Abhiroop Das
Directed by Mandla N, Johnny Barbuzano, and Jonathan “Jono” Hall, Netflix’s ‘Umthetho’ follows three siblings whose lives change forever when the eldest brother, Moses, goes into prison, never to be heard from again. Decades later, his sister Mbali, now a prominent lawyer, learns that he is still alive and actually a high-profile prisoner, and the race to bring him back home begins. As her other brother, Sphelele, and partner, Zola, join her on this dangerous mission, we also follow events at The Palace, the prison where Moses spends his days actively challenging the authorities.
Riled up, Warden Agnes Khoza decides to plan a crackdown on the rebellious prisoners, with Moses at the top of the list. Thus ensues a battle in this South African crime thriller series, in which the law is turned on its head as the characters defy the boundaries of right and wrong, whether to reunite with a loved one or to fulfill a personal vendetta. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Umthetho Plot Recap
‘Umthetho’ begins with a flashback to a man calling the cops on his own son, who is soon captured and separated from his younger sister and brother. About fifteen years later, we are reunited with the girl, Mbali, who has now become a successful lawyer. Living with her brother, Sphelele, Mbali seems to have moved on from her traumatic past, until a woman named Crystal arrives with a case that hits too close to home. As it turns out, Crystal’s husband is none other than Mbali and Sphelele’s big brother, Moses, who has been in and out of prison since, and is a bigshot member of the criminal gang known as Gaz’Lam. Ever since the gang leader Scarra’s prison break, Moses has been held in the torture room for interrogation, and Crystal needs Mbali’s help in getting him out.
Though Mbali has a plan to forge documents and secure a temporary release for her brother, it backfires, and she nearly gets arrested. To get her out of trouble, Detective Tau makes a deal, turning her into an informant who will take the police to Scarra. Being Moses’ sister, she is able to join the gang with relative ease, but when a police bust fails to capture Scarra, Mbali becomes the prime suspect. However, she manages to pin the blame on another gang member, and the next time she sets a stage for a bust, Tau doesn’t miss. Without Scarra at the helm, Mbali, Crystal, and a few others conduct their own robberies and quickly become wealthy, earning Scarra’s wrath from behind bars.
As tensions grow both inside the prison and outside of it, Sphelele develops a gambling addiction to combat his money woes and soon runs out of money and assets. Desperate for an income, he contacts Moses in prison, who assigns him his first drug deal, that too with a warden. However, things go awry very quickly, and despite Sphelele’s best attempts at escaping, he is arrested. Meanwhile, Mbali and Crystal seem to be in the final stages of building a tunnel that can get Moses and his friends out of prison, but at the last minute, Mbali makes a deal with the cops to leak the tunnel’s location in return for Sphelele’s freedom. It doesn’t take Tau very long to backtrack on the deal either, as he and the warden open fire on the prisoners, deeply wounding Moses and making Mbali hungry for revenge.
Umthetho Ending: Will Mbali Get Caught? Why Does She Kill Tau?
‘Umthetho’ ends with Mbali killing Tau before making a run for it, thus completing a corruption arc that started seven episodes ago. All the psychological walls that Mbali created between herself and her brother come crashing down once she gets blood on her hands, as by all definitions, she is now a criminal. While she manages to escape from the scene, we don’t get a clear answer as to whether she will get caught. The majority of the police force is distracted by the riots in the prison, and this might be the only reason Mbali manages to avoid suspicious eyes in the first place. However, a lot of shots are fired in the moments before her escape, making it very likely that the police are already on their way to the site, and, possibly, on their way to catching her.
The final shot of the season follows Mbali running out of the building, and is a direct callback to her first scene in the show, highlighting just how much has changed in that short span of time. While the original sequence points to a time in Mbali’s life when she was completely oblivious to her brother’s side of the story, the final run is one where she is firmly a part of it, partially by her own choice, but also because of the conditions imposed upon her by reality itself. The reason Mbali pulls the trigger on Tau is his betrayal, which led to the death of several prisoners and the hospitalization of Moses and the others. While she has been failed by the system at every step, it is only after experiencing it so closely that she decides to fight back.
