By the end of The Woods, Pawel has made the difficult decision to resign from his prosecutor job after his sister-in-law is caught up in a fraudulent scheme to do with the charity she runs in memory of Pawel’s wife, who died of cancer. The powerful father of a young rapist that Pawel was prosecuting had used an intermediary to entrap the sister-in-law as an attempt to blackmail Pawel into lifting the charges. Pawel, being a decent sort, prosecuted the guilty party, shouldered the blame for the financial fraud, promised to pay back the charity’s money lost to fraud, and resigned so that his workplace wouldn’t be tainted by scandalous association. He left the series jobless and alone, with a question mark over his future career.
In 1994, young Pawel had been in love with Laura Goldsztajn, the teenage daughter of the Jewish school principal who ran the summer camp where Kamila disappeared. In 2019, after the death of his wife, Pawel reunited with Laura, now a lecturer played by Agnieszka Grochowska. In 2019, Laura is married to a much older man, but she and Pawel discover that they still love each other. When Laura and Pawel return to the now-derelict summer camp in the closing moments of The Woods, he asks her if this could be their second chance, and she shakes her head, cries and walks away leaving him alone. It’s the poignant ending that Pawel predicted when he told Laura “I lose everybody I love. My mother. My sister. My wife. I’ll lose you too I guess.”
What happens to Pawel next?
Forget Pawel’s maudlin prediction because in Hold Tight, Pawel and Laura are married! (That’s not made explicit in the series, but Laura’s character’s IMDb listing names her as “Laura Goldsztajn-Kopinska”, showing that she’s added his surname to hers.) They live together in a smart Warsaw home with his now-teenage daughter Kaja. The first time we see Laura and Pawel together, they’re clearly besotted with each other and very happy. He’s showering after an early morning run, and she joins him for some saucy shower business (despite the fact that their home’s open-plan living means that his daughter Kaja can walk in on them – and she does, but must either be used to it or incredibly well-adjusted as she just laughs and takes it in her stride.)
In Hold Tight, Laura is a teacher at Kaja’s school, and the two clearly get on very well with no step-mother/step-daughter resentment or friction. Laura gives Kaja lifts to school and is happy to invade her students’ privacy to help Kaja’s search for information about her missing boyfriend. Pawel’s remarriage also doesn’t appear to have harmed his relationship with Kaja in the slightest, the father and daughter remain very close to one another.
Workwise, Pawel now runs a legal advisory firm from the family home, enabling him to see plenty of Kaja and to use his legal training after being forced to quit his prosecutor role at the end of The Woods.
Do We Learn What Happened To Pawel’s Sister Kamila?
No, though Kamila does get a mention in Hold Tight. After Kaja’s boyfriend Adam goes missing, she asks her father “When Aunt Kamila disappeared, did you have a bad feeling? That something happened to her?” Pawel says that he did, but that was because two other dead bodies were discovered at the time of Kamila’s disappearance, and he tries to reassure Kaja that Adam is a different case.
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