Summary
A slower-paced episode lacks action but nonetheless reveals some important pieces in the overall puzzle, including Imogen’s backstory and potential motivations, and the target of the terror plot.
The Veil is built on the idea of the audience not being able to trust a single thing that anyone is saying, and that is the driving force behind Episode 3, “The Asset”. Most roads converge in Paris, but the real juicy info is the backstory that seemingly reveals Imogen’s true motivations and the details we get on the nature and target of the impending terror attack.
It’s a slower episode than the two-part premiere with no action, but one of those installments that will doubtlessly prove extremely important to the story overall. All in good time, though.
A Literal Cold Open
The third episode of The Veil has a literal cold open, set in a snowy refugee camp on the Syrian/Turkish border. Hasad digs an iPhone from the ice, executes the two UNHCR (The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) who hassle him about identifying himself, and then calls the number in the phone listed as, simply, “Monday”.
The call is picked up in an abandoned hospital in Mosul, Iraq. “It can begin,” is the ominous message.
The Ultimate Sacrifice
What begins is an effort to extract two radioactive cores from radiology machines in the hospital’s bowels. The two men chosen for the task, Michal and Farroukh, tearfully don their death shrouds to be appropriately dressed for the afterlife, and have the objective carefully explained to them. Within a minute, the cores will have made them very sick. Within two, they might be blind, and within three, they’ll be dead. That’s the time limit for getting the cores safely inside lead-lined containers.
This isn’t a long sequence, but it is a harrowing one. The men sob and hug one another as they resign themselves to their fates, hopeful, but not entirely convinced of their entry into Paradise. They spew their guts up and their flesh sloughs away and they die holding hands on a dirty floor. But their mission is a success.
What Is Imogen Up To?
The Veil | Image via FX/Hulu
We learn shortly after this, through Max Peterson, that the NGO workers were shot right outside the tent once occupied by Adilah. So, despite the DNA test having seemingly proven that Adilah is not the Djinn of Al Raqqa, the investigation is being immediately reopened anyway, with the CIA fronting the operation. Malik is so annoyed by this that he forgets to pay for his coffee.
Imogen and Adilah are in Paris, too. There, Adilah reunites with her daughter, Yasmina, while Imogen reunites with Malik, who explains to her what Peterson told him, and the further news that a low-level ISIS volunteer — Hasad — was also found dead on a mountain road 45km away.
Imogen is thrilled to hear this since she was convinced of Adilah’s guilt all along. But the officialdom and interest from foreign intelligence agencies puts Malik in a difficult position since he needs Imogen to be answerable to the DGSE and she still isn’t willing to play ball. She instructed Adilah not to return to her bugged apartment, forewarned her that their comms would be listened to, and arranged a secret meeting place on the plane to France which she doesn’t share with Malik.
Even the bug Malik slipped into Imogen’s shirt after a night together is smilingly removed almost immediately afterward. Imogen remains multiple steps ahead.
Is Imogen’s Backstory Real?
Imogen and Adilah meet at a cemetery and, standing beside the grave of her revolutionary grandfather, Adilah pulls out a 70-year-old hidden revolver and asks Imogen outright why she’s helping her.
Imogen explains she has an obsession with annihilation; specifically of the self. She grew up all over the world as the child of a diplomat who was assassinated by a CIA-backed Turkish extremist faction, leaving nothing of him behind. She was recruited by British intelligence and assigned to bring in Adilah. She confesses that Adilah was believed to be someone very important and that DNA revealed she was nobody at all.
She doesn’t admit that she still believes Adilah is the Djinn of Al Raqqa. But Adilah believes her anyway.
All good lies have a grain of truth in them, so one has to wonder how much of Imogen’s backstory is true. If the CIA really were behind the death of her father, and the CIA is now running the operation to find Adilah, there’s some motive beginning to emerge here.
The implication is that this is really what Imogen’s looking for since she later asks Max to find out if the CIA did assassinate her father in exchange for continuing to supply information to Langley. She strongarms Max into doing so with a reference to Morocco and 2013, though it’s unclear for now what that means.
The End Of The Veil Episode 3 Reveals Where the Cores Are Going
The Veil | Image via FX/Hulu
“The Asset” concludes by giving us some more important pieces to the puzzle. We now know where the stolen cores from the radiology machine are going.
They’re being transported on a Bulgarian naval vessel called The Provadia, which is due to pay a goodwill visit to the East Coast of the United States. The Captain hopes that the Bulgarian Navy will make a big impression on the U.S., and if the plan is successful, it seems like he’ll be right.
RELATED:
