace, leading people from the 2020s, 1940s, and 1910s to exist beside one another. Halit, who had died in Esra’s arms moments ago, is one of these people.
Does Esra Change The Future? Why is The Timeline Messed Up?
As Esra and Ahmet take in sight the clashing timelines at the Pera Palace, one thing becomes blatantly clear: the duo has messed up time beyond comprehension. The earliest clue that their actions were headed in this direction came at the very beginning of 1941, when the hotel’s time-traveling abilities had stopped for some time. Likewise, another example of time acting strange comes when Halit stops his past self from saving Mumtaz in the past, only to realize it changed nothing in the future that he returned to. Even though the paradox killed him—the time traveler—his actions had no effect on the future. As such, the conclusion arrives that time’s linear flow has been spectacularly disturbed.
Since Esra discovers Pera’s secrets, she has already created two alternate timelines that never come to fruition. Likewise, her and her friends’ actions changed so many details that would have put an uncountable number of butterfly effects into motion. The last straw arrives when Esra and Ahmet attempt to hit a restart button to prevent her past self from traveling back in time. By doing so, they demanded so many changes that time had essentially broken in Pera Palace, bringing various eras together under one maddening roof.
Although the same comes with some benefits, such as Halit’s resurrection, it also threatens the fabric of reality. Therefore, the trio comes up with one final solution to solve the myriad of problems they have created by jumping back and forth in time. The Pera Palace gained its time-traveling powers after an Earthquake in 1894. Consequently, in order to reverse everything, the trio must travel back to the very beginning and clean up the mess they have made of the future.
Read More: Midnight at the Pera Palace’s Time Travel, Explained
