It’s been a long and arduous journey for the members of Money Heist‘s Dalí gang, but it has finally come to a climactic end with the release of season five part two on Netflix.
The original group initially reunited with the intention of saving young hacker Rio (Miguel Herrán), who had been abducted and brutally tortured by police, but doing so has come at a terrible price.
Since entering the Bank of Spain, they have lost two of their most beloved members – Tokyo and Nairobi – with fans anxious at the prospect of more characters losing their lives in the final five episodes.
All the while, there’s the lingering question over how exactly The Professor intends to smuggle Spain’s entire gold reserve out of the maximum security institution, which is currently being besieged by the country’s considerable military might.
If you need your answers right now, then read on for a complete explanation of the Money Heist season five part two ending, including a couple of major plot twists that you probably won’t see coming.
*Full spoilers follow.*
Money Heist season 5 part 2 ending explained: Who lives and who dies?
The opening chapters of Money Heist season five part two see some major developments, which we’re going to speed through to start off with in order to get to the truly juicy stuff.
The Professor’s hostage Alicia Sierra takes advantage of the fallout from Tokyo’s death to stage a brief escape, but ultimately enters into an uneasy alliance with her rival when it becomes clear that Colonel Tamayo will have no part in helping her rebuild her life.
(Check out our guide to the Money Heist season five part one ending for more details on how she got in such hot water.)
The team inside the Bank of Spain set about transporting the gold ingots, which they have melted into tiny pebbles, from out of the maximum security institution. They intend to do so by sending it through the sewers to an underground storm tank using an industrial sized pressure pump they stole from an offshore oil rig at an earlier time.
Unfortunately, there are enemies from within. As far as the gang is aware, Tokyo’s act of self-sacrifice killed the entire military squad that has been hounding them, with the exception of captured leader Sagasta and another seriously injured team member. But secretly, there is one more survivor – Arteche – who has been busy working away in the shadows.
!["Military]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2021/08/money_heist_military_squad-3e76496.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"money_heist_military_squad\"")
Things really heat up at the end of episode eight, which presents a massive twist that will probably leave jaws on the floor.
The Professor, Sierra, Marseille, Benjamin and the rest of the outside team are working away at the aforementioned stormwater tank, turning the gold pebbles from the Bank of Spain back into ingots so they can be transported more easily.
But the police are hot on their trail, having figured out that their smuggling plan involves moving gold through the pipes underneath the bank, arriving heavily armed at the hideout to end this elaborate heist.
Not wishing to see anymore bloodshed, the Professor orders his team to surrender, with the cops cuffing them all and placing them in the back of a police van where they are then left waiting. For quite a while.
At first, they dare not act out, seeing the noise and glow of police sirens from outside the van’s obscured windows, but after a certain amount of time they realise that something isn’t quite right – sure enough, the door isn’t even locked.
They step out to find that there are no police cars at all, only a set of flashing blue lights and a speaker blaring out a siren sound effect, while the gold they had been working on is nowhere to be seen.
Then it dawns on the Professor that the people who had stormed in earlier weren’t police at all, but rival thieves who had stolen the 90 ton gold horde for themselves and scarpered to whereabouts unknown. Cue: facepalms all round.
There’s only one person it can be: Berlin’s son, Rafael, who up to now we had only seen in flashback, working in partnership with his father’s ex-wife, who had heard all about the Bank of Spain heist years earlier at the height of their romance.
!["Patrick]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2021/08/money_heist_season_5_berlin_son-cc54b95.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"money_heist_season_5_berlin_son\"")
Following this epic deception, The Professor and his team set about recovering their gold, tracing Rafael’s rival robbers to a nearby quarry, where their lorries have been emptied of all gold ingots and abandoned. Oh dear!
Meanwhile, it won’t be long before the actual police stumble upon the stormwater tank where The Professor had been enacting his plan, so he sends Marseille there to set the so-called Tom Thumb plan into action.
This involves dressing up the tank to make it look as if The Professor still has the gold and has transported it to another location, leaving several fabricated clues (i.e. breadcrumbs) for the police to waste their time on.
