Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Deadwind’ Season 3 on Netflix, Marking The Return Of Pihla Viitala As A Finnish Detective With More Murders To Solve 

Just in time for the colder weather, it’s a Finnish crime drama full of cloudy skies, frowning police detectives, and a string of grisly murders to solve. Deadwind’s third season finds Sofia Karppi (Pihla Viitala) returning to the force after a leave of absence, where she rejoins her younger, more brash partner Sakari Nurmi (Lauri Tilkanen). On the job, Karppi is still sharp, and she still plays by her own rules. But her stepdaughter’s just been released from prison, work takes her away from her young son, and there are rumbles that her husband’s death years before might not have been an accident. 

DEADWIND: SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We track a sleek Porsche as it winds through a disused industrial area in Helsinki, Finland. It arrives at a crime scene, and evidence technicians and cops chattering on radios give way to the silence of a pockmarked factory floor, empty but for the grisly sight of a dead woman barricaded inside a cage.

The Gist: “Her arms and legs were tied with wire,” police captain Silja Rautamaa (Saara Kotkaniemi) tells the arriving Detective Nurmi (Tilkanen), as he notices a series of knife wounds on the victim’s back. And is it significant that the victim, who was the lead scientist on a pharma study involving opioid withdrawal medication, was found caged inside this abandoned hospital facility for animals? Maybe, but Rautamaa has another task for Nurmi. He’s to drag a dawdling Detective Karppi (Viitala) back to the force, now that her suspension for meddling with the drug dealing rap of her stepdaughter Henna (Mimosa Willamo) is over. And Nurmi, resigned to retrieving his old partner despite being directly involved in Henna’s arrest, finds Karppi chopping wood at the island home of her son Emil’s grandfather.

Nurmi’s pompous bluster has waned a bit with his seasoning as a detective. But he still drives that ostentatious Porsche, and there’s no love lost between him and Karppi. He has to eat it when the investigator formerly on hiatus immediately recognizes what nobody else did – the cuts on the victim weren’t random but instead form the diameter of a strange circular symbol – and after some range practice with her service weapon, Karppi greets Rautamaa and her other fellow detectives, sarcastic JP (Ville Myllyrinne) and quiet Peltola (Vera Kiiskinen).

“Why would anyone defend animal rights by killing humans?” Karppi wonders after Nurmi reveals his pet theory of violent activists making an example of the pharma scientist. But the victim’s sister Sanna (Mari Perankoski), a chemist on the project, confirms that they conducted animal testing. The detectives also uncover the dead woman’s estranged son Ossi (Max Ovaska), a hothead who takes potshots at the cops and escapes when they try to apprehend him. And though Karppi’s daughter Henna has been released from jail, she’s stuck in a nowhere restaurant job where her boss humiliates her. Henna’s also confronted by a bad guy from her past, and seems less than forthcoming about her life on the outside when her detective stepmom pays her a visit.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Netflix is a target-rich environment for European crime dramas. But it’s notable that Bordertown, with three seasons of its own on the streamer, was the first Nordic noir series to be filmed in Finland, and Capitani, Luxembourg’s first crime drama, features Luc Schiltz as the show’s hard-driving titular investigator. And don’t get Bordertown confused with Borderliner, a Norwegian crime drama that stars Tobias Satelmann, aka Ragnar the Younger from Netflix’s Last Kingdom.

Our Take: Captain Rautamaa hasn’t worked directly with Sofia Karppi before. So she’s a little frustrated when she learns how her new detective tends to operate. With the murder victim’s crazed son firing on Nurmi and Peltola, Karppi says she’s going after him. “Don’t go alone!” her superior demands over the radio; “I’m going alone,” is the response. And as Karppi draws her weapon and chases Ossi through a throng of shipping containers, Rautamaa looks at JP, incredulous at the brazen protocol breach. The other detective just smiles. “She always does that.”

Pihla Viitala makes Sofia Karppi a riveting presence immediately – a woman whose investigative acumen is as well-known as her individualism and tendency to act on her impulses over the minutiae of police procedure. But like so many of the character’s peers in the world of European murder mysteries, it’s the challenges and churn of secrets in her personal life that saddle Karppi with the kind of baggage that can derail a sound career. Deadwind only hints at this adversity as season three begins – Emil’s grandfather is looking after her son while she returns to work, but he’s clearly getting winded, and Henna’s experience as a drug courier is by no means a closed chapter, despite her incarceration. Karppi will have decisions to make going forward, even as she circles this intriguing new murder case and the mysterious symbols attached to the victims. But there’s even more for this talented detective to unpack. The accidental death of her husband years back in Hamburg? Maybe it wasn’t so accidental. Deadwind has a fantastic lead in Viitala and more than enough wandering strings of narrative to pull on as the weather turns and you’re searching for a new Scandi noir mystery to binge.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: “The same killer?” Karppi asks Rautamaa after receiving her call. “That’s what it seems.” The latest body is that of a doctor with links to the same opioid research as their first victim, dead in a field at night. And while Rautamaa hadn’t noticed any symbols on the body, it takes Karppi two seconds to see what’s up. She grabs a flare gun from a beat cop and fires it off, illuminating a massive scrawl with the victim arranged at its center.

Sleeper Star: Deadwind is typically as dour as its fellow Scandi mysteries. But Ville Myllyrinne injects some quality levity as JP, the quippy detective who’s the first to offer Karppi some good-natured ribbing after she returns from her forced leave of absence.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I know you’re embarrassed about screwing up,” Nurmi says to Karppi with his usual inability to read a room. “Now you have a chance to come back and prove you’re not a shitty cop.” Karppi’s only response to this jab is to immediately notice an enormous clue in the new murder case that never even occurred to her arrogant former partner.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Deadwind isn’t reinventing the Nordic noir formula. But it’s tactfully directed, with economical storytelling that telegraphs its bigger mysteries without giving them away, and Pihla Viitala is fantastic as its heroine, whose crack crime solving skills always have to share space in her skull with the evolving pressures of her personal life.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges