Created by Steve Bailie, the Romanian crime series “Subteran” aims for pacey, slick thrills. There are backstabbing, double-crossing, hidden identities popping to the fore, and all kinds of revelations designed to amp up the drama. Yet why does it feel so curiously lethargic, as if the show doesn’t quite know how to direct its manipulative, confident, and scheming characters onto a riveting, cohesive course of action?
Subteran (2025) Episode 1 Recap:
“Subteran” opens in media res. A car is burnt. A woman is advised by a man to wholly disappear. There’s danger in the air. Quickly backstories are rolled out and we are introduced to who these people are. The woman is Cami Serbu (Ana Ularu). She is an IT consultant. Her partner Luca has got himself in deep trouble, though he himself invites it.
The man in the first scene is Bones (Cezar Grumazescu), the working partner of Luca. Both are in a plan to nab their boss, Tanase (Florin Pierisic Jr. ). Tanase is a formidable mafia boss who has immense drug cartels behind him. Luca and Bones have got hold of The Bank, who has a laptop with a decryptor key that has access to all of Tanase’s crypto wallet as well as a list of cops who are on Tanase’s bankroll. Tanase is enraged to find all his bitcoins have evaporated. His daughter Tili arrives at the hotel where the Bank, Luca, and Bones are in, to take back the laptop. She storms in and shoots Luca and the Bank dead. Luca was on a call with Cami, who witnessed everything.
However, the laptop remains confiscated by the cops, stacked in the evidence room. Bones and Tanase’s other daughter, Crisi, come to his flat. Crisi wants a taste of adventure. However, it doesn’t last long for her since she gets shot by Cami. The episode ends with Bones and Cami fleeing the scene. He instructs her they ought to remain hidden and she cannot risk contacting her young son, Matei. It’d put all of them in high danger.
Subteran (2025) Episode 2 Recap:
Tanase is eagerly awaiting a deal with Lars, whom he has to pay to get the drugs. The crypto wallet gains urgency for this reason. Dracu (Cosmin Teodor Pana), the right-hand man of Tanase, and Tili go to Bones’ room. They suspect him since it was with Bones Crisi was last seen. Nevertheless, no word of Crisi has reached Tanase. Meanwhile, Prosecutor Golescu notices Bones on the hotel’s CCTV footage exiting the room of the crime. We are told Bones was once a cop. He went undercover. In Bones’ room, Tili and Dracu probe but find nothing. Elsewhere, Cami introduces herself as Bones’ girlfriend, Sonia. Tili is attracted and invites them to her father’s party.
Subteran (2025) Episode 3 Recap:
Cami inserts herself into the group of Tanase’s syndicate boys. She tells them she’s a hacker and they would direly need her services. Furthermore, they concoct a plan whereby they’d pop up at the police station and seize the laptop with the decryptor key. She takes up the alias of a lawyer, while Dracu and Bones, as drunk boys fighting at a bar, maneuver themselves into being arrested. Tanase had categorically exhorted against bloodshed. Bones insists on deference to this. However, Dracu cannot resist stirring a mess wherever he goes. He ends up starting an exchange of gunfire. The criminal team, however, manages to escape, boosted by the help of Tili. They are now in possession of the laptop.
Subteran (2025) Episode 4 Recap:
Cami escapes, and so does Bones. They have detected the threat posed. Tanase has instructed Tili and Dracu to finish off Cami, Bones, and everyone else since they can’t afford to have any witnesses. It’s when Tili and Dracu snoop around at Cami’s place they realize she is Sonia. Cami’s mother has taken Matei with her to the countryside. Cami is headed there. Dracu and Tili also follow separately.
Subteran (2025) Episode 5 Recap:
Bones/Roman was kicked out of the police academy for exposing someone on Tanase’s payroll. Since then he has been seeking vengeance. Bones tells a retired prosecutor he needs someone to make the arrest while Tanase is making the deal with Lars. Multiple discoveries happen throughout this episode. Cami realizes her old neighbor who has always been so helpful and generous is an ex-prosecutor himself. He is seeking vengeance too. He reveals to her that her father got bumped off by Tanase, not killed in an accident which is what had been told to her family. Prosecutor Golescu is also on the payroll of Tanase, which explains his laxness and skewed approach to the investigations.
Subteran (2025) Episode 6 Recap & Ending Explained:
Does Cami rescue her son?
The finale happens at the royal ballroom, where Tanase and Lars are negotiating a deal. Cami arrives at the spot, hoping to trade the laptop with her son who is in Tanase’s custody. Led by Cornel, cops have surrounded the house. The deal happens, once Cami hacks into the laptop and ensures the transfer of money. But Tanase is opposed to letting the son remain alive since Cami killed his daughter.
But she too has come well prepared. She tells them the minute she has logged into the account, she has got all access to their stuff. She has to be kept alive as well as her son. A scuffle ensues, leading to Dracu being shot dead and Tanase injured. Tili agrees to let Cami’s son go since Cami insists she won’t ruffle any feathers. Cami has the upper hand. She lets Tili come into Tanase’s fortunes and inherit his position. The series ends with a reaffirmation of the corrupt system. Police keep getting fed by now Tanase’s daughter. The cycle continues. At least, Cami and her son are safe, for now.
Subteran (2025) Series Review
A slew of writing issues peppers the show, even before we get to how personality-free the execution is. It is clumsy, wilfully lackadaisical, and determinedly anemic. You don’t know how the narrative will pan out, that’s the refrain the makers harp on. What can you possibly intuit? Instead, a barrage of low-intelligence detours wraps the narrative. The screenplay, co-written by Bailie along with Octav Gheorghe and Peter Kerek, stodgily piles on a series of conveniences in its plot turns, indifferent to characterization and intrigue.
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There is a complete absence of the biting tension much needed here to make us root for one character over another. A mafia boss is the arch threat, but one could also argue the duo of Dracu and Tili is the one pervasively biding its time to strike out against Cami and Bones. The latter two are compelled to be super-chary and be on the qui vive about the razor-sharp Tili, who is as ruthless as she is swift in detecting the slightest trace of deception. She already amply displays all the signs of being the perfect heir to the drug-saddled kingdom that has its claws deep in the police establishment. Irina Artenii channels the unblinking steeliness of Tili well, but the screenplay is also interested in the binaries between Tili and her twin sister, without caring to deepen the chasms and envy.
Hence, fatigue clouds the experience of watching the series. The mind becomes hazy as one tries to grapple with all the violence and hiding. Characterization is almost entirely forgotten, as a mother’s quest for her son drives the story. No other character pops off the screen. Everyone behaves on autopilot, the same weary façade of cool, unreliable aggression and unhinged impulses. “Subteran” struggles to distinguish itself from the crop of standard thrillers. It is a jaded, flat, and direly wooden attempt rife with stock characteristics.
