The season of "Fauda" ended on an epic note.

This cannot be the end of the story

The fourth season in the saga was the most unusual and also the most political, with a different pace and a focus that moved from the field to the corridors of the Shin Bet. While Lucy Ayoub successfully passed her baptism of fire as a dramatic actress, the conflict of the character she plays is at the center of the peak of drama we have seen from "Fauda" to So. Caution: Spoilers

Ben Biron Brauda

09/29/2022

Thursday, September 29, 2022, 09:20 Updated: 09:23

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Trailer "Fauda" season 4 (yes)

If there's one major thing that the fourth season of "Fauda" has taught us, it's that sometimes you have to go all the way to cool Brussels to come back with new and deep insights into the Middle Eastern pressure cooker we all live in.

"Fauda", which in its first three seasons wandered - and perhaps better: ran with guns drawn - between Judea and Samaria and Gaza, miraculously managed to be almost apolitical despite the explosive materials it deals with.

And here, precisely in the season that started with a joint and seemingly simple journey of Captain Ayoub and Doron to meet an intelligence source named Omar Tavalba (Amir Boutros) in Belgium, it took a turn and returned in its most political version to date.

In general, this was probably the "strange" season of "Fauda" so far.

It seems that the creators Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff felt a strong need to reinvent themselves so as not to bore themselves and the viewers.

Therefore, not only did the undercover team start this season as far away from the alleys of Gaza as possible - and there is also a strong statement in the takeover of Brussels by the terrorist cell of Twalba and especially in the lack of strength of the local police forces - the pace of the series also changed, and much of the action moved to the corridors of the General Security Service.

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The most "strange" season.

From "Fauda" (Photo: Eden Shohat, courtesy of yes)

As in every season, this time too we met quite a few new characters, but the central axis of the series was and remains the axis between Doron (Raz) regarding "Captain Job".

The abduction of Job in Brussels at the beginning of the season and then the realization that he is apparently dead, shook not only Eli's team (Yaakov Zeda-Daniel) but also the viewers.

The question "Is Job alive?"

- which became a kind of "Who shot JR?", the mythical cliff-hanger from the series "Dallas" - accompanied us throughout a considerable part of the season, including a feeling of pressure that grew as the episodes passed and the captain did not return to the screen.

To be honest, no one believed that they would kill our captain like this at the beginning of a season and without any proper way to say goodbye, but the fantastic character played by Itzik Cohen (full disclosure: we are friends, otherwise I would have flattered him even more) became one of the main reasons for watching the series , and therefore her absence from the screen was felt throughout the season.

The large void left by Ayoub was mainly filled with the figure of Maya Tuvalba, Omar's sister who became an elite officer in the Israel Police.

Lucy Ayoub did her baptism of fire here as a dramatic actress and it can be said that she passed it with great success.

She not only juggles - naturally and naturally - between Hebrew and Arabic, but also manages to convey the dilemma of her character in a convincing and captivating way: on the one hand, someone who has integrated well into Israeli society and is even proud to wear a uniform, and on the other hand, a caring sister who tries to help her brother even when the latter turns out to be a traitor The family and the country are in immediate danger.

A central conflict.

Lucy Job from "Fauda" (photo: Elia Spinopoulos, courtesy of yes)

Another person who has stepped into big shoes and filled them well is Dana (Mirav Shirom), who was promoted from another Shin Bet investigator to head of a department. Shin Bet investigators, whose main job is to get under the skin of terrorists and extract information from them, can easily be perceived as manipulative and antagonizing - but Dana managed to break this pattern.

True, the scenes where she used the sexuality of one of the interrogators to pressure him were difficult to watch, but she remained empathetic and humane, even when her role was very difficult for her.

Her relationship with Captain Ziad (Gal Friedman) even showed potential as such that could compete with the sparks of the relationship between Sagi and Nurit (Idan Amadi and Rona Lee Shimon), but as we know, ended tragically with Ziad's murder.

The series' move to the Shin Bet facilities had to come at the expense of something, and really this season we were a little less excited about the undercover team. It's not that there were no events, on the contrary: Nurit and Saghii got married, she became pregnant (which she hid from Saghii) and they almost broke up; Eli Hava for who knows what Some thoughts of retirement and even embarked on a final operation; like Steve (the always excellent Doron Ben David) who experienced a crisis in his relationship. At the same time, somewhere between Doron and Maya's trip to Lebanon to meet Omar and the elimination of senior Shin Bet officers following the handing over of Ayoub's names, he that our undercovers got a slightly smaller place.

More in Walla!

This is where Lucy and Captain Job live happily: "Fauda" is back - and in a big way

To the full article

A little more Shin Bet, a little less undercover. From "Fauda" (Photo: Elia Spinopoulos, courtesy of yes)

Wait, I said this is a political season and I need to explain.

From the beginning "Fauda" tried and succeeded not to say "Jews are good, Arabs are bad", and this approach succeeded in bringing diverse audiences to it and making them feel that they are getting a fairly objective picture.

This season, unlike previous seasons, seems to have illustrated more the difficulties of the Israeli Arabs and the heavy price paid by those who cooperate with the Israeli army.

It did start with the betrayal of Omar, whose father was a collaborator and he became a Hamas activist to 'atone' for the honor of the family, but it continued with the conflict of Maya, who, despite all her many achievements in Israeli society, was declared a traitor as soon as her brother crossed sides.

I did not count the bodies, but it seems that the amount The losses on the Israeli side were particularly high this season. After years of tricks and exercises on our enemies from the territories (and our neighbors from nearby countries), it seems that they learned the undercovers well and managed to return heavy and painful fire.

And indeed, after Ayoub's return to the borders of Israel due to the complexity and post-trauma inherent in that, it seems that there is only one thing left for the team to do in order to mark V on the mission: to eliminate the great villain of the season, Adel Twalba (the wonderful Louis Nofi).

To this end, poor Maya is manipulated one last time, and the team infiltrates Omar's funeral in the Gaza Strip.

Here the criticism of the way the Shin Bet takes advantage of the lives of collaborators is not even implicit, and Maya, who until this point we still felt was on "our" side, betrays the undercover during the funeral. The epic and dramatic final scene in which all the team members are injured and Doron begins to talk God is probably the peak of the drama we have seen from "Fauda" to date. There should be only one answer to the question "Is this the end of the series?" There should be only one answer: no way. It is fine to leave an open ending, but not one where almost all of our heroes are between life and death and the viewers are left with their tongues out.

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• Fauda

• Lucy Job

• Lior Raz

• Avi Issacharoff