Luther The Fallen Sun is a stand-alone story. While there are a number of characters and callbacks to the Luther series, if you’ve never seen an episode of Luther, you can still understand what’s going on in Fallen Sun.
The main plot revolves around David Robey, a psychopath and serial killer of the highest order. He’s been killing people indiscriminately for years, and now he’s elevated his game for the whole world to see.
David has a full staff who scour the Internet looking for vulnerable people. These are people who sometimes lead a double life online or just have odd fetishes that they play out online, things they hide from the people in their real life.
David’s crew finds out what these people are doing by frequenting chat rooms and areas of the dark web where people live out these fetishes. They’ve also hacked into laptops and phone cameras in order to catch people in the act.
David then takes this information and uses it to blackmail the people into performing various tasks, and then, more often than not, it leads to David killing them. These tasks can seem like something as trivial as running an errand for David, but there’s a plan and a purpose behind all of his actions.
Luther The Fallen Sun Explained
When David’s wife discovered what he was doing and tried to stop him, he staged a fire that nearly took his wife’s life, leaving her severely disfigured and unable to care for herself.
When David blackmails Callum near the beginning of the movie, he lures him to a fake car accident and drugs him, eventually killing the young man and leaving his body in a mansion with a number of other victims. However, David contacted the relatives of the people he hung up in the mansion, leading them to the location and essentially being forced to watch their loved ones burn.
Luther Goes To Jail
At the crime scene, where the initial car accident was staged, David sees that Luther has been assigned to the case. Even promising Callum’s mother that he would tell him. Unfortunately, this places Luther and David’s direct sight, who digs up seemingly every bad thing Luther has done over the course of the series, making him look like a dirty cop and getting Luther locked up in jail.
For those who have seen this series, this has been a long time coming, given that Luther does what he needs to in order to solve a case regularly skirting the law.
For those unfamiliar, if you even watched the first few episodes of Luther season one, you’ll get a general idea of how Luther operates. He’s definitely not shy about breaking and entering, planting evidence, and things of that nature. It’s all for the greater good of catching a criminal, but it’s still technically breaking the law, which is why he goes to jail when all this is uncovered.
Once again, David’s staff is trained to uncover this kind of activity, and they even have a mole in Luther’s department. So digging up all this dirt and making it public didn’t take much effort.
With Luther in jail, David thinks he has free reign to do as he pleases. Luther even gets taunted by David while he’s incarcerated, befriending Callum’s mother and prompting her to visit Luther in prison, questioning why he failed her. This is a bit heavy-handed and moves rather quickly, but we’re essentially getting a full season of Luther cut down into just two episodes.
Luther arranges his escape by causing a riot and getting help from one of his many contacts. Then proceeds to continue working on the case, much to the dismay of the new DCU Odette Raine.
While Odette has taken over for Martin Shank, she does enlist his help once Luther breaks out of prison. Her objective is to bring Luther in, but Martin convinces her that it would be better to let Luther lead them to David and then catch them both at the same time.
David’s Manipulation
David pulls a few more stunts, such as forcing a number of people to commit suicide in public. They would rather die than have their secrets released to the people closest to them. This is a running theme throughout the movie. Luther’s secrets were released to the public, and he ended up in prison.
All these people David manipulates, and black males are susceptible because they do not want their secrets released. Even the mold David has in the department claims what David has on him isn’t even all that significant.
More often than not, we never actually learn what David has on these people he’s using. But that’s not the point. The importance of something varies from individual to individual. What may seem small and meaningless to one person could be monumental to someone else. It’s about disappointing or hurting the people closest to you, the ones you love.
For example, if your wife caught you looking at the filth on the Internet, it’s not necessarily the act of getting caught or even really what you were looking at. It’s the fact that you disappointed or betrayed your wife, and that hurts the most. That’s what David uses to blackmail these people.
David sent Luther a recording of Callum’s death via an unused FM radio station. Luther is able to triangulate the source of the FM broadcast, which leads him to someone else who David is blackmailing.
This person then gives Luther a way to contact David, which is how he can track down David’s whereabouts. This is also where public suicide takes place. Luther almost catches David, but of course, Odette and her department interfere, and David gets away.
Luther The Fallen Sun Ending
As Luther The Fallen Sun comes to an end, Odette’s daughter is taken by David, who plans on having a public torture and execution streamed live on the dark web. Hundreds of thousands of people have already signed up to view this event, but after tracking down and speaking with David’s tortured wife, Luther, and Odette are able to find the location where the event is being held.
They’re able to save Odette’s daughter and confront David, who ends up drowning, with Martin arriving just in time to save Luther from drowning alongside David.
It’s at this point that Martin and Odette allow Luther to walk free, making it seem as though he died in pursuit of David. Luther is taken to a safe house where he’s able to heal up. It’s here, at the very end of the movie, that he is approached by an unnamed government agency and asked to join their ranks.
This is MI 6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service. We know this because the head of the agency is referred to as Chief in the movie, which lines up with the MI6 rank.
MI6 is also more in line with where Luther would fall since he’s a detective, not a spy or some frontline soldier. For Americans, MI Six is basically the British version of the CIA.
Luther The Fallen Sun Ending Explained
So now Luther is presumed dead and working with MI 6. Does this mean we’ll see another season of Luther or possibly a second movie? Neil Cross, the creator and head writer of Luther the series and the movie, has made it abundantly clear that a sixth season of the series is not going to happen. Cross has been saying this for years now, even before the film was officially announced.
However, if the movie is a success on Netflix, it’s possible that another movie could happen. Fallen Sun does not close the door on Luther, and that was very likely intentional. Idris Elba and Neil Cross both loved this character and have expressed interest in doing more Luther.
If you want Luther to return, either go see the Fallen Sun in theaters or watch it on Netflix within its first 30 days on the platform. That’s the most important period of time for any new Netflix production. If it does well in that initial 30-day window, it will increase the chances of another movie happening.
You can also watch the series, but with it moving from Netflix to Hulu, that won’t have much of an impact on Netflix greenlighting another film. So while nothing is confirmed, it’s still possible that we could get more Luther. So what did you think of Luther’s The Fallen Sun? Was it a fitting continuation of the series? And would you like to see another Luther movie?
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