After the success of the Dutch crime drama series Undercover, Netflix presented a prequel film in 2021 named Ferry, only to give background on the show’s central character, Ferry Bouman. Now, in 2023, the streaming platform has come up with a sequel series to the film, titled Ferry: The Series, that gives an even stronger understanding of the past of the notorious Ferry Bouman as seen in Undercover. Following the events of the 2021 film, in which Ferry killed his erstwhile boss Brink only for the sake of his lover Danielle, Ferry: The Series charts the man’s actions in Brabant, which soon make him the biggest ecstasy kingpin of the region. Filled with action and perfectly adequate drama, Ferry: The Series is a good addition for fans of the crime drama genre.
Spoiler Alert
Plot Summary: What is The Netflix’s Series about?
Ferry: The Series takes place entirely in Brabant, sometime after the events in Amsterdam, as shown in Ferry (2021). After getting rid of Brink and also being fueled by the boss’ claim that Ferry would be nobody without him, the show’s criminal protagonist has started his own ecstasy drug business. It is his brother-in-law, Lars, whom Ferry had earlier saved, and his two close friends, Dennis and Remco, who cook up the synthetic drugs while Ferry Bouman sells them to whatever customers he can find. However, the man’s drug business is not seeing the days of success that he had dreamt of, as only occasional customers are interested in buying from him, and that too in small quantities. At the very beginning of the show, we are made privy to a drug deal that goes extremely wrong when a customer named Jurgen is spooked at seeing a police van. Ferry loses his car as well as the stash of pills hidden inside it, and he has to struggle hard to save himself from getting arrested.
During such a time, the drug business in the region takes a considerable hit when the biggest ecstasy manufacturer and seller, Arie Tack, gets arrested by the police. Known as the most notorious and successful drug lord in the whole Brabant region, Tack gets arrested after a drug bust at his factory gives the police all the necessary evidence against him. Seeing this as a brilliant opportunity, Ferry Bouman directly contacts a motorcycle gang known as MC Pusaka, who are known to be the biggest distributor of ecstasy pills, selling them off to clients abroad. Although his presence is not welcome, Ferry makes his proposition clear: the Pusaka gang was supposed to receive a batch of pills from Tack, which were to be sent over to Australia, but now that Tack is in prison, Ferry wants to take his place as the manufacturer.
The local head of the biker gang, Ricardo, is not convinced by Ferry’s plan, but the president of the club, Mick, is ready to give the man a chance. After all, Arie Tack’s arrest is bad business for the Pusaka gang as well. Ferry is given the order to come up with a million pills within a month, and the man takes up the offer despite the logistical difficulty of it. However, to everyone’s surprise, Arie Tack makes it out of prison very soon, making Ferry Bouman’s life difficult, all while the man also has to deal with personal struggles.
Does Ferry kill Arie Tack?
Once Arie Tack is able to come out of prison with only an ankle monitor to track his location, the man wants to immediately resume his drug empire. He learns of the Pusakas’ deal with Ferry, and so he calls for a meeting with the man and proposes that they split the million-dollar deal between themselves. Although Lars, who also goes to this meeting, is not of the same opinion, Ferry absolutely refuses any such deal, for he is confident that he will be able to deliver on the deal. The reason for Lars’ doubts is simply the fact that Ferry’s small factory does not have enough equipment or, more importantly, enough raw materials needed to produce a million ecstasy pills. But Ferry has a solution for this as well, and as is expected of his character, this plan is also extremely risky and illegal.
Ferry sends Lars as a sort of decoy to find out more about Tack’s factory and the amount of raw materials stored at the place. Once he has all this information, Ferry launches a break-in and robbery at the factory, holding everyone at the place, including Lars, Dennis, and Remco, hostage and stealing all the raw materials from there. He makes the job look as if some Polish gang had carried it out, but this cover does not work well with Arie Tack and his trusted henchman, Dozer. The two obviously start to suspect Lars, since the man had suspiciously turned against his associate Ferry to join them, and so Dozer starts to follow the young man around. Meanwhile, Ferry starts his own manufacturing unit with the help of John, the husband of his now-deceased sister Claudia. With extra hard work put in by Lars, Dennis, and Remco, they are finally able to produce a million pills and sell the batch to Mick from MC Pusaka.
When Tack directly tries to confront Ferry for having robbed his factory, Mick intervenes and essentially promises their support to Ferry, making it clear that the power dynamics in the drug world of Brabant are changing. However, it is Lars who ends up making a mess, as he is constantly spooked by Dozer after having been terribly beaten up by him. The man loses control over his life out of fear, and while being high on speed for days, he gets hold of a gun and attempts to kill Arie Tack at the man’s own house. The plan obviously does not work out, and Tack now comes after Lars and his entire family, forcing Ferry to move them away from their house. Mick once again arranges for a meeting between the two sides in order to sort out the situation.
But the hierarchy within the MC Pusaka gang also changes when Ricardo finds out that his boss, Mick, was the one who had helped the police nab Arie Tack, for he wanted to keep the drug lord in check. Since talking to the police is strictly against the principles of the motorcycle gang, Ricardo easily finds support from the other members and uses this opportunity to kill Mick and make himself the president of the club. Although it seems like Ricardo would side with Tack, it is soon revealed that he, too, has acknowledged the shift in powers in the drug world of the region. The man knows that Ferry is desperate to get Arie Tack off his back, and so Ricardo kills Tack and Dozer during the meeting, right in front of Ferry. Establishing this as a sign of friendship, Ricardo orders more pills from Ferry, and the two become business partners.
What are the family troubles faced by Ferry?
