Money Heist season 1-4 recap: The Royal Mint and Bank of Spain robberies so far

Netflix’s crime thriller is nearing its conclusion.

By David Craig

Published: Thursday, 26 August 2021 at 12:00 am

Crime thriller Money Heist has exploded into a global phenomenon over the past four years, beginning life on terrestrial Spanish television before finding an international audience on Netflix.

Viewers have been hooked watching the Professor (Álvaro Morte) and his gang tackle seemingly impossible heists, beginning with The Royal Mint before taking things to the next level at The Bank of Spain.

As the show reaches its final chapters, there’s no telling where the story could go next and who will get out alive, especially considering the sheer number of twists and turns we’ve seen so far.

If you’re keen to get stuck into the show’s last hurrah but could use a refresher on the dramatic events that have led us here, look no further than our full Money Heist recap, which gives you a whistle-stop tour through the first four seasons.

The Royal Mint heist (seasons 1-2)

Money Heist’s crime saga kicks off by introducing us to someone we initially know only as Tokyo, a young woman on the run from the law after a botched robbery that led to the untimely death of her boyfriend. She calls her mother from a public phone booth and is persuaded to return home, but unbeknownst to her, an armed police squad is waiting to arrest her there.

Fortunately, a mysterious man who calls himself the Professor intervenes, warning Tokyo of her imminent ambush and asking her to join his team for the most elaborate heist the world has ever seen. Although initially sceptical, she ultimately decides to go along with this plan and heads with him to a large estate in the Toledo countryside where she meets the rest of the crew.

Each of them uses the name of a major city as a pseudonym, with the Professor demanding they keep their real names secret so not to form emotional attachments and jeopardise the heist. The gang is initially comprised of:

The big idea is to rob the Royal Mint, where all the money in Spain is printed. By taking 67 hostages and locking the place down for a little over a week, they hope to print €2.4 billion in unmarked bills and escape without any bloodshed. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

"The
The Professor in Money Heist
Netflix

Money Heist has a time-hopping narrative that frequently flips between the present day, when the heist is taking place, and several months earlier, during the time spent studying and planning in Toledo. Indeed, the Professor is truly an expert in his field, teaching his crew everything they could possibly need to know to carry out a heist of tremendous scale, as well as dreaming up contingency plans for almost every eventuality.

Let’s get straight to the action. It’s the day of the heist and before the gang arrives, we are introduced to a few people unlucky enough to be at the Royal Mint that day. There’s the director of the institution, Arturo Román, who is having an affair with his secretary, Monica Gaztambide. Mere moments before the robbers arrive, she tells him that she is pregnant with his child and expects a happy response, but is deeply hurt when he tells her to get an abortion.

Meanwhile, a group of teenagers are also at the Royal Mint that day for an educational school trip, with one being of particular note: Alison Parker, daughter of the British ambassador to Spain. Immediately before the heist, she goes into a private bathroom with one of her classmates and is pressured into taking a revealing photograph, on the agreement that it is for his eyes only. However, as soon as he has the picture, he laughs and tells her he plans to share it with the world.

That’s when the gang break in, sporting red jumpsuits and Salvador Dali masks that have become firm favourites of cosplayers the world over. As planned, they take 67 hostages, including Román, Gaztambide and Parker, quickly registering their names and confiscating their phones. They dress them up in the exact same outfits that they are wearing and equip them with fake guns in order to make them indistinguishable from the robbers in the eyes of police.

"Rio
Rio in Money Heist
Netflix

Speaking of police, it should come as little surprise that they have arrived on the scene, with investigator Raquel Murillo tasked with negotiating with the robbers and rescuing the hostages as quickly as possible. Her point of contact is The Professor, the only member of the gang not to enter the Royal Mint, who is closely monitoring the situation from a dingy warehouse nearby. (The gang rewired the phones to give him a private line of communication with them, as well as setting up cameras allowing him to see what’s going on).

His strategic placing outside of the heist allows him to interfere with the police investigation, introducing himself to Raquel at a local bar, using the name Salva as yet another pseudonym.

