Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s French crime drama, ‘Thicker Than Water,’ follows the story of a woman whose hopes of a promising career are torn apart after she gets entangled in a crime while trying to save her brother. A family story at its core, the show touches upon the themes of sisterhood, sexism, and racism, among other things. Over eight episodes, it weaves a complicated tale of the love-hate relationship between the protagonist and her sisters. Ultimately, despite their differences, they come together to save each other. SPOILERS AHEAD
Thicker Than Water Plot Synopsis
Fara has been working as a journalist for almost a decade, but it isn’t until she lashes out on live TV that she gets the promotion she deserves and was promised by the network. She is given the role of a television presenter, and she is excited to share it with her family, but then her brother shows up at her place. He asks her to keep his car in her garage and disappears. Fara and her sisters are taken to the police station for questioning, where they discover that Semir had run over a police officer when he was asked to stop for breaking a traffic rule.
The sisters get rid of the car, hoping the lack of evidence will save their brother. They burn it but don’t realize that the vehicle had millions of dollars worth of drugs hidden in it. It belongs to the gangster, Oumar, who now wants his money back within a month. Fara and her sisters try to devise a plan to get his money back. Fara is approached by a police officer named Samuel, who wants to put Oumar and his bosses behind bars and asks for Fara’s help.
Thicker Than Water Ending: Is Oumar Dead?
Oumar was a local gangster who made money by transporting drugs for another gangster. Because he had a higher power to answer to, he was very ruthless about anyone breaking the rules or betraying him. So, when Semir’s sisters burn the car and the drugs with it, he knows he must run, or Oumar will kill him. With Semir gone, Oumar turns to his family to get his money back and is ready to do whatever it takes.
Fara and Samuel try to trap Oumar, but he escapes while his consignment of drugs is confiscated. The gangster threatens to kill Fara because she betrayed him, but she reveals that she has a plan to get his drugs back. To ensure the plan’s success, Oumar holds Fara’s niece, Lina, captive. Fara arranges for the network to cover the destruction of the confiscated drugs. She knows it’ll be broadcast as a live feed and uses it to her advantage.
She has Oumar and her men storm the network during live news. He threatens to kill people on live TV if the officers in charge of burning the drugs don’t give them back to him. The journalist on the scene is told to take the car full of drugs and bring it to Oumar. Unbeknownst to the gangster, Fara’s sisters intercept the car and mix the real drugs with the fake. They take the car to the destination where Oumar is to exchange drugs in place of Lina.
However, by then, Lina finds a way out of her captivity and runs away. Her mother gets anxious when she doesn’t show up at the drop point. When Oumar tries to leave, Fara tells him about the fake drugs. This infuriates him, and he pulls a gun on Fara, who has brought a gun of her own to the fight. Just as the cops arrive, the tension on the scene explodes, and Fara and Oumar shoot each other. While Fara survives, Oumar seems to have taken a fatal shot and dies on the spot.
Why is Fara in Prison?
In the final scene of ‘Thicker Than Water,’ it is revealed that Fara had been narrating this story to a lawyer in front of the gangster whose drugs it was. Because she and her sisters had tampered with the drugs, the gangster knew the real drugs were still with them, and he wanted them back. Fara tells him that if he gets her out of prison, she will tell him exactly where those drugs are. If not, and the gangster threatens her family as Oumar did, then her sisters will burn it all, just like they did the first time.
It’s interesting to find Fara behind bars, but the situation is not so surprising. From the first episode of the series, Fara commits several crimes, including aiding and abetting her brother, a criminal, to escape the law. She destroyed the evidence to protect him and then collaborated with Oumar to get his drugs back, even if she tampered with them. She did it all with her sisters, but we can assume that she took all the blame upon herself to protect her sisters. So, even though she got a criminal out of the streets, she had broken the law multiple times. When she recovered from the bullet wound, she was sent to prison.
What Happens to Selim?
The whole drama in ‘Thicker Than Water’ starts with Selim. In trying to give a good life to his family, to get them out of where they’d spent their entire lives, he took a job that would pay well. He started working for Oumar and helped him transport drugs from one place to another. He was assigned to transport more than a million and a half dollars worth of drugs in his car. He was expected to be careful, but he made the simple mistake of running the red signal. When asked to stop, he didn’t and, in haste, ran over a police officer.
Selim knew he couldn’t get caught because it would mean a lifetime in jail or death by Oumar’s men. If he had stopped, he could have gotten away with a penalty, but having killed a police officer with a car full of drugs, he knew he would be sent to prison for a very long time. He thought about hiding out and knew that Oumar would protect him. But then, his sisters burnt the car and the drugs with it, and whatever help Semir expected from his lawyer was taken away.
Selim took all this trouble to make enough money to get his mother out of that place and give her the life she deserved. But now, he was on the run with his family, left to pick up the pieces of the disaster he left behind. When his mother finds out, she helps her daughters figure things out, but eventually, she realizes that even if they dupe Oumar, it won’t ensure Semir’s return. She talks to her husband, who has been estranged all these years, and tells him to find Semir and bring him back home.
Semir had already been reconsidering his decision to flee his home, and when his father shows up, he is convinced that running away will not solve any problems. He had created enough trouble for his sisters, and now, it was time to put all of that to rest. In the end, he returns to Paris with his father and surrenders to the police. He will plead guilty to the charges levied against him, including but not limited to the death of the police officer and the drugs in his car, and will spend a very long time in prison.
What Happens to the Drugs?
With every thread of the story tied up, the only question is what happened to the drugs. Fara’s sisters had swapped the real drug with the fake (flour dough dipped in flour and packaged to look like drugs.) It was so convincing that Oumar didn’t bother to check it until Fara told him the truth. He never got the real drugs, and his boss meets with Fara in prison, asking her about it confirms that the sisters didn’t give it up.
In the final scene, we find the drugs hidden inside a car. Lina and her friends wonder what they are going to do with it. It is millions of dollars worth of stuff, and if they can sell it to someone, they will have enough money to help their entire neighborhood. The only thing is they don’t have any connections, and the material is too much for them to move. However, Lina is confident that if anyone can move it, it’s them. Didn’t they take down the seemingly untouchable gangster who wanted to kill them? If they can do that, they can also sell drugs to make money.
It is not revealed whether the drugs are exchanged for Fara’s freedom or if Lina and her friends find someone to sell them to. In both cases, the consignment is a plan for the family to fall back on. And with millions in their garage, it is only a matter of time before they find a way to get it out of their hands in exchange for some money, improving their financial situation.
Read More: Is Netflix’s Thicker Than Water Based on a True Story?
