Elsbeth Season 2 finale recap: Elsbeth solves a case behind bars and Kaya’s heartfelt departure

In the Season 2 finale of Elsbeth, titled “Ramen Holiday,” several killers whom she helped put away during her time in New York return. However, it turns out that this time, they didn’t commit the murder.

In the episode, the theater professor and an inmate, Alex Modarian (Stephen Moyer), meets his end after he is mysteriously murdered in the library. It’s hard for Elsbeth to catch the killer, as all the people around her are capable and had a motive to kill Alex, which they share with the song, Cell Block Tango, from the musical, Chicago.

Elsewhere, Kaya (Carra Patterson) and Charles Wagner (Wendell Pierce) try to prove that Elsbeth was not to blame for Crawford’s death, as seen in the previous episode.

Here’s what happened in the epic Elsbeth Season 2 finale.

Disclaimer: The article contains spoilers for the Elsbeth Season 2 finale. Reader discretion is advised.

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Elsbeth Season 2 finale recap: Elsbeth gets an unwanted reunion

After Edwin Dousant, the Crawford loyalist judge, sentenced Elsbeth for Crawford’s murder in Episode 19 of Elsbeth Season 2, the eccentric attorney finds herself behind bars. She also finds herself among many of the murderers that she helped put behind bars, such as Joe Dillon (Arian Moayed), Pupetta Del Ponte (Alyssa Milano), and Dr. Vanessa Holmes (Gina Gershon), among others.

Among those is the theatre professor, Alex, who directs a play on Elsbeth, portraying that she planted evidence on all of them to prove them guilty of the murders they allegedly committed. However, before having it performed, he meets his tragic ending when Elsbeth finds him stabbed to death near a bowl of Ramen in the library.

As expected, Elsbeth’s first instinct is to suspect all the inmates, and she begins to subtly interrogate them to find out what they were doing at the time of the murder.

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Elsbeth Season 2 finale recap: Elsbeth’s investigation gets her to the murderer, who turns out not to be one of the inmates

As she proceeds with her investigation, she initially gets ambiguous responses from the other inmates, who all reveal that Alex had it coming, with a sparkly musical rendition of Cell Block Tango. She begins reporting to the Warden, Mrs. Martin (Donna Lynne Champlin), and mistakenly gets Milano’s Pupetta arrested after blurting out that she had been making knives with arts and crafts.

After talking to the inmates and prison guard Rocco, Elsbeth discovers a half-finished tunnel that Pupetta’s Uncle made and about Alex’s transfer to a better prison. She shares all the information with the Warden, who dismisses her claims of the tunnel’s existence but tells Elsbeth that Alex might have gathered a lot of information about the inmates during his play rehearsals and might have wanted to snitch on them by sharing the information with the DA that he was supposed to meet.

However, rather than suspecting the inmates, Elsbeth reaches a different conclusion with their help. She reveals that, as Joe told her, some of them used cash instead of ramen to trade, which Alex then gave to the Warden, as the warden was the one who ran the black market business. She further proved that, as Mrs. Martin confiscated all the makeshift weapons that the inmates made, she might have kept a weapon created by Chef Veev with Ramen and used it to kill Alex, and then put the knife in his hot bowl of ramen, which softened the weapon.

Elsbeth shared that it wasn’t the inmates’ information that Alex was trading with the DA to go into a better prison, but the Warden’s secret black market trading. However, it seemed like Elsbeth’s solving a murder case in the prison was not appreciated as the inmates now did not have anyone to do their bidding and bring exclusive stuff for them.

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Elsbeth Season 2 finale recap: Wagner and co. Successfully bring Elsbeth out of prison

Since the beginning of the finale episode of Elsbeth Season 2, we saw Kaya being unhappy about how Elsbeth had to go to prison and wanted to try to find a way to get her out of there. Wagner even tries to talk to Judge Dousant, who still thinks it was Elsbeth who killed Crawford and wouldn’t change his decision.

However, the situation changes when Elsbeth’s son Teddy (Ben Levi Ross) finds out something dubious about Dousant as he finds a connection between Crawford and Dousant and the Mertons case that they can use to free Elsbeth. With Officer Chandler’s (Ethan Slater) help, they discover that Dousant attended a junket paid by a Historical Law Society donor, who saved Crawford by covering up his murder. Dousant still didn’t budge as he asked them to prove their theory, but Wagner didn’t confront him with just a theory, as he and Chandler later revealed that Dousant attended the junket with an unidentified woman.

With this little information to blackmail Dousant, Elsbeth was now free as she surprised her best friend Kaya in her farewell party at the precinct and even gave a heartfelt farewell. She talked about how she had been questioning herself and considering leaving, but finished her speech on a hopeful note by saying Kaya is going where she is needed, while she will be here where she is needed.

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Elsbeth season 2 is available to stream on Paramount+.

Also Read: 5 heartfelt moments from Elsbeth Season 2