The heist is underway and going swimmingly! Until it isn’t anymore. Shortly after entering the Royal Mint, the Professor had planned for his gang to head back out with a few bags of cash, drop them on the steps, shoot at the ground and then retreat back in. Why? To give the illusion that this is a poorly planned robbery attempt and thus lower the guard of the investigators on their case.

However, the Professor did not anticipate such a strong response from police straight out of the gate, with Rio being shot on the steps and collapsing to the ground, sending Tokyo into a rage. You see, the two of them had broken the Professor’s rule against forming personal bonds by starting a romantic relationship during their time together in Toledo. The resulting gunfight sees two police officers (non-lethally) gunned down, adding significantly to the gang’s potential prison sentences if they get caught.

Tokyo drags Rio back into the Mint where it is revealed he is alive, with the bullet only grazing him. But tensions among the gang explode as Denver declares this the worst start imaginable. It’s not going to get any easier.

"Money
The gang’s fake attempted escape goes awry.
Netflix

Let’s revisit Arturo and Monica for a moment. The director of the Royal Mint backtracks on the earlier comments he made to his lover, saying he’d love to be the father of her child, although this feels mostly like a ploy to convince her to risk her life retrieving an as-yet-undiscovered mobile phone from his office. She does so but is caught in possession of the contraband and Berlin orders Denver to kill her.

He is clearly horrified by the request, but Berlin makes it clear that if he doesn’t carry out orders, he will be executed along with her. Denver takes Monica away to the bathroom and attempts to kill her, but is simply unable to pull the trigger as he does not wish to become a murderer. Instead, the two of them work together to fake her death, with Denver shooting Monica in the leg to create a convincing blood splatter before stashing her in a basement vault where he patches her up.

Arturo isn’t the only unruly hostage as Alison Parker also pokes a major hole in The Professor’s plan. She is given the opportunity to record a video to her parents explaining that the leaked photo of her was taken and shared against her will, but is instructed not to connect her phone to the internet. She does so anyway, taking advantage of the fact that her guard, Rio, is distracted talking to Tokyo about their relationship.

Rio realises something is amiss and dashes to take the phone away from her, but the police outside were able to hack into the device’s camera before it is switched off, giving them a glimpse at Rio’s face. He and Tokyo are the first members of the gang to be identified by police, after they are spotted together on CCTV visiting The Royal Mint several weeks earlier, when they went on a recon mission to locate the building’s security cameras.

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Tokyo in disguise outside the Royal Mint.
Netflix

News of Monica’s supposed death reaches the hostages, devastating Arturo and Moscow alike, the latter of whom feels responsible for turning his son into a killer. The guilt is so strong that he attempts to turn himself into police, but the gang manages to stop him at the last minute. Denver arranges for he and his father to spend some time on the roof as it is the only fresh air available, but requires several disguised hostages to go with them as cover.

While up there, he attempts to tell his father that Monica is alive, but upon hearing the name of his former lover, Arturo loses his temper and begins waving his fake gun around demanding answers about her fate. The terrified response from his fellow hostages leads the police into thinking that Arturo is one of the robbers and Raquel orders one of her snipers to open fire on him. She quickly finds out she has the wrong man, calling her position as chief investigator into question.

She is able to find some solace in the company of a charming stranger she recently met at a bar, blissfully unaware that he is in fact the devious bank robber she has been talking to on the phone for the past two days. The Professor’s relationship with Raquel is getting increasingly intimate, as he had planned, but he never expected to develop genuine feelings for her – and that will make things a lot more complicated down the line.

For now, let’s focus on wounded Arturo. The sniper’s bullet didn’t kill him but it has done some serious damage that will require urgent medical attention. Raquel agrees to send in a surgeon to treat the civilian, but sneakily substitutes her police partner, Ángel Rubio, for one of his accompanying two nurses with the intention of getting a look around inside. The Professor suspected this is what she would do and, recognising Ángel from an earlier interaction with Raquel, identifies him to his team.

