Mitić makes a bold choice in Episode 1 (“The Water is Rising”). The famous lake that anchored the show’s visual identity is now a toxic marsh. The ferries don’t run. The old hotel where protagonist Inspector Luka Trajkovski (a career-best performance by Vlado Jankovski) once interrogated human traffickers is now a refugee squat.
The internet is split. Half the audience calls it “transcendent realism.” The other half calls it narrative cowardice. But here’s the truth: Prespav has always been anti-catharsis. If you wanted revenge, you were watching the wrong show. For all its poetic ambition, Season 7 has a pacing problem. The mid-season arc (Episodes 4-6) introduces a subplot about a missing shipment of lithium batteries. It feels like a Season 2 plot stretched into Season 7’s existential framework. The supporting cast—particularly Elena, the corrupt mayor played by Tanja Kocić—is given less to do than ever before. She has exactly three scenes in Episode 5. Two of them are voiceover.
By: Deep Dive TV Reading time: 9 minutes prespav sezona 7
Brilliant, but deliberately broken.
There’s a specific kind of dread that settles in when a prestige drama enters its seventh season. It’s the moment when the cultural conversation shifts from “What will happen next?” to “Is it time to let it go?” Mitić makes a bold choice in Episode 1
Here is the deep autopsy of a season that refuses to heal. For the uninitiated, Prespav is named after the fictional border town between North Macedonia, Albania, and Greece—a liminal space where no law applies consistently. In Seasons 1-4, the town was a character: foggy, claustrophobic, smelling of wet stone and bad coffee.
In Season 7, the town is dead.
Compare this to Season 5’s “The Goat Bridge” episode, which featured a 30-minute courtroom monologue. Season 7 seems afraid of its own theatricality. It retreats into silence, mistaking stillness for depth. Credit where it’s due: cinematographer Jana Petreska deserves every award nomination. Season 7 shifts from the cool blues of earlier seasons to a sickly, sulfuric yellow. The lake isn’t just water; it looks like battery acid. The famous night scenes—once lit by a single bare bulb—are now lit by the glow of smartphone screens and police flares.
This isn’t just set design; it’s a thesis statement. Prespav has passed the point of no return. The question is no longer Can Luka save the town? but Should anyone even bother? Let’s talk about Luka. For six seasons, he was the archetypal “broken genius”—a forensic accountant turned detective who solved crimes through ledgers rather than gunfights. He was quiet. He was damaged by the loss of his daughter in Season 3. He was, frankly, getting stale. The old hotel where protagonist Inspector Luka Trajkovski
If you want plot resolution—the trial of the cartel, the rebuilding of the town, the redemption of Luka—you will be frustrated. The finale ends on a freeze frame of Luka staring at the drained lake bed. No credits music. Just static.