Motherland
Becca is about to turn 18 and her parents are about to get divorced. Jenny and her husband are concerned about how Becca is going to take this. They both want her to have a good experience with both events, but they don’t know if she can handle the stress.
What does Svetlana want with Becca?
Svetlana has other plans for Becca. She’s going to use her to fulfill her destiny, taking over from Jenny given she failed her birthright.
As Svetlana walks away, Jenny crawls across the ice-rink and grabs the phone, telling Chauncey he needs to get to the Madrid arena to save Becca.
Chauncey convinces Ohana to let him talk to Diego and Ines. This allows him to learn that Gideon is a woman. This, alongside Jenny’s pleas, gives Chauncey a decent amount of information to work with in order to try and stop Gideon before it’s too late. ..
Does Chauncey save Jenny?
Chauncey heads to the rink to find Jenny bleeding out. Apparently her powers are only as strong as she is (and we’ve seen how terribly weak she is across the whole season!) Anyway, Chauncey helps staple her wounds back up, which is enough to get “The Whisper” back on her feet to fight back against Gideon. ..
That’s probably just as well, given Becca is currently being brainwashed by Svetlana. Alone in her dressing room, she’s given headphones to listen to that strange humming, alongside a glossy look in her eyes.
What is Svetlana’s plan?
Svetlana is using Chauncey as a pawn in her plan to take down the senator. She knows that he won’t tell the police what he knows, so she has to use him in order to get what she wants.
In the episode “The Senator,” we find out that Svetlana plans to brainwash the senator into being her puppet. She wants to get him promoted up to become the President of the United States. Then, she’s going to start World War III, bombing a Russian city like St Petersburg to make Russia the good guys this time. ..
What happens at the arena? Is Svetlana stopped?
At the Madrid arena, everything kicks off when a sniper nearby stands ready to take out Jenny. However, she uses her powers to morph into different people in quick succession to evade the threat. Becca is used to try and take out the senator but in order to stop her, Jenny shoots her gun near her daughter’s ear in order to break the brainwash. ..
I’m not sure if Jenny is deaf, but she did use a defibrillator on her head last episode so anything could happen. ..
Jenny tracks down Svetlana up on the rooftop. She admits she’s been in Siberia after being arrested in Russia for her crimes. It’s here she divulges her diabolical plans (detailed above) but Jenny has heard enough. She shoots her mentor and that’s the end of the brainwashing queen’s rule.
One Month Later
We follow Jenny and Becca for one month as they try to work through their divorce. Jenny is honest with Becca about the situation, but they still have some secrets. Jenny promises not to keep any secrets between them anymore.
Chris and Becca are out on a date when they hear about the new couple. Chauncey and Jenny have been reinstated to the CIA and Chris decides to get a quiet IT job. Chauncey has also been reinstated but for Jenny, she still doesn’t have her freedom.
How does In From The Cold Season 1 end?
That night, Jenny heads into the garage and begins smashing up the concrete. Underneath, she unveils a box with a phone. Speaking Russian after downing some vodka, she contacts someone and smirks. “Agent Anya Petrova, everything is fine. It worked.”
The Episode Review
In From The Cold leaves us with more questions than answers after its final episode. The most notable of which revolving around that phone call and just what’s going on. It seems Jenny/Anya is actually undercover, but why? And to what end?
The whole Svetlana plan is laughable. Her master plan to get revenge includes her bombing her home country after hoping a senator becomes president, making Russia the good guys in a World War. Excluding the Cold War stuff, Russia fought with the Allied Forces against Hitler so solely on World War history, it makes Svetlana look like a deranged lunatic that skipped out on History class. ..
The inconsistency with Jenny’s powers is perhaps more confusing than anything else about the show. We’re told she can only use her powers as they allow her to, but throughout the season she has had a difficult time using them for any real purpose.
We could have had a more interesting and suspenseful story with more than one assassin working together. The pair could have turned into different people and had to use their skills to survive. We could also have seen the sniper turn into a werewolf in order to take down the target.
The fight between Svetlana and Jenny on the rooftop didn’t quite go as planned. Instead, they got none of the excitement and conflict that was promised.
This show has been disappointing. The editing has been poor, and the jump forward one month, right off the back of a flashback, was handled poorly. The bait for season 2 is every bit as annoying because it essentially undermines Jenny’s character arc and negates her promise to Becca to be more truthful. ..
Netflix’s decision to not renew “House of Cards” is a bit of a letdown, as the series had some promise but ultimately failed to live up to expectations. While there are some good things here and there, the overall story feels unfinished and unfulfilled.