"Money
Berlin, Tokyo and Rio welcome guests to The Royal Mint.

They do not make it known that they are aware of the spy, but during a routine search of all three individuals, they covertly plant a tiny recording device into Ángel’s glasses, giving The Professor ears inside the police tent. During the surgery, Monica asks Denver to give Arturo a message, hoping the revelation that she is still alive will give him the will to survive. But when he arrives at the surgery room, Arturo is on the phone to his wife promising to be a perfect husband when he gets out of the Mint – but then he accidentally calls her by Monica’s name. Oops! At least the surgery is a success.

The bug was implanted at just the right time as the police get ahead of the gang shortly after, identifying an old car they used via CCTV footage and seeking it out. The Professor had paid Helsinki to have it destroyed at a scrapyard weeks earlier, but he had not gone through with it, meaning the vehicle is sitting there simply waiting for police to dust it for fingerprints.

The Professor jumps into action, heading to the scrapyard in the nick of time to douse the car with bleach and then plant a blazer button on the seat belonging to Berlin. In order to escape the scrapyard undetected, The Professor is forced to disguise himself as a sickly homeless person, ultimately managing to get away but not without Raquel noticing his presence.

Back at the Mint, Denver is still making regular visits to the basement vault to check on Monica and tend to her leg wound, which is starting to become infected. Berlin switches on the television and is shocked to see that police have identified him using the button found in the car, believing Denver is to blame as the last person to wear the jacket in the vehicle. It’s at this point that he also discovers Monica is still alive, leaving him baying for blood.

A suspenseful stand-off ends in a stalemate as the gang unites to stop Berlin from executing Denver. He concludes that perhaps it is for the best that Monica is still alive, as they now plan to display the wellbeing of the hostages in order to buy themselves some extra time from the police. Raquel enters the Mint to inspect each of them individually, while also slipping Rio a video of his heartbroken parents pleading for him to turn himself in. As the youngest member of the team, he is tempted, but was braced for this tactic by the Professor and decides not to. The Professor tells Berlin he planted the evidence against him as punishment for him giving an order to kill Monica; it later emerges the two of them are brothers.

"Money
The Professor and Berlin are revealed to be brothers.
Netflix

Raquel becomes frustrated at how little progress the police have made since the heist began and believes there is a mole in the tent. To her complete shock, her suspicion eventually settles on Ángel, who remains unaware of the bug in his glasses.

After discovering that Monica is alive, Arturo begins devising another escape plan, instructing two of his fellow hostages to smuggle tools out of the cellar – where a hole is being drilled through the floor – to the room where they are being held. Against all odds, the scheme works and a small group of hostages break free, incapacitating Oslo with a nasty blow to the head and making a run for the doors. Arturo parts ways with them to retrieve Monica, but gets a lot more than he bargained for.

Upon opening the door to the safe, he witnesses Monica and Denver having sex – apparently treating a bullet wound can get pretty steamy – leaving him shocked and enraged. He attempts to fight Denver but is swiftly beaten and alerts Denver to the escaping hostages in order to save his own skin. It’s too late to stop them entirely as 17 hostages flee The Mint, but the gang are able to seal the hole in the wall they escaped through thanks to the tip-off.

Things have taken a dark turn on the outside too as Ángel has become suspicious of Raquel’s new man, partly due to the timing of his arrival and partly because he is deeply in love with her too. He tracks Salva – aka The Professor – back to his hideout and steals a teaspoon with his fingerprints on that he asks to be tested off the record. It comes back a match for prints obtained during one of the Professor’s earlier interventions, confirming Salva is not who he claims to be.

"Money
Oslo is seriously injured by a hostage during one of Arturo’s escape plans.
Netflix

However, by the time Ángel receives word of this, he has been dismissed by Raquel and is in the midst of a self-destructive bout of binge drinking. He has been leaving drunken messages on her answering machine all night, completely filling it up, meaning he has to report word of Salva’s identity on her home phone instead – which she shares with her mother. He gets behind the wheel of a car and ends up seriously injured in a drink-driving accident.

