barely gets away with his life in an assassination attempt ordered by Brenno, and sustains a permanent injury, with a bullet that can no longer be removed from his skull and which causes him violent headaches. Meanwhile, Tano Cariddi, suffering from severe drug addiction and depression, is located in Dakar, Senegal by Licata and brought back to Italy to act as a key witness against the Mafia. The police leverages Tano's only remaining emotional attachment to his disabled sister Maria as a way to manipulate him. Brenno's henchmen do the same, however, and Maria is brutally raped. Faced with the fate of his badly traumatized sister, Tano is ready to cooperate fully with the authorities. In less than a week, he transforms himself from an opium-dependent bundle of nerves to his erstwhile cold and calculatingly efficient operator. The season continues with various plots and sub-plots, Mafia rivalries and schisms, Turkish drug-running channels, and even a connection with a former Nazi concentration camp supervisor in Czechoslovakia. This latter, played by renowned Czech actor Rudolf Hrušínský in his last major role, escaped the Allied liberation forces at the end of WWII by assuming the identity of a camp prisoner, and later went on to become a wealthy banker using stolen Jewish money. The season closes with Licata and Cariddi luring the banker back to the concentration camp, now a heroin lab. Licata is at this point struggling with his health and only barely manages to overpower the old man, but dies soon after as a consequence of his previous injury. Season seven The seventh season of La Piovra launched in 1995 after a three-year gap, the longest between seasons to date. Vittorio Mezzogiorno had left the show after the previous season, and as the second dead lead protagonist in the series, there were concerns about repeating the same pattern again and thus leading to viewer fatigue. Luigi Perelli again directed, the setting was brought back to Trapani, and Countess Olga Camastra (Florinda Bolkan) reappeared, in order to re-establish continuity with the story of Corrado Cattani, whose life had been cut short at the end of the fourth season. Several new elements were introduced this time around, including connections with the occult Thule Society and the pseudo-Masonic ultra-right Propaganda Due. Viewers and critics responded positively to the seventh season. After seasons 1, 2, and 4, the 7th season won the Italian television award