Summary
The Agency has an excellent ending, with Episode 10 tying up the first season’s arc while creating a dynamite premise for Season 2.
Given how much I didn’t like The Agency when it started, it’s kind of remarkable how good the first season’s ending is. Episode 10, “Overtaken by Events”, neatly rounds out the key subplots of the previous nine episodes – particularly the rescue of Coyote, Sami’s fate, and Danny’s insertion into Tehran – while also leaving virtually all of them open for more development in a potential Season 2. Martian’s fate, in particular, is especially compelling and would provide enough meat for another batch of episodes on its own.
The Agency has been up and down, then, but it’s firing on all cylinders here, and in hindsight – which is always 20/20, as we know – those slower, more ungainly chapters seem worth it considering where it all ultimately ends up. That’s the sign of a solid, smartly written season of television. It was just well disguised as boring rubbish at the beginning, a bit of subterfuge that is perhaps fitting, given the subject matter.
The penultimate episode did, to be fair, provide the finale with a fascinating setup. Martian flipping a Valhalla officer gave a green light to the complex Coyote rescue plan, Danny set out to Tehran, and Sami’s fate seemed to have been sealed. Martian chose the agency over love. Or so we thought.
We’ll get to that in a minute, though, since we might as well round up the slightly less interesting but nonetheless compelling developments elsewhere. Smartly, The Agency saved all its best action and tension-building sequences for this finale, letting the multiple episodes of build-up create the most combustible setups possible for Coyote’s rescue and Danny’s undercover placement in Tehran.
Both of these missions were ultimately successful. Thanks to Martian bringing Owen in to help in identifying Coyote and then shifting the kill zone, Volchok is killed by a member of his inner circle and Coyote is rescued, giving Henry a nice moment of emotional vulnerability in the aftermath.
This is multiple chickens – Martian’s efforts, Felix, Henry’s personal stake, etc. – all coming home to roost at once. It’s a well-done, literally explosive sequence. Danny’s interrogation at the hands of Iranian officials when she arrives in-country is more low-key, but equally effective, especially since it is largely framed from Naomi’s tense viewpoint, as she worries that perhaps Danny’s training won’t have been enough.
Richard Gere, Jeffrey Wright, and Michael Fassbender in The Agency | Image via Paramount+
It is, though, and Danny finds herself successfully embedded in Tehran by the end of The Agency, all in service of what we now know will be a more expansive Season 2 plot. And Martian returns to work after his “random” motorcycle accident a hero – and also, though admittedly unbeknown to everyone else, a traitor.
This is the finale’s big swerve, an outgrowth of everything we’ve been through involving Martian’s relationship with Sami. As it turns out in The Agency Episode 10, he wasn’t willing to condemn Sami that easily. And British Intelligence’s James Richardson sees his weakness as an opportunity. He pitches Martian about becoming a double agent for the British, and when he says yes, Richardson pretends to laugh it off as a taunt to prove how far gone Martian really is. But the trap is baited.
Richardson arranges for Martian to be knocked off his motorcycle, so they have somewhere to talk in private – the hospital. This is when we realize that Martian’s flash-forward conversations throughout the season have been with Richardson. If Martian wants to save Sami, which we know he does, he has no choice but to become a mole within his own agency. Ultimately, he accepts.
This lends a dark contour to Martian’s return to the office, where he’s greeted as a hero for his work with Coyote. His instructions are simple – to keep doing what he’s doing, to progress up the CIA, and to regularly sit down for tea with Richardson. He’s selling out his own government, and he didn’t even get the girl – he just got some reassurances that she wouldn’t be raped and killed by her own people.
If Martian’s mental health was sketchy before, one can only imagine how bad it’ll get in this predicament. Season 2 has a near-perfect setup to build on.