Raquel’s mother, Mariví, hears Ángel’s message and attempts to contact her daughter, but cannot get through to her or leave a message due to her completely full inbox. She instead calls The Professor, who she previously met in his Salva persona, asking him to pass on the message as she believes they are in a relationship. Mariví is relieved to have passed the information onto someone as she is suffering from the early stages of dementia and knew that she would soon forget to do it otherwise.

The Professor is panicked to find out how close he is to being caught, feeling so backed into a corner that he briefly considers killing Raquel’s mother with poison, but after arriving at her home finds he cannot go through with it. He is able to delete the message from her answer phone and after witnessing her deteriorating mental state first-hand, realises she is not a threat to his heist. As he is about to leave, Raquel returns home and the three of them have a drink together.

While there, she has a sudden realisation based on previous evidence that the gang’s pre-heist meeting place must have been in Toledo, and instructs her team to look into any nearby 250-acre estates with a house. Such a residence would be large enough to accommodate a gang, while any noisy weapons training would have been attributed to hunting and not raised any alarms. Sure enough, they find The Professor’s country estate and Raquel unwittingly asks the man himself, who she still only knows as Salva, to drive her there as she is not fit to do so herself.

Season one ends in dramatic fashion as the cops arrive in Toledo and discover a house filled with DNA evidence and information about the gang’s heist – it looks like it’s all over, folks! For a minute, at least.

"Money
The Professor anxiously waits in Raquel’s car as police descend on the Toledo estate.
Netflix

In the season two opener, it is revealed that this is all part of The Professor’s plan. He wanted the police to discover the Toledo estate and filled it with unhelpful information and irrelevant DNA evidence to stall the progress of their investigation. But when the police call in their top forensic investigator, Raquel’s abusive ex-husband Alberto, he is able to find a small fragment of a photo in the fireplace that The Professor burnt the night before the heist, which could be enough to identify him.

Fortunately, The Professor is still on the scene and gets wind of this discovery and a perfect opportunity to muck things up arises when Alberto offers him a lift back to the city. On the way, The Professor pretends to have an upset stomach and asks him to pull over so he can relieve himself around a corner, but in reality uses this opportunity to tear off a corner of an old newspaper in the dumpster. When he returns to the vehicle, he provokes Alberto into a fight, but makes short work of the cop by getting him in a headlock until he passes out.

The Professor then swaps out the photograph fragment for the piece of old newspaper, protecting his identity. But when Alberto regains consciousness, he immediately arrests him for assaulting a police officer and takes him to the station.

Between dropping in on Raquel’s mother, the trip to Toledo and now the arrest, it’s been a long time since the gang inside The Mint have heard anything from The Professor – and they’re getting worried. A schism forms as Berlin, Helsinki, Nairobi and Moscow believe they should wait a little longer before going off-plan, while Tokyo, Rio and Denver have lost faith that the Professor will come through for them.

Ultimately, the trio lead a mutiny against Berlin, restraining him and playing Russian roulette with him to compel him to give up the Professor’s last resort escape plan. They also smash bottles of his medication, which he desperately needs to slow down a terminal health condition that will soon kill him. Moscow and Nairobi break up the stand-off, but there’s no water under the bridge this time. Instead, Berlin straps Tokyo to a trolley and rolls her out of the building to be taken into police custody, no longer trusting her for the heist.

"Money
Tokyo is arrested after being expelled from The Mint by Berlin.
Netflix

While all this drama was unfolding, Helsinki smothered Oslo with a pillow as an act of mercy, as his cousin’s head trauma – sustained during Arturo’s escape attempt – had rendered him severely brain damaged and unable to move or communicate.

Back at the police station, the Professor is still in custody and asks to use the toilet. While in the men’s room, he deliberately bruises his abdomen to make it appear that Alberto had beaten him up and then uses his phone call to contact Raquel. When she arrives, she is appalled by his injuries and demands that Alberto release him or she would report him for brutality. He accepts her demand, allowing The Professor to remain off the radar for a little longer.