Early on in Ferry: The Series, Ferry proposes to his beloved girlfriend Danielle, much to the surprise and happiness of the woman. Around the same time, Danielle also starts to get symptoms of being pregnant, and once she gets a pregnancy test done at home, her suspicions are confirmed. The woman is indeed pregnant with Ferry, and there can be nothing happier for her. Ferry, too, expresses his happiness and excitement after initially fearing the responsibilities of being a parent, and the couple seems to be in their best phase. However, Danielle’s understanding and perspective about her husband’s profession start to change when a young girl is terribly hurt by a pool of chemical waste from some ecstasy production factory. As it turns out, this waste is from Ferry’s own makeshift factory, and Lars had carelessly disposed of it in the middle of a forest road. When Ferry tells his wife about this, and Danielle reports how much the girl and her family are suffering, Ferry does not show any guilt or remorse but is just scared of being caught.
While this incident makes Danielle think about whether to bring a baby into this cruel and dangerous world, she soon learns something much more terrifying about her husband. She had known that Ferry was a drug dealer but did not have a proper idea about his criminal past. Lars tells his sister about how Ferry was very used to killing people, and that he also suspects that the man has now killed Arie Tack, too, and this shocks Danielle tremendously. She does her own research on the internet and finds out about Ferry’s link to murders and other crimes in Amsterdam, and she decides to leave the man.
To make matters worse for the woman, she also finds out that the pregnancy test was either a misdiagnosis or that she had lost the baby. Not only was Danielle not pregnant, but she also suffered from a rare case of early menopause, meaning that she would never be able to bear children anymore. After leaving Ferry’s house, she takes shelter at her best friend/employer Sabien and her husband Marco’s house, but later finds out that the best friend is also ready to betray her.
Another individual in similar internal trouble is John, who is still grieving the death of his dear wife, Claudia. John is alive only as a shell, and he struggles the most while at home by himself. The man is even about to attempt suicide when he is interrupted by Ferry. In a twisted way, John is at his best only when he is directly linked with the running of the drug gang, and by the end of Ferry: The Series, he decides to join Ferry in the business. While Danielle’s struggles have a very direct impact on Ferry, for the man is heartbroken when his wife leaves him, John’s internal issues are never known by anyone, and he remains a truly lonely person in this regard.
What is the biggest threat facing Ferry in the series?
Ever since the first order for a batch of a million pills that Ferry receives from the MC Pusaka gang, he starts to find alternatives to the common raw materials required for the drug. He learns from Lars that a key ingredient, PMK, can also be replaced with something called BMK, which is readily found in a substance called Sassafras that is present in shampoos. Ferry immediately cooks up a plan to get hold of large amounts of Sassafras from his close friend Marco. Marco and his wife Sabien run the salon where Danielle also works, and the two men are extremely close friends as well, which leads to Ferry proposing his plan to Marco. Although he is initially scared of the consequences, Marco finally agrees to it and starts his own shampoo business, which is really just a front to get hold of Sassafras.
Since Arie Tack had appointed Dozer to tail Ferry, the henchman had found out about this secret deal and had also managed to sneak out an empty shampoo bottle from the storehouse. When Tack and Dozer’s dead bodies are found by the police, they treat this bottle as an important piece of evidence, since the police are well aware of the BMK content in Sassafras. The drug enforcement authorities pick up Marco and question him about the matter, offering him an easy way out if he helps them catch Ferry. Although Marco manages to free himself on this occasion, he is truly in a horrific situation since there are no sales or even finished products to show for his shampoo business. Convinced by Danielle, who was frustrated by her husband at the time, Marco eventually tells all of this to Sabien, and the wife immediately tells him that he must turn in Ferry to save himself and his family.
Marco even manages to wear a recorder and get Ferry’s confession about running the ecstasy business. Along with this, the drug lord also hands him a bag full of cash to give to Danielle, who was still living with Marco and Sabien. However, Sabien decides that her husband should submit this cash to the police as well, along with the sound recording, in order to favor his own situation. Marco agrees to this and goes over to the police station to give them all the evidence, but Ferry stops him in his tracks.
As it turns out, Danielle had overheard the conversation between Sabien and Marco at their home the previous night. While Ferry having sent money for her made her emotional, Danielle could also hardly believe her ears when she heard Sabien choosing to take away this cash and hand it in as evidence to the police. Although Sabien had decided to do this only to save her husband and herself, Danielle saw this as her friend backstabbing her. Danielle had immediately sneaked out of their house and returned to Ferry, telling him about this plan of their best friends. Thus, on the next morning, Ferry stops Marco from entering the police station.
What happens to Ferry and Danielle in the end?
Ferry takes Marco with him, and together with John, they go over to a forested area. Here, John shoots Marco dead, and even though Ferry struggles to accept this fate, he also knows that killing the man is necessary to protect himself and his drug empire from the police. This situation of having a mole inside his gang had also affected Ferry’s relationship with Ricardo, but in the end, the protagonist informs him that the mole has been dealt with. Ricardo tries to still keep the upper hand over the drug lord, but Ferry now clearly establishes himself as the one with more power. After all, Ferry was the one producing the drugs, and the motorcycle gang was only trafficking them, meaning that Ricardo depended more on Ferry than the other way around. The police also fail to find any solid evidence against the man, and Ferry Bouman now becomes the single most powerful drug lord in Brabant, intending to move to other parts of the country soon.
During Ferry: The Series‘ ending, we see Ferry and Danielle finally getting married. Despite all their internal problems, Danielle had realized that her lover had always been beside him, and perhaps the acceptance of never being able to be a mother pushes Danielle back towards the love of her life, Ferry. The two get married in a private ceremony where every friend and relative, except for Sabien (of course), is present. Like in his professional endeavors, Ferry Bouman comes out successful in his personal life as well, and his confidence is evident from a last direct look at the camera with a wry smile on his face.
