# Absentia (2017)

> A former FBI agent returns six years after being declared dead, memory gone, and must piece together her own past while hunting a serial killer.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/63411

## Facts

- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 30
- Episode runtime: 43 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: crime, drama, mystery
- Created by: Matthew Cirulnick, Gaia Violo
- Network: Prime Video, AXN
- Cast: Stana Katic, Patrick Heusinger, Neil Jackson, Matthew Le Nevez, Natasha Little, Angel Bonanni, Ralph Ineson, Christopher Colquhoun
- TMDB rating: 7.1/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6794990/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: brutal
- Tone: dark, tense, oppressive, haunting, melancholic

## What critics say

Viewers find Absentia a gripping, atmospheric crime mystery carried by Stana Katic's performance, though its slow pacing and uneven plotting draw mixed responses.

## Synopsis

Absentia (2017-2020) is an American crime mystery series created by Matthew Cirulnick and Gaia Violo for Prime Video and AXN. Stana Katic, known from Castle, plays FBI agent Emily Byrne, who reappears six years after being declared dead, with no memories of her former life. Patrick Heusinger plays Nick Durand, a figure tied to her hidden past, while Neil Jackson plays Jack Byrne, her husband, who has since remarried. Emily struggles to reconnect with her son and her husband while she works through the investigation that once consumed her, a case involving a dangerous serial killer. The engine of the show is the gap between who she was and who she is now: each episode turns over fragments of memory, unreliable witnesses and pieces of an old case that resurface in the present. The story runs across three seasons of ten episodes each, forming one continuing mystery rather than a case-of-the-week format. Set in the American present, the series moves through a cold, pressured world of police work and family estrangement. Its tone is dark, tense and oppressive, with long stretches of silence used to build unease, and its mood is haunting rather than flashy. Viewers who enjoy The Missing and The Leftovers will find resonance in its grief, its serialized mystery and its slow, unsettling dread.

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