When he gets back to his hideout, he is left reeling by how events in the Mint have unfolded. After Rio threatens to pull the entire heist asunder, The Professor assures him that he will find a way to free Tokyo to get him back on the team.

Raquel gets to work on another bid to root out The Professor, telling the local press that Ángel has woken from his coma and implying he will soon give them crucial information – this is a lie, intended to lure The Professor to the hospital. He sees through the deception but wants to be sure that Ángel is still unconscious, so he places a fake casting call for a clown job instructing applicants to descend on the hospital. He also dresses as a crown and blends into the confused crowd, before asking a child to head to Ángel’s room holding a plush toy with a camera inside. In doing so, he gets his confirmation that this whole story was a trap.

He heads back to his lair, ditches the clown getup and goes to meet Raquel for another date. At this stage, it’s clear they both have a connection, with The Professor genuinely hoping to run away with her after the heist is completed. As they’re busy dreaming of their life to come, Raquel spots a bright orange hair on Salva’s jacket, realising he must have been one of the clowns present at the botched operation earlier – suddenly, she knows that he is the mastermind she’s been tracking all this time.

"Money
Raquel confronts The Professor about his lies.
Netflix

Raquel arrests The Professor but rather than turn him in at the station, she takes him to his countryside estate in Toledo to interrogate him about both the heist and their relationship. This takes him out of action, but fortunately the plan to free Tokyo from police had already been set in motion earlier that day.

The Professor had sent mercenaries to intercept her as she is transported to prison, promising to greet her personally at a rendezvous point, but proves to be a no-show following his unexpected arrest. With police closing in and nowhere else to go, Tokyo decides to return to The Mint, tipping off Rio about her imminent arrival with a code word understood only by them. In one of the show’s most iconic scenes, Tokyo rides back into The Mint on a motorbike, but Moscow is shot down by police after opening the door for her.

The police refuse to send medical help to treat Moscow, while the former miner declines an offer to be patched up outside The Mint as he does not wish to go back to prison. Despite their best efforts, Moscow dies of his injuries, getting to say an emotional goodbye to his son, Denver. It’s a particularly painful loss for the gang as the tunnel they have been building – which goes from The Mint to The Professor’s hideout – is almost complete.

Raquel reluctantly lets The Professor go as she is unable to shoot him due to their shared romantic bond, but as a result, is taken off the case and considered an accomplice by her colleagues, who force her to turn in her gun and badge. She steals Ángel’s badge from the hospital and uses it to obtain CCTV footage leading her to The Professor’s warehouse.

"Money
Nairobi inspects her handiwork as the gang prepares to leave The Mint.
Netflix

Inside the Mint, we’re in the endgame. The police are on the offensive, storming into the building with guns blazing, while the gang scrambles to get the money they have printed down to their escape tunnel. In total, they have a highly respectable haul of €984 million, although it is significantly less than their original target.

The Professor convinces Raquel not to divulge the whereabouts of his hideout, winning her over to his side. She persuades him to let her go to the hospital and ask a newly awake Ángel to keep quiet about what he knows, a dangerous move that works but lands her in custody. While being interrogated, she gives up the location of The Professor’s hideout as the police threaten to take her daughter away from her.

The robbers head into the escape tunnel and emerge in the hideout, where their money is stashed in barrels inside a large beer lorry. Monica decides to join the gang, after assuring Denver that her feelings for him aren’t the result of Stockholm Syndrome, but in fact an honest love. Berlin stays behind to fight off the police squad, where he is ultimately killed in a blaze of gunfire. They leave the hideout minutes before police arrive and then scatter across the world with their respective fortunes.

One year later, Raquel – who evaded criminal charges, but did quit the police force – reunites with The Professor in the Philippines after following a clue he left on a postcard.

