Hotel Costiera’s ending was centered around Daniel’s efforts to rescue Alice from the clutches of Laurent. Why did things come to that? The owner of the titular hotel was Augusto. He had 2 daughters, Adele and Alice. Daniel, a part-Italian former U.S. marine, was a fixer for Augusto who fell in love with Alice and began a whirlwind romance with her. A month later, Alice was nowhere to be found, and Daniel launched a personal investigation into her mysterious disappearance. He was occasionally distracted by the side quests provided to him by the hotel’s guests, and even strangers in Positano. Despite all those diversions, Daniel managed to find Bruno, the last person who saw Alice, and twist his arm until he named the individual who was responsible for Alice’s kidnapping. Based on that info, Daniel and his crew—which comprised Genny, Bigne, and Tancredi—tracked Alice down to a castle and confronted her French captor, Laurent. Like every cliche villain in existence, Laurent was very open about explaining his motivation for apprehending Alice. Well, he wanted to kidnap Adele, but his employees mistakenly captured Alice, but let’s not dwell on such irrelevant details. The bottom line was that Augusto had a very valuable necklace in his possession. When Laurent was just a kid, he wanted to see it, but Augusto’s father stopped him from doing so because Laurent wasn’t upper class enough for him. After that, Laurent vowed to get that necklace, even if it meant using one of Augusto’s daughters as leverage. After revealing this fact to Daniel, Laurent wanted the fixer to bring this plan to fruition. Did Daniel comply? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
An Ethical Heist
Daniel, Bigne, Genny, and Tancredi had been outgunned and outmatched at Laurent’s castle and were unable to extract Alice from there. Since Daniel was desperate to rescue Alice, he accepted Laurent’s offer of stealing the necklace for him. After that, he tucked his tail between his legs and ran back to Hotel Costiera along with Genny, Bigne, and Tancredi. Without wasting any more time, he explained everything that had gone down with Laurent to Adele, because without her help, the heist would be impossible. The necklace was about to be auctioned off at the hotel. So, the five of them had to find the slim window of opportunity to steal the real deal and replace it with the fake that had been painfully handcrafted by Laurent. Augusto overheard this whole plan and attempted to put a stop to it, because a theft would be detrimental to his business as well as his relationship with auctioneers and the elite bidders. So, Daniel came up with an alternative: he’d pose as one of the buyers, officially win the auction, deliver the necklace to Laurent, and retrieve Alice.
The only issue was that nobody on their team had that kind of money, while the bidders had an unlimited pool of money. Even if Augusto sold everything he had to his name, he would have 15 million euros. The necklace was priced at around 13 million euros. Since it was an auction, it was expected to go for even higher than that. Hence, Daniel and his team came up with 2 more alternatives: bringing in Sheryl, an old and rich acquaintance of Daniel’s, to help them with the buy, or simply performing a “smash and grab” to steal the necklace. They ended up going down the former, because the price of the necklace had gone past 15 million euros, and Sheryl came in clutch to secure it with 25 million. However, just because Daniel had purchased the necklace didn’t mean that he had bought Alice’s freedom; he had to hand-deliver the necklace to Laurent within the next 3 hours, and then and only then would the Frenchman let go of Alice. If he failed at this additional task, Laurent intended to kill Alice and flee Positano.
Genny Performed a Switcheroo
Laurent’s only henchwoman, Sabine, was not okay with her boss’s legit threat to Alice’s life—because Sabine was a thief, not a murderer—and decided to sever her ties with the Frenchman. Bastien, Laurent’s son, and Le Bris, Laurent’s henchman, stuck around with Laurent largely because they had no other option, and departed from the hotel to wait at their yacht with Alice. While en route to Laurent’s yacht, Bruno made a last-ditch attempt to steal the necklace, because he had been discarded by Laurent and manhandled by Daniel. But thanks to Bigne’s excellent aim, Bruno was thwarted, and that allowed Daniel to continue his journey to Laurent’s yacht via speedboat. After getting there, though, instead of doing a straightforward exchange, Laurent started piling up one demand upon another. He wanted to verify the necklace’s authenticity, and Daniel obliged. He wanted Daniel to give up the necklace, and only then would he let go of Alice. When Daniel proposed a one-hand-give-one-hand-take style of exchange, Laurent rejected that offer too.
All this nonsense caused Daniel to get angry, and he chucked the necklace into the water. Laurent ordered his son to jump into the water and get the necklace before it sank to the bottom of the ocean. In the meantime, Daniel and Alice tag-teamed to take down Le Bris and escape from the yacht on the speedboat that Daniel had used to get there. Bastien managed to retrieve the necklace and handed it over to his father. However, when Laurent examined it, the necklace turned out to be a fake. How was that possible? That’s because Genny had followed Daniel all the way to the yacht and was waiting underwater for him to chuck the real necklace. In the time it took for Bastien to dive into the ocean and get the necklace, Genny swapped the real necklace with the fake one. Hence, while Laurent delivered the fake necklace to his dad, once Daniel had gotten away from Laurent, Genny swam to his speedboat with the real one. Realizing that he had been duped, Laurent decided to flee the scene on his own speedboat before the police got to him. He abandoned his own son, probably because he saw him as a liability rather than an asset.
Season 2 Expectations
In Hotel Costiera’s ending, Alice reunited with Adele and Augusto. As for the necklace, Daniel assured Sheryl that Augusto would arrange for a buyer and she’d get her money back. As Daniel and his friends celebrated this win, Augusto was seen talking to Daniel’s father. The identity of this man wasn’t revealed, but it seems like Augusto still has some more tricks up his sleeve. The man has been royally betrayed by Daniel, and he won’t let that slide so easily. I don’t think he cares about the necklace anymore. Now, things are personal, and he’ll stop at nothing until he has punished Daniel appropriately. But why will Daniel’s father help Laurent get revenge against Daniel? The only thing I can think about is that Laurent will dangle the prospect of a father-son reunion if they do some kind of a job for him. This job will certainly be more difficult than stealing a necklace. But since Daniel is such an expert at pulling off impossible feats, he’ll get it done for a chance to be with his father.
However, when the mission draws to a close, Laurent will probably look to betray Daniel, thereby making him feel what he felt when Daniel gave him the fake necklace. I have a feeling that Bastien will look to join hands with Daniel in order to get back at his own father for betraying him. Also, the romantic subplots involving Daniel, Genny, Alice, Adele, and Bastien haven’t been resolved. So, we can expect future seasons to shed some light on that. At the time of writing this article, Prime Video hasn’t announced a second season of Hotel Costiera. It’s not a particularly great show by today’s standards. That said, I did like its Burn Notice-esque vibes, and that show went on for a whopping 7 seasons. So, if this first season ends up being a mild hit, and the showrunners manage to keep the budget in check, I think we can look forward to a new chapter that’ll focus on Daniel’s adventures and his rivalry with Laurent. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the show. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments below.
