Biblical Imagery in Dolly Parton’s Music
9 min read
7 min read
7 min read
6 min read
4 min read
Before Oct. 7, Fauda's creators pitched a Hamas attack scenario, then rejected it as too extreme. Reality outpaced them, and the new season had to catch up.
When Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff sit down to write a new season of Fauda, they ask themselves one question: "What is the thing Israelis fear most?"
Months before Oct. 7, 2023, Raz had an answer. "Let's do an event where Hamas takes over a settlement in the territories and conducts negotiations from there, and it turns into something huge."
Issacharoff turned it down. "It's not realistic," he said. "We can't do that."
"Then Oct. 7 happened," Raz told Ynet, "and we had to rewrite the season because what happened was far bigger and more horrifying than our darkest script."
What they wrote instead arrives on Netflix worldwide on Sept. 8. Two of the season's eleven episodes go back to the terrors of Oct. 7 itself, seen through the eyes of Doron, Eli and Steve. "We won't use archive footage," Raz said, "but we'll show what they went through."
When the season aired in Israel, its broadcaster warned local viewers they could skip those two episodes. Israelis were offered the chance to look away because they had already been there. For viewers around the world, Sept. 8 is the chance to finally look.
The losses in season five aren't only an aborted script. In November 2023, Fauda producer Matan Meir was killed in northern Gaza. "We deeply mourned the loss of Fauda producer Matan Meir, who was killed in Gaza," Raz said. "A rare man with a huge heart.”
Two months later, Idan Amedi, the beloved actor who plays Sagi, was seriously wounded in Gaza, in an operation reported to have been part of the effort to rescue hostages. Two of his close friends, Gabriel Bloom and Akiva Yasinsky, were killed in the same battle. Raz flew to the hospital and stayed with him through his early recovery.
Amedi healed and made an emotional return to the stage, but he told Raz he wasn't ready to come back for season five. "Before anything else, Idan is a good friend, and you have to respect his wishes," Raz said. "It was very hard for me when he told me he wasn't continuing with us. I love him. I asked why and understood his needs."
There is no hiding season five’s fevered depictions of brutalized Israelis dealing with traumatic personal losses from Oct. 7 and being overcome with bloodlust to avenge loved ones. Set two years in the aftermath, it is in Raz's words, "a blood-revenge season inspired by real stories that happened after Oct. 7.”
At times it makes for difficult viewing and it was not easy for the cast as well. "All the Oct. 7 scenes were extremely difficult physically and emotionally. You're in a situation you know actually happened and know the consequences of. It's not imagination," said Raz. "There was a moment I broke down," he said of the filming.
As a result, we encounter a more hardened, grittier version of the familiar cast of characters. For viewers who have been on the journey since the beginning, there is a blurring between reality and fiction. “You’ve seen Doron in his hardest, softest, loneliest and most loving moments,” Raz said. “You know him in 360 degrees. When you see him in an Oct. 7 situation, the perception is different because of the identification people already have with him.”
Raz knows that his show has become a central cultural symbol of how Israel is witnessed abroad. “Fauda is one of the best explainers for Israel in the world. At first it wasn’t intentional… We wrote a series for Israelis. We never thought it would succeed globally, certainly not like this.”
That reach is why the two episodes taking viewers through a realistic experience of Oct. 7 is so important now, at a time where Hamas’ massacres are being increasingly forgotten. "Now they're trying to deny everything: murdering babies and children, raping women and men. We addressed all of it," Raz said.
Ultimately, Raz expects the show to deliver a complex message about Israel’s experience over the last several years. "There are almost no victories," he said. "In war we lose friends, we lose morality, we lose ourselves, we suffer trauma. It doesn't matter whether you won. My children, who ran to shelters here every day, lost."
It will not be easy to watch. But that’s why it is essential to do so.
“Yes, it’s going to be very difficult,” Raz said. “There will be trigger warnings. But I believe this season will create empathy for viewers, including internationally.”
Fauda season five premieres worldwide on Netflix on Sept. 8.