The Bank of Spain heist (seasons 3-5)

"Rio
Rio and Tokyo live in a tropical paradise for two years.
Netflix

Two years have gone by since The Royal Mint heist, with the robbers living lives of leisure and luxury in disparate parts of the world. Tokyo and Rio moved to a tiny, remote tropical island, entirely removed from the hustle and bustle of modern life. But after two years of lying on the beach drinking out of coconuts, Tokyo craves more excitement in her life and tells Rio she is leaving to rejoin civilisation. He is devastated by the decision, giving her an unregistered phone purchased on the black market, which should allow them to keep in contact without being picked up by the authorities.

Unfortunately, the devices turn out to be duds and their communication is picked up by Europol immediately, with Tokyo narrowly avoiding arrest and Rio being taken into custody as police swarm his tropical getaway spot. Before they went their separate ways, The Professor had assigned handlers to each member of the gang that they were to contact if ever they got into trouble. Tokyo’s transports her to Thailand where she is reunited with The Professor and tells him what’s happened.

The Professor calls in the old team as well as three new members, Palermo (an old friend of Berlin’s), Bogota and Marseille, to plan an even larger heist designed to free Rio and strike a blow to the corrupt establishment. This time, the target is The Bank of Spain, where the country’s gold reserve is stored in a maximum security vault. Emboldened by their past success and aided by their vast riches, the heist begins in dramatic fashion with giant airships bearing the iconic Salvador Dali mask fly over Madrid making it rain money from the sky.

With help from an elite team of computer hackers in Pakistan, The Professor is able to broadcast from screens across the city telling the public that Rio is being illegally held in international territory and tortured (that’s true, by the way – poor Rio!). Large swathes of the public are already huge fans of the Dali gang so it takes little convincing to get them onside, while the money also ensures chaotic scenes on the streets of Madrid, prompting the army to be deployed.

This is exactly the response the gang were expecting, so they intercept communications from the police and roll in themselves as a fake military squad, giving them free and easy entry into the Bank of Spain. Taking control of the building proves difficult due to the governor’s tenacious head of security César Gandía, who very nearly bests the gang in the opening phase of their plan, but they are eventually able to surround him and leave him cuffed with the other hostages. However, in the preceding shoot-out, Palermo is left partially blind after tiny glass fragments get in his eyes. Things are off to a rough start (again).

"Money
Nairobi takes a leading role in retrieving the gold from the flooded safe.
Netflix

Nairobi and Bogota get to work cracking the safe filled with gold, which is designed to flood with water if a break-in is detected. Fortunately, they are prepared with scuba and welding gear, creating an air lock between the safe and the room outside that allows for safe transportation of the gold. Determined not to let this heist escalate as the first one did, Colonel Tamayo plans to send the military in right away for an offensive strike. The gang is able to halt this intervention after gaining access to a second vault behind the gold where state secrets are stored and threatening to release them to the press.

With Raquel now in cahoots with The Professor, a new negotiator is brought in: Alicia Sierra, a pregnant police inspector who was also in charge of Rio’s barbaric torture. She is able to sow dissent between The Professor and Raquel, while tension is also growing inside the bank after a fallout between Nairobi and Palermo. She dislikes him as he had started sleeping with her good friend Helsinki when the gang were preparing for the heist, but neglects his feelings and does not respect him.

Sierra leaks false state secrets to the media in order to neutralise the gang’s threat as it means neither the public nor the press would know which are real and which are fabricated. The police begin preparing another strike on the bank, which The Professor and Raquel get wind of in the nick of time after a brief communication outage. They inform the gang, who are able to outsmart the squad sent in. This latest failure persuades the police to give into the gang’s demand by releasing Rio into the Bank of Spain, in exchange for the safe return of their squad and 40 other hostages.

"Money
Rio is happy to be reunited with Tokyo but traumatised by the torture he has endured.
Netflix

Remember Arturo Román? That nuisance of a man has spun his hostage experience into a media career, publishing a book and giving motivational speeches around Spain off the back of it. He was called in by police as an adviser when the Dali gang returned and has been sat twiddling his thumbs in the police tent since the Bank of Spain heist began. As Rio enters the bank and the selected hostages leave, Arturo spies a chance to find Monica – who has been raising his son with Denver – and develop some new material for his talks. To the bewilderment of the police, he runs into the bank as the doors are closing to become a hostage once more.

