How Can The Money Heist Crew Survive That Finale Disaster?

The closing minutes of Money Heist part 4 are a little too cherry for a Netflix season finale. As season-ender “The Paris Plan” wraps, the series’ band of criminals are as happy as they can be trapped inside the Bank of Spain while mourning a murdered comrade (R.I.P. Nairobi/Ágata Jiménez (Alba Flores), “The Fucking Boss”) and battling an endless barrage of gun-toting law enforcement officers. The group managed to get Lisbon/Raquel Murillo (Itziar Ituño) back from police custody and Gandía (José Manuel Poga), the man who killed Nairobi, has been beaten to a pulp. 

Then Alicia Sierra (Najwa Nimri) goes and ruins the good mood in the final shot of “Paris.” The detective tracks down The Professor (Álvaro Morte) to his command centre lair and points a gun in his face. “Checkmate, son of a bitch,” she says, ending the episode. It’s a moment that suggests The Professor could be dead come Money Heist part 5, with the rest of his crew could be in shambles. However, there is still a lot of room for hope, despite Sierra’s murder-happy grin. 

While Sierra could easily kill The Professor, there are two less fatal outcomes at play. The first possibility is that Sierra could use The Professor to free herself from her legal nightmare. In the penultimate episode, “Strike the Tent,” the Professor leaks damning details about Río’s (Miguel Herrán) illegal detention by Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI). In an emotional video, Río recounts the many forms of torture he suffered at the hands of the CNI, which stuffed him into an inhumanely small cell, forced him to defecate on himself, and then buried him alive in Maghreb. The Professor leaks the emails of CNI colonel Prieto (Juan Fernández) as proof of Río’s accusations and forces Osman, the man who tortured Río, to admit to his crimes on live video. 

Coronel Tamayo (Fernando Cayo), who is in charge of stopping the heist, decides Prieto and detective Sierra will be his scapegoats for the human rights fiasco. While Tamayo promises Sierra — who is pregnant — full governmental support during her trial, she refuses to go down for the Río crisis without a fight. In a “Paris” press conference, Sierra admits to every brutal accusation levied against her by the press, confirming her culpability in Río’s torture and Nairobi’s death and thereby implicating the entire Spanish government in the process. Then she disappears to find The Professor. 

Considering all of the misdeeds Sierra admitted to in her press conference, only something big could save her — something like apprehending the mastermind of two nationally debilitating heists. Sierra could even bolster her defense by using The Professor to take down his entire band of accomplices.

Executing such a plan is a very big if. After Sierra’s shocking confession, it is likely the government — and specifically CNI — would want to punish her for betraying them on such a public stage. It is possible that capturing the Heisters wouldn’t even save her at this point, and Sierra knows that. If anything, her quick and exacting detective work in “Paris” proves how wildly intelligent she is. 

That is why it is far more likely that Sierra is hoping to join the Money Heist crew as a new thief, as inspector Murillo did before her. Sierra’s press conference was a middle finger to Tamayo and a master class in blowing up your life — not putting it on pause until you can outsmart some robbers. Sierra went so far as to send her cat away for an extended “vacation,” suggesting she is planning to be gone for some time. If Sierra were simply going to find The Professor and bring him to authorities, she wouldn’t need to put her pet in someone else’s custody. 

If Sierra’s pet mom behaviour isn’t enough to convince you she may be plotting a new career as a criminal, then let’s turn to her motives as a mom-to-be. As we see throughout Money Heist part 4, Sierra is pregnant and on the verge of giving birth at any moment. It is likely she will do whatever it takes to protect her child and their future together, including joining the heist. At this point, The Professor would be smart to accept Sierra into the fold, considering how easily she was able to track him down with just a few scraps of information. Such ingenuity must be useful to a massive criminal organization.

Don’t be surprised if, come Money Heist part 5, we’re calling Alicia Sierra something like “Marrakesh.”