u/Befunouille

It is quite shocking after watching season 1 of Berlin. If you go back to the first seasons of La Casa de Papel, especially the first two, and focus on the character of Berlin and his personality. It's less shocking when you watch the five seasons of La Casa de Papel then Berlin, because in seasons 3, 4, and 5, except for a few nice moments of violence and mental disturbance, the character of Berlin seems much less cruel and psychopathic than in the first two seasons of La Casa de Papel. The transition with season 1 of Berlin is therefore a bit less shocking. But I invite you to do the comparison: watch season 1 of Berlin, see a man, bohemian, romantic, somewhat obsessive and rigid in mind in some aspects, but a person who wants to be almost like a dreamy butterfly, despite some harshness towards his team.

And then go back to seasons 1 and 2 of La Casa de Papel, and it feels like you’re watching a completely different character if you focus on his personality. In the first two seasons of La Casa de Papel, he’s a genuine sociopath who regularly takes pleasure in psychologically torturing the hostages, repeatedly sexually assaults one of them, and is fully aware that he behaves like a bastard, as he says before dying: ‘I’ve acted like a complete asshole my whole life.’ He has no hesitation about killing a hostage. In short, he’s an extremely cold and cruel man, very far from the bohemian figure we see in season 1 of Berlin.

Of course, you can try to explain it by saying it’s because of his illness, or because of the recent heartbreak he experienced when his last wife left him for his son, but that feels like an easy and disappointing explanation. Because that would mean that in the first two seasons of La Casa de Papel, we’re seeing a man who isn’t true to himself, and that only at the very end of his life does he become a much darker, entirely different person — meaning that this darkness isn’t actually intrinsic to the character’s personality. I find that explanation a bit unfortunate.

Moreover, once again, before dying he explicitly says that he behaved terribly his entire life. So originally, the character was clearly intended to be fundamentally like that. It’s also stated in episode 8 of season 1 of La Casa de Papel, in his psychiatric file, that he cannot distinguish between good and evil and that he has a total lack of empathy. In short, the character was meant to have always been like this, and I think it’s a shame that they softened him so much afterward.

...Weren't brothers. Sure, you can tell that this probably wasn’t the original plan during the first two seasons (the “Little brother, I love you” line felt metaphorical rather than literal), especially considering all the inconsistencies people here have already pointed out that this reveal created afterward.

But more importantly, their relationship would have been infinitely more complex and interesting. Throughout the first heist, you keep wondering why the Professor and Berlin are so close, why they seem so emotionally connected, especially during the Bella Ciao scene. It remains deeply intriguing because you wonder how two men who are so different — the Professor with his empathetic and ultimately kind nature, and Berlin with his sociopathic temperament — can love each other so much and be that close.

And making them brothers feels a bit too easy and lazy, in my opinion. Not revealing any family connection and leaving a mystery around what these two men went through to become so close despite their very different personalities would have been far more interesting, I think. Everyone could have imagined that maybe one or several very difficult events brought them together — who knows.

But I keep coming back to the same point: the idea of making them such different men, yet still deeply bonded through time and experience, was infinitely more intriguing than simply saying, “Well, they’re brothers, and that’s why they love each other.”