On Sierra’s orders, the police planted a listening device inside Rio’s body while he was unconscious, hoping the bug will go undetected and be a vital tool in bringing down the heist. However, the Professor had assumed that – in the event that Rio was returned to them – he would be bugged, and thus had trained his gang in how to remove such a device. In the meantime, he instructs the gang to speak normally as he does not want the police to know he is one step ahead of them.

Before going into surgery, Rio breaks up with Tokyo – a move that may be partially motivated by PTSD sustained from his time being tortured. The procedure goes smoothly and the device is removed intact, allowing the gang to have some fun messing with the police and sending them running in wrong directions, before eventually destroying it.

After some car trouble had given the police a rough approximation of their whereabouts, The Professor and Raquel are spotted on a drone and police begin heading to their location. In this event, the plan had been to each scale a tall tree and camouflage themselves in the branches, but Raquel struggles to work her climbing gear and is forced to abandon The Professor in the woods, taking refuge at a nearby farm where she is quickly discovered by the owners.

Initially, they plan to turn her over to the police, who are offering millions to whoever can find her. But Raquel draws on her experience in the force to explain that they are unlikely to ever actually see that money and that The Professor could offer them even more. Unfortunately, this whole interaction takes too long and while Raquel comes close to winning them over, the police arrive before she can.

Back at the bank, Sierra attempts to turn Nairobi by bringing out her son, who she lost custody of several years ago after being arrested for dealing drugs. She has desperately wished to be reunited with him ever since so this tactic succeeds in upsetting Nairobi and drawing her to the window, where Sierra orders a sniper to shoot her in the chest. In doing so, she creates an opportunity for another assault, taking advantage of the team’s distressed state.

"Nairobi
Nairobi is shot by a sniper at the window of the Bank of Spain.
Netflix

Meanwhile, at the farm the Professor believes that Raquel has been illegally shot dead by police after hearing what appeared to be an execution over their shared earpiece. In reality, this was a deception using the same sneaky tactics as the gang had used on police earlier, but The Professor won’t learn this until some time later. Devastated by the loss of his beloved partner, he authorises the gang to use lethal force on their attackers, which takes the police by surprise and prompts them to pause their advance.

The gang use this time to save Nairobi’s life; she begs to be released to police so that her surgery can be performed by professionals and the gang argue over whether this is the right course of action. Ultimately, Tokyo makes the final call that she will carry out the procedure herself in the bank, while also taking Palermo’s leadership role from him. The Professor is picked up by Marseille and returns to his duties as heist mastermind, arranging a 48-hour truce with the police that allows Nairobi some added recovery time.

Palermo is furious over Tokyo’s coup and very nearly storms out of the bank entirely, a move which would have doomed the heist, but Helsinki is able to stop him and restrain him to a chair with the hostages. With Tokyo’s help, the Professor realises that Raquel is not dead and likely being held in the police tent outside the bank, so he breaks into the apartment of Colonel Tamayo’s assistant, Antoñanzas, and persuades him to send her a message.

Raquel is close to caving when Sierra offers her a reduced prison sentence and threatens to find her mother and daughter, who had been living on the run with her in the Philippines before the second heist. Fortunately, the message from Antoñanzas gets to her just in time, assuring her that the Professor is working to get her out via the so-called “Paris plan”. This tells her exactly what she needs to do too: stall for time.

"Money
Raquel (also known as Lisbon) receives a message from The Professor while in custody.
Netflix

Keen to get back in command at any cost, Palermo begins scheming with restrained head of security Gandía, instructing him to break out of his handcuffs by dislocating his thumbs, but only when Rio is on guard duty as he correctly assumes the gang’s youngest member will be too traumatised to fire a gun. Gandía gets away from the hostage room and is running loose in the Bank of Spain, first arriving in Nairobi’s recovery room where he attempts to suffocate her with a pillow. She fights back, stabbing him in the neck with a needle, causing him to flee to a secret panic room – disconnecting the Professor’s cameras on the way.

