Directed by Shariff Korver, Atomic is the story of a smuggler who finds himself stuck in a perilous situation in the unforgiving Sahara desert, with radioactive material in his possession and a gang of assassins trying to hunt him down. The series is based on a novel named “Atomic Bazaar” written by American author William Langewiesche. So let’s find out what happened in Atomic episode 1, and if the smuggler was able to overpower those who were after his life.
Spoiler Alert
What happened to Carlos and Max?
Carlos and Max were smuggling goods to Beirut. They were from Guinea-Bissau and worked for a local cartel there. That cartel had strong ties with a Russian kingpin named Oksana Shirokova, and together they were planning to do something really big. Max, unaware of what the end goal was, just followed orders and did what Danny, his boss, told him.
Max and Carlos often traveled on that same route through the Sahara Desert, and so all the guards knew them well, and nobody stopped them. Seeing Max drive freely through that area made one thing very clear: the cartel enjoyed a lot of influence in the area, and nobody dared to come in their way. But this one time, Carlos was shot dead by a few unknown jihadists, and it seemed as if they were there to steal the consignment and the cash that Carlos and Max were carrying with them. Max survived, and for a few moments he couldn’t understand how anybody could even dare to stop the consignment that belonged to his cartel. But these jihadists didn’t care about anything. They took all the cash, and then they were about to kill Max too when something unprecedented happened. One of the jihadists, in a sudden move, killed his own men, and asked Max to quickly keep the cash and the smuggled goods in the vehicle and escape with him. Max didn’t understand why he didn’t kill him. He just looked up to the sky and asked Max to drive the vehicle. It felt as if he saw something in the sky, maybe a drone, and he made a spur of the moment decision to take Max with him.
How did JJ save himself from the Jihadis?
JJ (the man who attacked Max and Carlos and then later killed his own men) saw a checkpoint in the middle of the desert, and he asked Max to play along if he didn’t want to end up like his partner. Max did as he was told, but the guards at the checkpoint realized that something was not right, and they reported it to some anonymous person. JJ realized that Max was merely a driver and he was not capable of spilling blood, no matter what he claimed. Max came to know that his new partner was a British citizen, and it was he who chose to give him the name JJ. Max was very curious to know how an Englishman ended up in the Sahara Desert amidst the jihadists. But he didn’t reveal anything about himself. Max and JJ came across dead bodies in the Sahara Desert, and they found out that a young boy had survived and was hiding beneath the vehicle all that while. JJ decided to take the boy with him, though he didn’t know where he would leave him. The kind of affection JJ showed towards the young boy made Max realize that he was not a bad man. Max even told JJ that he believed that the latter had some trauma associated with children. It could have been that JJ had killed a few innocents back in the day, or maybe he had abandoned his family, and now he longed to be with his children. Whatever the case, the young boy felt safe in JJ’s company. While Max was traveling to Beirut, JJ wanted to go to Benghazi. Probably he wanted to enter Europe through that route, but Max had no clue what his real plan was. Before Max and JJ could reach Beirut, the father of one of the jihadist, whom JJ had killed at the beginning of Atomic episode 1, got hold of him. The father, who was probably the leader of the jihadists, told JJ that he had committed the biggest mistake of his life by trusting him and making him a part of his group. That man would’ve killed JJ and Max both, but just when he was about to pull the trigger, the young boy, whom JJ had rescued earlier, picked up a gun and started firing at them. Seizing the opportunity, JJ got the better of the Jihadist warlord, but in the crossfire, the young boy lost his life. In that short period of time, the boy had developed such a strong bond with JJ that he sacrificed his life trying to save him. JJ was disheartened, and it seemed like yet another name was added to the long list of people whose deaths he blamed himself for. JJ felt that if he wouldn’t have brought the kid with him, he would have probably survived. But he couldn’t do anything as of then, and he decided to keep moving with Max.
What Were The Russians Smuggling?
After the death of the young boy, JJ realized that he was being tracked by what seemed to be officers from British intelligence. There was a drone following JJ and Max’s car, and the former realized that he needed to do something about it. JJ got out of the car and tried to shoot the drone, though I don’t think that that would stop those officers. So, basically, JJ’s own people were after his life; he had become the top target for the jihadist groups, and he probably had a lot of other enemies too, whom we didn’t know about yet yet. He told Max that he did not belong to any state, and it became clear that he did not have a very clear roadmap as to what he wanted to do and where his path would ultimately lead. At the beginning of episode 1, we saw that the Russian mafia, under the leadership of Oksana Shirokova, smuggled certain goods, which, we later came to know through Max, were antiques. Max had to deliver the goods that he was carrying, and in return he was supposed to get antiques. Max asked JJ to accompany him to the base where the exchange was supposed to happen. Since JJ didn’t have any better plan, he didn’t mind; he agreed. The Russians were obviously not going to just give them the antiques as a gift. They would have killed JJ had Max not acted swiftly and turned his gun at them.
At the end of Atomic episode 1, Max and JJ took the antiques and escaped from there. The Russians were not smuggling the antiques but the uranium that was hidden underneath them. Probably the cartel and the Russian mafia together were trying to build a nuclear bomb. Max and JJ had no clue the kind of trouble they were in. I believe that Max and JJ will form an unlikely alliance, and it could be possible that the onus of saving the world from a nuclear war would fall on them. I guess they stand against the tides of chaos and feel obliged to do the right thing, because even though they were involved in a lot of illicit activities, they were not bad men.
