This article discusses if Adam is dead in Netflix’s Treason, so it’ll contain enormous plot spoilers for the entire season.
Treason is a five-part Netflix espionage thriller written by Bridge of Spies scribe Matt Charman. Its protagonist is Adam Lawrence, an MI6 agent who circumstances force to confront a very troubled past that he has deliberately kept shrouded in secrecy.
As ever, our ending explained article really gets into the weeds of the plot, but this specific article pertains to a very particular question: Is Adam dead? This is thanks to a late-game plot twist, so we’ll do our best to answer not only this question but also dig into the circumstances surrounding that twist and why it occurred.
Who is Adam Lawrence?
When we meet Adam, he’s a former MI6 field agent who has risen rapidly through the organization’s ranks to become the deputy chief, second only to his friend and mentor, Sir Martin Angelis, the current “C”, short for “Control”. Adam made his reputation by saving an embassy in Baku, though he has kept quiet about the fact he was working from a tip-off obtained by a Russian spy named Kara who he was also sleeping with.
Kara’s team was killed in Baku by an MI6 double agent codenamed Dorian. Adam left her in-country because he wanted to take credit for the job and couldn’t risk their relationship getting out. In the 15 years since, Adam doesn’t realize that he has been receiving crucial intelligence from Kara, who was trying to maneuver him into position as the Chief of MI6 so that she can use him to find out who killed her team. Working off this intel technically makes Adam an unwitting traitor to his country.
Why are the CIA involved?
Over the years, Adam became a person of interest to the CIA because of his rapid ascent. They suspected he might be a double agent, and in fact, might be Dorian himself, and they took this to Angelis. As a result, Angelis has been keeping Adam close so that he can manipulate him, which we learn is a habit of his. At home, he has a bunch of kompromat which he uses to blackmail high-ranking public officials.
The CIA sends an agent, Dede, to keep an eye on Adam. Dede served overseas with Adam’s wife, Maddy, and when Adam begins acting suspiciously, she pushes Maddy to believe that her husband is a traitor to both her and his country. However, when Adam hands over some of Angelis’s kompromat to help Kara influence the U.K.’s leadership election in order to save his kidnapped daughter, Ella, Maddy inadvertently learns that it was the CIA who kidnapped Ella using a known people trafficker as a front.
Eventually Adam, Maddy, and Kara all team up to evade an MI6 hit squad that Angelis sends after them. Angelis then hires Dede and her CIA team to kill Adam and Kara.
Is Adam dead in Netflix’s Treason?
This all comes to a head at a builder’s yard where Angelis’s agent, Olamide, is digitizing the kompromat and burning the original paper files. Kara is able to steal the hard drive containing the kompromat, but a firefight breaks out and Dede’s team arrives on the scene.
Dede manages to get the drop on Adam and hold him at gunpoint to try and force Maddy into handing over the hard drive. However, Adam lunges at her and, in a surprising twist, Dede shoots him dead.
While this initially seems like some kind of fake-out, there is no evidence to suggest that Adam is still alive. His body is presumably found, as news of his death makes its way back to Angelis, and he isn’t seen in the series again. Kara and Maddy work together to expose Angelis’s blackmail and identify Dorian, and the series ends with Maddy having to tell the kids that Adam is dead.
