Directed by Sadeer Massoud, Echoes of the Past is the latest addition to the wide array of murder mysteries on Netflix, but I have to say here that it does not bring anything unique or authentic to the table. I don’t deny that the premise had potential, and the creators even executed it in a decent manner, but the story didn’t need to be stretched across 8 long episodes. Even a 40-minute episode seemed way too long because the narrative was just beating around the bush, saving everything for the last episode. So, let’s find out what happened in Echoes of the Past season 1 and if the protagonist was able to find out who killed his sister in the end.
Spoiler Alert
What happened to Nadia?
We saw in various flashback sequences throughout Echoes of the Past that Nadia died in a tragic accident. Her diving gear did not function properly once she jumped into the water, and as a result of it, she died a painful death. In the first episode itself, we saw that Ali’s parents asked Yehia to take the blame for Nadia’s death. Ali was dating Nadia, and Yehia was her brother. Now Yassin and Sawsan, Ali’s parents, believed that in such a scenario, more often than not, the boyfriend was deemed to be the murderer, so they asked Yehia to take the fall, and they told him that they would make sure that he didn’t spend more than a year behind bars. They told him that they would look after his mother and make sure that she doesn’t have any financial issues. Yehia felt obliged, and he accepted the offer. Once the trial started, Yehia realized that he had committed the biggest mistake of his life by trusting Ali’s family. The poor boy had to stay in prison for almost 15 years. During that time, he made some friends there, and additionally, he decided that until and unless he found the person responsible for his sister’s death, he wouldn’t stop his quest. Now, as a viewer, it was natural to be suspicious of the boyfriend, i.e., Ali, as we saw that he had an argument with Nadia just a day prior to her death. But then it was revealed in Echoes of the Past that Nadia was pregnant with Ali’s baby, and the latter’s parents wanted her to have an abortion. Now, firstly, the parents believed that both the kids were way too young, and they also wanted their son to marry somebody who was of similar social status to them. So, for the longest time (and by long, I mean the entire tenure of the series), we were made to believe that either Yassin or Sawsan were responsible for the death of Nadia, but obviously, it was not so. It was a bit frustrating to see the narrative go round and round when there was no need to do so. I believe that it somewhat diluted the tension that was created in the first two episodes at least.
What did Mona reveal about Nadia’s death?
Once Yehia was released from prison, he started hunting all those people who had wronged him. Firstly, he found the counselor who fought his case and killed him. That man, till the very last moment, made Yehia believe that he would be released in a year when he very well knew that that was not going to happen. Yassin came to know that Yehia was out, and so he hired an assassin named Khaled to find and kill him. Now, there were a lot of revelations that happened during the tenure of the first seven episodes, but the problem was that none of them were worthy of being called subplots. The writers started a subplot, but from the onset, it was obvious that it had nothing to do with the central conflict. We got to know that Yehia, back in the day, loved Mona, Ali’s sister. Layla, the youngest of Ali’s siblings, got involved in things once she got to know about what was happening. Now, surprisingly, Layla didn’t remember anything about the aforementioned incident, though she was present at the crime scene during the summer of 2007. We got to know that Sherif, Ali’s cousin, also had a thing for Nadia, and he crossed his boundaries and tried forcing himself on her just moments after she had fought with Ali and was sitting near the beach alone. Now Sherif aspired to be a film director one day, and so he always had his camera with him. During the vacation too, he took these small videos, which proved to be quite useful in Yehia’s investigation. Yehia was working together with a man, who was a fellow inmate back in the day, named Fatla. Apart from Fatla, Yehia did not trust anybody else. Another weird thing happened with Yehia, and he wasn’t able to decipher who was behind it. Yehia started getting messages from an anonymous source, who told him if the prime suspect on his list was actually the murderer or not. When Yehia asked that anonymous person to tell him the name of the killer, they said that they only knew who hadn’t murdered Nadia, and they, too, had no clue about the perpetrator. There was one video recorded by Sherif that Yehia saw during his investigation. He saw Mona and Nadia in a heated argument, and his gut told him that she was the one who had killed her. Layla, who was helping Yehia in his investigation, told him that back in the day, she had seen her father burying Mona’s Swiss knife in the backyard. Everything seemingly started to make sense, and Yehia became sure that Mona was the one who had killed his sister. He couldn’t resist his impulse, and he went and assaulted Mona. He wasn’t able to kill her, because deep down, he still had feelings for her, but the incident compelled Mona to finally speak up. A few days later, Mona came to meet Yehia, and she told him that it was her father, Yassin, who had killed Nadia. Yehia believed Mona, as he knew that she didn’t have any reason to falsely implicate her father. He made up his mind that he was not going to stop until he made Yassin pay for his sins.
Who killed Nadia and why?
Ali and Mona didn’t like their father. Ali had already made plans to take over his company, and Mona, too, wanted her mother to leave the toxic man and be done with him once and for all. Before Yehia could confront Yassin, Khaled, the assassin, got hold of him. During the altercation, Fatla lost his life, and then Yehia took Maldini’s help and made sure that he took revenge on Khaled for his friend’s death. Khaled had blackmailed Maldini, and the poor boy didn’t want to betray the man who was like a father to him, but he had no option. Khaled was killed in the end, and Ali took the opportunity to use the situation for leverage. Ali told his father that if he didn’t step down from his position, then he would reveal to the law enforcement authorities that he was involved with Khaled. Yassin was very confident from the very beginning, and his family’s threats did not intimidate him. Sawsan literally came and told her children that it was their father who had killed Nadia. But then a twist came, and Yassin went and met his youngest, Layla. He knew that Ali and Mona were way too brainwashed to listen to what he said. So, he went to Layla and told her that it was her mother, and not him who had killed Nadia, he was just covering up for her.
At the end of Echoes of the Past, there was yet another twist waiting for us, and we got to know that neither Yassin nor Sawsan had anything to do with Nadia’s death. It was revealed that they were just covering up for their youngest daughter, Layla. It was a fact that Sawsan and Yassin didn’t want their son to marry Nadia. Nadia was very angry because of it, and then she got to know about Sawsan’s affair. She tried to use that information to keep Ali’s classist parents in check, but she wasn’t able to achieve the intended goal. That frustrated Nadia, and in that mind frame, one day, she just told Layla that her mother was a characterless woman and that her family was of no good. Those words really hurt the impressionable mind of the small child. Layla was infuriated, and she kept asking Nadia why she would say something like that. Now it has to be mentioned here that Sawsan poisoned Layla’s mind and she told her that whatever Nadia was saying was not true. That little girl didn’t know who to believe. On one end was her mother and on the other end was the person she admired the most. It wouldn’t be wrong to say here that Sawsan was equally responsible for what happened to Layla at a later stage.
The naive little girl, not knowing what she was doing, used a multipurpose knife to damage Nadia’s diving apparatus. Things changed for Layla when she got to know that Nadia had actually died. Due to post-traumatic stress disorder, she started forgetting what she had done. Her mind started making her believe that it was not her but someone else who had murdered Nadia. She was convinced that Nadia had told Mona about their mother cheating on their father and not her. She conveniently replaced herself in each and every situation, and it is to be noted that it was not done intentionally. She was just not able to deal with the trauma. In the end, there was a massacre, where firstly Yehia stabbed Sawsan, and then he went after Yassin and killed him too. Ali, taking advantage of the situation, shot at Yehia and killed him. So basically, Yehia, Sawsan, and Yassin, all three of them, died there. It is said that revenge is a dish best served cold, but in this scenario, nobody was able to achieve anything. They are all lost in the process, and I believe that this incident will leave Layla even more startled from within.