Back at the Bank of Spain, things are dire indeed. Arteche and Sagasta’s plan has worked out perfectly, with the stealthy Special Forces operative successfully deactivating the gang’s bombs at three entry-points – allowing the army to move in – before personally disarming Palermo and Helsinki. The heist is over.
Every member of the Dalí gang inside the Bank of Spain is now under arrest, a fact that the Professor is soon informed of. He decides he must go there himself to be with his teammates at this dark hour, tasking his former adversary Sierra with locating the stolen gold, while also handing her a note to pass onto his devious nephew (if she is able to track him down).
Luckily, Sierra is nothing if not cunning and sharp-minded, quickly figuring out that their rivals would need a large patch of land to store the 90-ton haul, which would have likely been purchased recently i.e. since the Dalí gang’s Bank of Spain heist started making headlines.
With some involuntary help from staff at the local land registry, they begin visiting every plot of land that has been bought with cash in the surrounding area over the past week – and it isn’t long until they come across Rafael’s stashing spot.
To the casual observer, it’s a pleasantly decorated and well-maintained static home, but on closer inspection it becomes clear that this home has been hastily thrown together to conceal something buried underneath: the gold!
!["Alicia]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2021/08/money_heist_alicia_sierra-f38d592.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"money_heist_alicia_sierra\"")
The Professor and his gang undergo some intense interrogation from Colonel Tamayo, who wrongly believes they know where the missing fortune is, but no one lets on that it has been swindled by a third party.
The military chief is under unimaginable pressure himself as if the gold isn’t found soon, Spain will descend into an unprecedented financial crisis when international markets discover its entire wealth has vanished.
It ends with an ultimatum: Tamayo threatens to execute the entire gang unless they disclose where the gold is, but The Professor says doing so will doom him (and the entire country) to never finding the treasure.
With this in mind, at the last moment, Tamayo reluctantly agrees to go along with the criminal mastermind’s high-concept contingency plan, which allows everyone to come out relatively unscathed.
The Professor calls for two lorries – which he had prepared earlier in true Blue Peter style – carrying what appears to be gold bars to be parked up outside the Bank of Spain.
Tamayo goes out to hold a packed press conference announcing that the Dalí gang has been defeated thanks to an efficient police and military investigation, which has seen Spain’s national gold reserve returned to its rightful home.
As a result, panic starts to subside and the international markets quickly bounce back. So how has The Professor brought about such a tidy outcome?
Well, the “gold bars” in those two lorries are actually gold-coated brass which The Professor had prepared should his gang be backed into a corner as they have.
Tamayo is made aware of this deception, but going along with it is the only way he can secure Spain’s economy, as the world needs to think that its gold reserves remain safely locked away.
The lie is unlikely to ever be exposed as Spain never actually uses its gold ingots to make trade deals. Rather, they are a symbolic representation of the country’s wealth and rarely ever seen by anyone under ordinary circumstances. But if the international community simply believes that they are there, it should be enough to keep business ticking along nicely.
Back at Rafael’s fake bachelor pad, a tense stand-off ends with Sierra passing him a note from his uncle, The Professor, outlining the mind-blowing ruse he has planned. Wishing to stay faithful to his family, Rafael agrees to split the enormous gold with his uncle’s team. How kind!
Tamayo tells the world at his press conference that the entire Dalí gang was killed in a shoot-out at the Bank of Spain, when in reality they have been placed in witness protection and are about to start new lives in Portugal.
Sierra tells The Professor that the gold is waiting for them there, meaning the surviving members of the team will be settling into lives of luxury from here on out.
In the end, the surviving characters in Money Heist are: The Professor, Lisbon, Rio, Denver, Stockholm, Manila, Helsinki, Palermo, and Bogotá.
Sadly, the Bank of Spain heist did cost the lives of Nairobi in season four and Tokyo in season five, but succeeded in its initial goal of liberating Rio from his barbaric treatment at the hands of the Spanish authorities.
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Money Heist seasons 1-5 are available to stream on Netflix. Read our guide to the best series on Netflix. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.