‘The Night Manager’ Season 2, Episode 5 Recap – Diego Calva Is Superb

The Night Manager has spent most of Season 2 trying to redo the events of Season 1, albeit with some key exceptions. One of those exceptions is Teddy, and Episode 5, which is largely a showpiece for actor Diego Calva, shows how valuable that exception is. You know to root for Pine, and you know to despise Roper, even before he starts executing his dogs. But while Teddy was introduced as a bad guy, and still technically remains one, Calva’s performance is so compelling that as we head into the finale, we’re kinda rooting for him.

As obvious as Roper’s survival and reintroduction have been, this season has been way better for it. There’s real tension now as the stakes have become clear and the pieces have shuffled into place for what will inevitably be a cliffhanger ending – Season 3 has already been greenlit – but should be enjoyably action-packed either way. Let’s break down the latest.

RIP Basil (I Think?)

In the few Blighty-set sequences, Basil is on the back foot thanks to Roper tipping off Mayra that the enigmatic Matthew is really the presumed-dead Jonathan Pine, which he discovered in the previous episode. He knows Pine must still have some allies in the U.K., so he puts Mayra to the task of finding them. Basil senses the danger and flees, telling Sally to do the same, and leaves some files for Angela in a dead drop before he’s picked up by Mayra’s goons.

You have to respect Basil. He’s a pencil-pusher, for the most part, but he’s a seasoned old hand in the intelligence service, and he knows the rules. Mayra has him dead to rights, but he still doesn’t give Pine up, even under torture.

All Basil confesses to knowing about is the plans for Colombia, which is a death sentence in and of itself. When Mayra realises she isn’t going to get anything else out of him, she instructs her goons to execute him. It happens off-screen, so we can’t say for certain that Basil has snuffed it, but it’s very heavily implied.

Pine Tells Roxana the Truth

Recently, Roxana has been shuffled into the margins a little bit, but she still has a part to play. That begins with Pine telling her the truth, which isn’t exactly reassuring for her. Gilberto Hanson is really an English arms dealer with whom Pine has a history, and nobody will be safe until he’s taken down. This is especially pressing for Roxana, since nothing Pine promised her when he was undercover was real. There’s no team coming to back him up. She can’t get immunity. She’s on her own.

Pine has a counter to this, which is that her own deceptions caused the death of his friend, which is fair enough, but doesn’t do much to remedy the situation. After a bit of flirty back and forth – we know Pine only has eyes for Teddy – Roxana says she won’t ask anything of Pine again. He tells her to stay put in her family’s abandoned home and not do anything drastic.

She doesn’t listen. The Night Manager Season 2, Episode 5 ends with Roxana turning herself over to Roper, who introduces himself with some very theatrical threats about what might happen to her if she tries to double-cross him. The implication here is that she’s selling Pine out, retribution for how he deceived her. But she could also be playing the long game. We’ll have to wait and see.

Pine and Roper, Face to Face

In one of the more effectively dramatic scenes of the episode, Pine summons Roper to a meeting so they can catch up. And by “catch up,” I mean politely threaten each other. Both men have an offer for the other. Pine’s is that Roper turns himself in and brings down his collaborators. Roper’s is that Pine takes $50 million as hush money and gets out of Dodge. There’s never really any suggestion that either man will agree, but I suppose one has to ask.

Pine promises to call Roper on a burner the next morning. Either he turns himself in, or his entire operation is taken down, even though he currently lacks all the pieces to pull that off. Again, there’s no real sense that Roper will listen. But these two have very good chemistry, and it’s great to see Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie act opposite each other in such close proximity again.

Sometimes the ends justify the means.

Pine Flips Teddy

Pine’s next impromptu meeting invite is for Teddy. He needs Teddy onside to be able to stop Roper’s plans, since the shipment is all present and correct and ready to make its way to its final destination. From there, a blackout and a civil war will follow. That can’t happen, so Pine takes drastic measures.

These measures include playing Teddy a recording of Roper’s conversation with Sandy Langbourne, the one where they speculated about having Teddy killed because he’s a lunatic who isn’t fit for civilised company. Pine tells him about Danny and Roper’s planned return to England, where his sprawling country pile won’t have a room for Teddy. Diego Calva is superb here, building real sympathy for Teddy by selling his profound sense of betrayal. He’s similarly good in a subsequent scene wherein he reconnects with his estranged sister, Clara.

It seems like Teddy is now on Team Good Guys.

Not the Dogs!

Back at his compound, Roper finds the listening device hidden in the guard dog’s collar, which tips him off that someone is listening nearby. He rallies his security personnel to comb the immediate area for the spy. Martin is just about able to escape, but it’s a close call.

Furious, Roper kills his three dogs, which is classic villain stuff. You should have known as soon as you saw him being all sensitive and doting with them that they’d be on the chopping block to prove his villainy.

The point of this is to show how volatile Roper is when he doesn’t get his way, so you can only imagine how annoyed he’ll be when he realizes that Teddy has turned on him, which he very much seems to have done. After finding the British passport and housing estate brochure that confirms everything Pine said was true, Teddy sends him multiple photos of the plane he needs to intercept. The mission is on. But there’s still plenty of scope for things to go badly wrong in the finale.