Alex Rider season 2, episode 2 recap – “Hunt”

This recap of Alex Rider season 2, episode 2, “Hunt”, contains spoilers.

“Hunt” begins with a flashback to a daring cyber-attack on the Pentagon that occurred six months prior to the season premiere. America’s nuclear arsenal is mere seconds away from being compromised. On the case, though, is the CIA’s Deputy Director Jo Byrne, who quickly and conveniently determines that the attack’s point of origin was London. Will this turn out to have something to do with Yassen Gregorovich, the attempt on Ed’s life, and Alex’s ability to learn his lines for Romeo & Juliet? You betcha!

Alex Rider season 2, episode 2 recap

It doesn’t take long for “Hunt” to put these pieces together pretty explicitly. Byrne meets with Blunt and Mrs. Jones and briefs them about a hacker known on the Dark Web as “Smoking Mirror”, and then we see a three-months-earlier scene of Ed meeting with this hacker and pressing him for information about who hired him to target the Pentagon. Of course, simply discussing these matters could get both of them killed.

Alex, meanwhile, is still trying to track down Mrs. Jones, which is proving somewhat difficult. He tries to get his government-appointed therapist to tell him where she is, but no dice. He visits Sabina, whose father is in a coma, and questions her about what he was working on; he also suggests someone should be with Ed all the time, just in case, and catches someone looking into his room (not Yassen) who flees when Alex spots him. More desperate for answers than ever, Alex is eventually directed by Jack’s smart thinking to the Friend estate, where David, whose son he posed as in the first season, eventually gives up the name of Blunt’s exclusively upper-class British club, where he’s rather conveniently meeting with Byrne and not picking up on — or at least not acknowledging — the colonial undertones of such things. She points them out either way.

Here, “Hunt” gets a bit bogged down in its explanations. We spend some time watching Jones and Blunt trying to track down Smoking Mirror, and eventually finding out his real name from a left-wing agitator named Limehouse who hired him to steal state secrets from GCHQ. After kidnapping Limehouse, showing him a fake newspaper reporting his apparent death, and faking his extradition to the United States for the Pentagon hack, they get the name Simon Marriott.

We also get a fair bit of discussion about Damian Cray, who apparently got the current president elected by donating millions of dollars to her campaign and is working closely with her on the War on Drugs — as a matter of fact she’s attending a charity dinner that he’s hosting, which is never, ever good news in a spy story. But Alex Rider isn’t one to rewrite the rulebook.

Alex Rider himself isn’t one to play by the rules, though, so after attaching Tom’s bicycle helmet cam to the front of Blunt’s car, he follows him, hoping to be led straight back to the new base of operations. What he accidentally stumbles into, though, is the attempted capture of Simon Marriott. We see that he was the guy who was lingering outside of Ed’s room earlier, and also learn that he’s pretty switched-on — he immediately recognizes there’s a sting underway and escapes through a secret tunnel, right in front of Alex, who’s ensuing scuffle with some officers allows Marriott time to escape and lands Alex in trouble with a rather disgusted Blunt.

Blunt explains to Alex that Yassen Gregorovich works for an international organization devoted to bringing about global change (aren’t they all), which is true, but also feeds him a load of nonsense that Gregorovich is under surveillance in Myanmar, which is not. He’s still trying to convince Alex that his experiences in Point Blanc have given him PTSD, but it’s hard to tell whether he believes that or not. Mrs. Jones certainly doesn’t, but without Blunt’s say-so, she isn’t really in a position to do much about it. That’s why Alex says he’s going to do her job for her. He’s easily the most trustworthy person in the room, so I’d say he’s serious.

You can stream Alex Rider season 2, episode 2, “Hunt”, exclusively on IMDb TV.