Although Mbali has managed to evade arrest for the time being, Tau’s body will likely be discovered very soon. The murder of a major detective is bound to make headlines sooner rather than later, and the search will be on. There is a chance that Mbali is captured in one of the CCTV cameras while exiting the building, as police surveillance emerges as a prominent motif in the series. However, the fact that this entire string of events takes place in a secluded building meant to serve as a crime den is likely to work in Mbali’s favor. With this, she has no choice but to go on the run for now, leaving behind her own family for the time being. In a way, the cycle of crime and violence that has consumed Moses seems to have found its next target, and Mbali has no choice but to follow suit.
Is Crystal Dead or Alive?
Another ambiguity that goes unaddressed in the final moments of the season is Crystal’s fate. Before being killed by Mbali, Tau manages to get Crystal into a chokehold, seemingly long enough to knock her unconscious. However, whether this means that she is simply knocked out or actually dead is never clarified. It is not uncommon for shows and movies to rely on unrealistic depictions of being choked to death, often in a matter of seconds. However, ‘Umthetho’s attention to realism suggests that it knows better. As such, the more probable explanation is that Crystal is simply unconscious right now and will wake up to find Tau dead. However, there are multiple possible outcomes for what happens next, and it mainly depends on when she wakes up.
Hypothetically, if Crystal doesn’t wake up before the police arrive, it is very likely that she will be held accountable for Tau’s death, considering that she did manage to shoot at him once before, albeit with a non-fatal injury. If arrested, Crystal might be faced with a new conundrum: whether to snitch on Mbali and reveal her role in the entire operation or stay silent. The former route doesn’t seem to work too well for her either, as Mbali was working with Tau as an informant and is likely known to other cops as well, which can make Crystal’s arguments weak. The other probable scenario here, though, rests on Crystal waking up soon after Mbali’s escape, as then she can run away and stabilize as well, before launching an all-out war against her sister-in-law.
Does Moses Escape Prison?
While Mbali and Crystal are met with unique predicaments of their own, Moses, too, has a close call with death in prison. Fed up with the warden’s abuse, not just directed towards him, but to all prisoners in general, Moses begins a revolution, cleverly baiting the guards into lowering their defenses, before overpowering them. Following his injuries, the warden briefly stops thinking of Moses as a threat, and therein lies her mistake. Upon taking down the guards, the first thing that Moses and the other survivors do is take shots of drugs that can help relieve the pain. From there, he takes the warden at knife point, gaining access to the keys to all the prisons. With all the inmates freed, the now revived Brotherhood storms past the prison gates.
What makes Moses’ revolution unique is its understanding that the inmates will likely never be able to escape from the prison outright. That is indeed what happens, as the moment they break open the main door, they are greeted by the sight of a hundred officers taking aim from above. However, using the warden as a shield, Moses reveals that his real goal is not to escape the prison but to forcibly bring in reforms. Surprisingly, the leader of the force agrees to Moses’ demands, starting with the present warden’s removal from the post. While small, this is still a victory for the Brotherhood, and it is one they celebrate with much enthusiasm. While it is entirely possible that the police are only lying to the inmates to get them under control, for now, Moses gets to enjoy a memorable win, his first against the system.
Why Does Sphelele Join the Church?
In sharp contrast to his elder brother and sister, Sphelele chooses a path of non-violence, leaving the cycle behind while he still has the chance. After surviving a prison assassination attempt, he realizes that this is not a world he is ever meant to fit into. As such, his first step on the escape journey is not his home but the congregation run by Ntombi’s parents. Ntombi rejoined the group a while back, and Sphelele decides to join her as well, afraid of the horrors he has witnessed and partially perpetuated. Beyond that, though, he seems to be tired of it all, and while Moses and Mbali find themselves sinking deeper into this tragedy, Sphelele hopes to find his resolution through faith and community.
Though Sphelele gets accepted as a part of the congregation and is accordingly baptized, whether this will become his safe haven remains to be seen. To begin with, he is technically a fugitive now. With the police cracking down on all the prison escapees harder than ever before, Sphelele’s time as a free man might be short-lived. There is also an internal angle to all of this, though, and it manifests in Sphelele’s gambling addiction. On a larger level, the addiction symbolizes his inability to stay out of trouble for too long, which can also be foreshadowing for where life takes him at the end. For now, though, all three of the siblings seem to have arrived at an unpredictable chapter in their lives, for better or for worse.
Read More: Is Netflix’s Umthetho Based on a True Story?