Gandía contacts Tamayo in the police tent via a phone in the panic room, but is discouraged from launching an attack from within due to the aforementioned 48-hour truce, which has been widely reported by the press. Settled into his mole role, Antoñanzas tips off The Professor about Gandía’s tactical advantage, but as he relays the information to Tokyo, she is knocked unconscious by the security chief and taken back to his panic room where she is restrained. He informs the gang and the hostages of Tokyo’s abduction via the bank’s intercom system, which gives Arturo the confidence to start plotting once more – but this time, no one is keen to work with him as he drugged and sexually assaulted one of his fellow hostages, Amanda.

Conscious again, but limited in her mobility, Nairobi heads back down to the vault with Bogota, where she had been spearheading the key objective of the heist: melting down Spain’s gold reserve and turning it from large bars into tiny pellets. The operation is going relatively well, but they still have a long way to go before completing the work. After giving a rousing speech to boost morale, Nairobi returns to her room.

"Money
Nairobi heads down to the vault, where Spain’s gold reserve is being melted down, to calm her frightened workers (above).
Netflix

The rest of the gang are attempting to hunt down Gandía but not having much luck. The formidable foe spots Rio and Denver entering an elevator and throws a grenade in with them as the door closes. Fortunately, they are able to survive by piling their bulletproof helmets and vests over the bomb, but it’s a very close call. Gandía escapes through the air vents and heads to Nairobi’s room, placing her in a headlock and intending to use her as leverage.

Meanwhile, The Professor remains hard at work on various schemes, discovering the location of the bank’s panic room and sending Marseille to Algeria to dig up evidence on the torture tactics used by Sierra on Rio.

Gandía shoots a large hole through a door and forces Nairobi’s head through it, while also restraining her hands. This gives him a place to negotiate with the gang, threatening to kill her unless they allow him to escape. With no other option, they reluctantly oblige and Gandía exits with his gun still pointed at Nairobi. Tragically, he goes back on his word and shoots Nairobi dead, before making a run for his escape room. Denver throws a grenade in his direction and the blast sends shrapnel into Gandía’s back, but it’s not enough to stop him from slipping away. Having located the panic room, the gang cut its telephone line to isolate Gandía, while Tokyo knocks him out when he frees her to treat his wounds.

The Professor’s new strategy involves bombarding the police with crises that distract them from the heist itself. He does this by drawing attention to Rio’s illegal torture by the Spanish authorities, providing indisputable evidence that it did indeed happen, which humiliates and shames Colonel Prieto at a press conference. Tamayo tells Sierra that she won’t see jail time for overseeing the torture, but she will have to take full responsibility to protect the credibility of the police and armed forces. She isn’t happy to have her reputation soiled, so she instead opts to bring everyone down with her, telling press that every senior figure in the armed forces and the government approved of what she was doing.

"Alicia
Sierra is not willing to take full responsibility for Rio’s torture.
Netflix

The Professor also makes the public aware that Raquel has also been illegally detained in the police tent outside the Bank of Spain, where she still has not been formally charged or taken into custody. This forces them to arrange a transfer vehicle to take her to jail, giving The Professor an opportunity to orchestrate an elaborate breakout. His associates intercept Raquel’s transport and smuggle her aboard a fake police helicopter. The gang forces Gandía to demand a rescue craft from Tamayo who swiftly orders one, which allows the craft carrying Raquel to drop her off at the bank with no suspicion at all.

The Professor and the gang celebrate her arrival as a major victory, once again confident that the heist will succeed. This is short-lived however, as since her dismissal Sierra has been doing some off-the-book investigating into The Professor and has successfully located his hideout. Strangely, it seems that police detectives are only capable of finding the criminal genius after they get fired. Anyway, as he is celebrating the safe return of Raquel, he is caught off-guard by Sierra who pulls a gun to his head and tells him: “Checkmate.”

To see how he gets out of this one, check out Money Heist season five part one, which launches on Netflix on Friday 3rd September.

Money Heist seasons 1-4 are available to stream on Netflix. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.