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‘Jack Ryan’ Season 3 Episode 6 Recap: “Ghosts”

As the fifth episode of Jack Ryan’s third season came to a close, Jack watched Luca make off with a weapon of mass destruction, discovered the Sokol plotters’ intention to disguise the nuke as American made, and attempted to alert Elizabeth Wright to these developments. Jack’s list of problems? He knew neither Luca’s immediate destination nor the route of the weapon to its point of detonation, Wright was moved off the board by her superiors at Langley, and his own status as an international fugitive from justice. And so it’s good to see Jack reunite with Greer in Prague as the Sokol situation continues to escalate. Besides the steady support of Mike November, Jack’s list of immediate allies was looking pretty thin.

“Jack, look at me. Time to wake up. There’s no version of trusting Luca after what just happened.” There’s that pesky issue of trust again. For a bunch of people in the spy game, with all of its purposeful obfuscation, everyone in Jack Ryan pays a lot of lip service to the concept of trust. Jack is familiar with Luca’s resume as a ruthless Russian spymaster. But by now, the man has also saved his life twice. Greer and Jack head to the US embassy in Prague to stir up some intel on Luca’s whereabouts. They also seem prepared for any move made by the CIA director or his FBI lackeys to detain and rendition Jack. As for Luca, he’s seen at a remote airstrip observing the nuclear device as it’s loaded onto an American-style military cargo truck. Not only that, but the Czech guy tasked with driving the vehicle is wearing the US Army’s combat uniform.

JACK RYAN 306 MISSILE

In Prague, President Kovac has detained Jana, the wife of her deceased double agent security chief who is also a true believer. The woman is defiant, a proud member of Petr’s cause even though the president’s scheming father murdered her husband and is planning to detonate a WMD. Still, Kovac says, “I can see in your eyes that you still fear my father.” At the embassy, the FBI team arrives with a lot of blustery fanfare, prepared to grab Jack. Instead, a Keystone Cops foot chase ensues up and down the embassy steps and spilling into the street, where Jack is joined by Mike as they run to a Czech police roadblock. This is the escape hatch Greer arranged. The police take Jack and Mike to the presidential palace, beyond FBI jurisdiction, and Jack finally meets President Kovac. 

Jack’s most recent intelligence signaled an attempt to disguise the Sokol nuke and its detonation as American. But with the weapon on the move inside the Czech Republic, where a convoy is transporting explosives as part of NATO’s agreement with President Kovac, Jack deduces the real threat. “They just need to make it look like a nuclear accident – that’s the only way to sell it as ours,” and Jack and Mike grab a ride on a chopper to catch up with the convoy. It’s on a direct line to the central Bohemian city of Nymburk, and were a blast to occur there, it would properly stoke the outrage that Petr’s plot requires in order to destabilize world power and drive it toward war.

We’ve seen Jack reunited with Greer, and Kovac finally meeting Jack. Now it’s Luca’s turn for a big reveal. When Petr greets him by his full name at the hunting lodge we’ve seen before, Luca says Matoksa was an interesting choice for the secret project’s implementation. “Perhaps Sokol will give meaning to those who sacrificed their lives there,” Petr says. “To those you sacrificed.” That’s right, this whole thing goes back to 1968, when Luca was the Red Army lieutenant ordered to massacre the Soviet scientists and Petr was the soldier in his unit who he shot for refusing the order. Luca expresses his surprise that Petr never surfaced, never returned to his family. “And that ate at you. Because I was the one that got away. But I am not your ghost. You are mine.” Petr’s restart of the deadly Sokol project, his willingness to kill for the cause, even his marriage into power and influence through the family of Alena’s mother: it was all in his calculation, not only to reinvigorate the Soviet Union, but to see Luca embarrassed and defeated as a representative of what Russia had become. 

Presented with all of this, Luca can only smile his grim spymaster’s smile. “This mantle you carry will die with you,” he tells Petr. “And don’t you think I know about Crossbow?” Until now, it’s only been mentioned in passing. But whatever Crossbow is, it’s almost certainly a deeper component of the unrest within Russia’s government. Petr reaches for his pistol but Luca is faster. He shoots him as security personnel flood the hunting lodge led by President Kovac, who looks down on her wounded and bleeding father as he writhes in pain on the floor. “One day, you will understand!” He cries. And his daughter regards him with a mix of anger, pity, and betrayed love. “No, I don’t think I will,” Kovac says, and she removes the tourniquet on her disgraced father’s leg.

JACK RYAN 306 TUNNEL

Jack has directed the NATO convoy to safety, and asked its commanding officer to deploy one of their trucks as an obstacle inside a highway tunnel that runs through a tree-covered ridge. Then he drives a HUMVEE into the gloom, picks up the soldiers, and hauls ass for the exit as the bad guy’s truck explodes in the tunnel and collapses the structure above. Thanks to Jack Ryan, Petr’s grand plan to destroy Nymburk and goad the world into war has failed, and 7000 miles away in Washington, the vice president is asking his CIA director why the US didn’t know what was going on until the bitter end. That’s the same CIA director who personally named Jack a fugitive and sicced the FBI on him. The same CIA director who recalled Elizabeth Wright from Rome Station, and who would have carpet bombed her Agency career, were it not for her tactful appearance in the White House situation room. She tells the vice president that the only reason the US knew anything about the Sokol plot was because of Jack. “I’m saying that if the agency had his back from the beginning, today’s events would have been averted.” 

This season of Jack Ryan has two episodes left. “Ghosts” felt like it resolved a lot of loose ends, from the redemption of Jack’s lone wolf intelligence maneuvers and reuniting him with Greer, to reversing Wright’s removal by the CIA brass, galvanizing her working relationship with Jack, and killing off the main villain. But there are still two episodes to go, and the little matter of figuring out what Crossbow is. And for that, we’ll have to follow Jack, Greer, Mike, President Kovac and Luca as they board a private plane en route to Moscow.  

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

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