The last scene of The Glass Dome revealed why Granas’ retired police chief, Valter, was worried about Said’s mine expansion project, because of which the river running through the town was soon going to be drained. [Spoiler Alert] Well, the reason was the deep-flowing river had been Valter’s dumping ground for so many years. If Said’s company, Svea Vandadin, had successfully expanded the mines, then the declining water level in the river would have eventually caused the corpses of Valter’s victims to surface. This was the reason why Valter paid a hefty sum of money to a man named Adde to sabotage the mines and poison the underground water so that the townsfolk would force Said to abandon his project, letting the river stay as it is. However, in case Valter’s plan of tampering with the mines hadn’t worked, then he would have had to extract those bodies from his favorite river and find a new spot for his trophies. Well, thankfully he didn’t have to follow through with any of that, as his adopted daughter, Lejla, finally exposed him and his crimes to the world and joined forces with the current police chief and Valter’s younger brother, Tomas, to take the children’s dead bodies out of the river and hand them over to their respective parents so that they could finally find some closure in life.
Why Did Valter Kill?
The question many of you might’ve had in mind: how did Valter end up becoming a serial killer? Well, The Glass Dome didn’t delve too far into Valter’s psychological condition, though from a brief exchange between him and Tomas at the end of episode 5, it became apparent that Valter had been sick and lacked empathy from a very young age. When they were just kids, Valter had tried to suffocate some fox cubs that the brothers had found in the woods. He put them inside a plastic bag, but when they didn’t die, he just strangled them to death, similar to how Valter killed most of his victims. This suggests that Valter showed signs of a psychopathic personality, which possibly stemmed from his abusive father and traumatic childhood. Tomas suggested that their father was quite a violent man, and that their mother had failed to save the kids from his wrath, which took a toll on Valter and Tomas’ mental and emotional health. While Valter ended up being a psychopath, Tomas had issues of his own to work through.
As Valter grew up, his desire to capture and torture manifested further and he started targeting young girls who had hair like his late mother. It seemed like Valter always blamed his mother for being a coward and held her accountable for what their father did to them. According to Tomas, their mother pretended not to see or hear the kids’ screams of pain when their father punished them violently. In simple words, Valter might have been trying to take revenge on his mother by killing those innocent victims. After kidnapping them, he would lock them inside the titular glass dome. He would nurture them and read books to them, something his own parents failed to do in his childhood. And when the right time would come, Valter would chop their hair and strangle them to death. He had even created an alter ego, Ecki, to commit these gruesome crimes under. You see, things would have been pretty different if the kids’ mother had stood up against their father or had reported him to the police, thereby saving the children from the monster.
Why Did Valter Stop Killing?
You might have noticed that Valter’s demeanor changed completely when he came across a young, fearless girl named Lejla. She stood near the fire and wasn’t afraid of the flames, making Valter experience something he had never witnessed before. Lejla was different from Valter’s other victims, but most importantly, Lejla was different from his mother. She wasn’t a coward like her. She faced her perpetrator like a true hero and tricked him to escape his captivity, making Valter realize that this was the one who could fill the void inside him, and therefore he killed her mother, Milena, so he and his wife could adopt Lejla. It could be theorized that Valter had always been looking for such a fierce spirit, and when he finally found one, he discontinued his hunt and settled down to be a father to Lejla. The young girl’s presence kept Valter’s demons at bay; however, things got messy again the moment she left Granas for America. And I guess it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that Valter may have had something to do with his wife Ann-Marie’s death, as he had been eagerly looking for a way to bring Lejla back to Sweden. And when Lejla finally returned, he killed her best friend, Louise, and kidnapped the latter’s daughter, Alicia, to keep Lejla in town. Valter knew that Lejla, who suffered from demons of her own because of her childhood trauma, wouldn’t be able to leave Granas until she’d solved the case of Alicia’s disappearance, and therefore he used his adoptive daughter’s weakness against her.
What Will Happen To Lejla And Valter?
In The Glass Dome’s ending, Valter was going to kill Alicia just like the rest of his victims, but Lejla, who had cracked his psyche by now, understood what had driven Valter to the brink of madness. She knew about his mother and how Valter was fascinated by her courage. She knew Valter would do anything to protect her from all harm, which was why Lejla, locked inside the glass dome, tried to hurt herself, as she knew Valter wouldn’t be able to see her getting hurt. And while she banged her head against the glass wall, Tomas heard his brother’s loud screams and finally arrived at the underground dungeon to save Lejla and Alicia from his wrath.
But even though Tomas and his team had arrested the former police chief, they knew they wouldn’t be able to hold him in custody for long before they had to charge him for murder, and for that they needed to find the dead corpses of his victims. And that’s what the last confrontation between the father and his adoptive daughter was all about. Valter, proud of his crimes, finally gave away the location of his victims, and Lejla, with the help of the police, finally brought out the dead bodies from the river so the respective families could find some closure. This also means Valter is going to spend the rest of his life behind bars, while Lejla would finally be able to return to America and leave her demons behind, likely to never return to Granas again.
