Messiah Recap: You Can Never Be Sure

By Jonathon Wilson
Published: January 1, 2020 (Last updated: last month)
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Messiah (Netflix) Season 1, Episode 10 recap: "The Wages of Sin"
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Summary

“The Wages of Sin” closes Messiah on an ambiguous note, leaving everything unclear. Is the point a second season, or are we simply not supposed to know?

This recap of Messiah Season 1, Episode 10, “The Wages of Sin”, contains spoilers.


Messiah Episode 10 opens in 2011. A heavily bearded Avrim (Tomer Sisley) carries out a raid, kidnapping a boy who he later threatens with torture. He agrees to talk. We flash to where we left things in the previous episode, with Avrim in the car with Al-Masih (Mehdi Dehbi).

“The Wages of Sin” then cuts to the aftermath of the explosion, where Jibril (Sayyid El Alami) is still alive but badly wounded. Rebecca (Stefania LaVie Owen) is still seizing. Eva (Michelle Monaghan) watches CCTV footage of Al-Masih being taken away by Avrim, and we learn that he has been taken to a plane. Eva tries to track it, but the flight plan and tail number are classified.

When Rebecca wakes up, Felix (John Ortiz) is immediately concerned about Al-Masih’s whereabouts and not the fact his own daughter almost died, which Anna (Melinda Hamilton Page) is quick to chastise him about. Rebecca says he is gone and isn’t coming back.

Eva and Katherine (Barbara Eve Harris) watch footage from the mosque bombing. Q (Assaad Bouab) was there, but they haven’t heard from him yet. Nobody is claiming responsibility. They learn that Al-Masih was taken from a government airfield in a diplomatic plane. Katherine calls Danny (Iqbal Theba) for details of it and where it plans to land in Israel.

On that plane in “The Wages of Sin”, Avrim and Al-Masih talk. The latter brings up Megiddo again. They discuss, but come to differing conclusions on the matter; Al-Masih insists all can be forgiven, whereas Avrim believes some — perhaps including himself — are irredeemable.

Collier gives Miriam Keneally (Jane Adams) details of Payam Golshiri and tells her to run with it. She does, making international news of his entire backstory, including the death of his parents, his training as an illusionist, his psychiatric troubles, and his links to Oscar Wallace. Felix is beside himself. Everyone — Rebecca, Staci (Emily Kinney), Jibril — see the report on TV. Raeah (Nicole Scimeca) dies, and Staci sobs, knowing she suspended her daughter’s treatment in the hopes a false prophet might heal her. It’s an incredibly tragic moment.

One of the engines explodes on Al-Masih’s plane in Messiah Episode 10, prompting another flashback to Avrim in 2011. He is with the boy, Rashid, and we learn that the boy’s father killed Avrim’s mother with the car bomb. Rashid has inherited his father’s sin. While we don’t see it, the implication is that Avrim executed Rashid. Back on the plane, he’s crying and apologizing — atoning. Is he worth of forgiveness now? We’ll find out.

Eva confronts Collier about everything he has done, including sabotaging a diplomatic plane, but she can’t prove anything. Rather than returning home to her father, she goes instead to the all-night diner. Felix goes back to Dilley and finally burns that church of his.

But Messiah Season 1, Episode 10 hasn’t finished with the surprises just yet. Earlier in “The Wages of Sin”, we met a young boy, Malik, a goat herder with an elaborate imagination — he has apparently fought off lions and seen UFOs. We rejoin him in the closing scene as he finds the wreckage of the downed plane. Everyone is dead except for Avrim and Al-Masih. Malik offers Avrim a drink and explains to him that he was dead just moments before. Al-Masih revived him. The Shin Bet cynic looks through the field of red flowers in which the plane landed, and sees Al-Masih revive another passenger. Perhaps he was the messiah after all.

Netflix, TV, TV Recaps
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