In the second episode of Atomic, DEA agent Khaled and covert CIA operative Cassandra entered the picture with the aim of nabbing the people, Max and Mohammed, who were running around Beirut with enough uranium to probably level the whole city. Max and Mohammed wanted to get rid of the uranium as soon as possible, but they also wanted to get paid for delivering it to Alam. In the meantime, Alam had kidnapped Max’s girlfriend, Laetitia, and was threatening to kill her if he didn’t give up the uranium to his associate, Danny. During the exchange, Max and Mohammed were outnumbered and outgunned. They were staring death in the face, but that’s when Cassandra, Khaled, and the DEA infiltrated the meeting and killed a bunch of Danny’s men. Rifaat, Khaled’s secret informant, probably got killed or injured in the process. And Max, who had never killed anybody before, shot Danny in the head. When Max and Mohammed made a run for it with the uranium, Cassandra almost got a hold of them, but Mohammed managed to knock her out and run away. Since Max was still worried for Laetitia, he contacted Alam again and asked where he could deliver the uranium. Alam pointed him towards Syria, and hence Max and Mohammed headed in that direction. What happened next? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Max and Mohammed Head to Syria
Episode 3 of Atomic opens with a flashback sequence set in Syria, 2014, to show us the moment Mohammed met the love of his life, Janat. In the present day, Max and Mohammed enter Syria, both thinking about their respective romantic partners. Max informs Mohammed that Alam wants them to head to an airfield and catch the plane heading to Morocco. Mohammed wants to place the bust of Baal at the site where it belongs. Max disagrees with him and says that they can do all that once the uranium is in Alam’s hands and Laetitia is safe. Mohammed warns him that Alam is probably going to kill both of them, because they are the reason Danny and his crew have been wiped out. Max assures him that he’ll be able to convince Alam that they died at the hands of the DEA and then cater to his benevolent side by showing that, despite going through all that, they have to come to him with the uranium.
While these two delude themselves, Cassandra, Mark, and Khaled get news of the fact that Max and Mohammed have entered Syria. Mark wants to nab them, and Cassandra wants to go with him too, but it seems like Mark is using the need to protect her cover as an excuse to keep her away from this case. Cassandra tries to prove that she can be useful by bringing up the name of a physicist, Sayed Ahman, who might be in charge of turning that uranium into a nuclear bomb. That proves to be a successful maneuver, because when Mark gets word that the CIA has assembled a task force to get Max and Mohammed, he asks Cassandra to come with him. That said, Cassandra has to say goodbye to Khaled because the job doesn’t fall in his jurisdiction anymore.
Max and Mohammed Make a Pit Stop
Mark orders the operatives to not interfere with Max and Mohammed’s journey to Syria until he touches base, because if they are caught prematurely, then maybe their final destination will remain a mystery. Speaking of Max and Mohammed, they stop at a ramshackle petrol pump to fuel their car and check where they are headed on the map. Since Max can’t read Arabic, he allows Mohammed to read the map for him, and he points out where Palmyra and the location of the airbase are. Max reiterates the plan to go to Marrakech to save Laetitia and also get paid for delivering the uranium.
While they are talking about the Caliphate and whatnot, they spot the government soldiers that are hot on their tail. They somehow manage to leave the petrol pump undetected, and Mohammed advises Max to head to Palmyra because that area falls out of the soldiers’ jurisdiction. They make a pit stop at Baal’s temple so that Mohammed can place that bust he has been carrying all this while, which is when Max gets a call from Alam. He repeats the same old message: Max needs to board that plane to Marrakech or bid goodbye to Laetitia. As he is about to head back to the car, Mohammed claims that he has mistakenly stepped on a mine. After a brief phase of tension, the dynamic duo realize that it’s not a bomb, just the top of a soda can. What’s the point of this scene? Well, Max could have left Mohammed to die there, because he didn’t need him for the uranium exchange, but the fact that he didn’t shows that he actually cares about Mohammed.
Max and Mohammed Are Captured
Cassandra’s hunch that Ahman will build the nuclear bomb with that stolen uranium is proven to be true, because we see him pulling up at the cartel warehouse in Marrakech and meeting with Oksana and Alam. Meanwhile, Max and Mohammed enter the Deir ez-Zor province, because that’s where the latter’s home used to be. Max is under the impression that Mohammed is taking him to the airbase, but that’s not the case at all. Mohammed makes it seem like he has opted for an alternative route to avoid being detected by the government, but he’s actually returned home to die by suicide. You see, he promised Janat that he’d get her and their son, Kamal, away from the bombs that were being dropped on Syria by British forces in 2018. But by the time he could make the necessary arrangements to make that happen, a missile dropped right on his house, killing Janat and maybe Kamal as well. That prompted Mohammed to go on a journey of retributive violence, but I suppose he believes that he is done with all that, and he just wants to rest beside the graves of his wife and son. However, here’s the issue: Max doesn’t know how to read the map because it’s written in Arabic. Hence, he needs Mohammed’s help to save Laetitia. Max empathizes with Mohammed, but he wants him to understand that, in order to commemorate two lives, he is letting another life bite the dust. While they are having this argument, the local forces show up to capture them. The US Army arrives there as well and arrests the duo before the local soldiers can get their hands on them. They are detained at a US Army base, and the seized uranium is analyzed by Cassandra.
While we, the audience, have a rough idea about the uranium’s origins, Cassandra and the CIA don’t. So, they begin interrogating both Max and Mohammed. While Mohammed stays mum, Max says that he is willing to do anything if they let him call Alam and buy some more time for Laetitia. Surprisingly enough, Mark wants Mohammed and Max to reach Alam, because that will allow the CIA to track them and get to the makers of the nuclear bomb. Cassandra doesn’t like the idea, yet she is willing to give it a chance. But for that to happen, they need Mohammed to cooperate. Cassandra starts making some breakthroughs by talking about all the families that’ll be affected by the nuclear bomb if he and Max deliver the uranium without allowing the CIA to follow them. That said, she is stopped in her tracks by Rab Mackintosh, an elite member of the British special forces who wants to take down Mohammed because he is one of the survivors of the 2018 bombing that killed his family.
Kamal Is Alive
Since tracking down the makers of a nuclear bomb is of utmost importance, Rab agrees to put his plans to kill Mohammed on the back burner and help the CIA make him malleable. Rab gives Cassandra a video of a kid that’s supposedly a grown-up Kamal. The baby’s body was never found. Hence, Mohammed didn’t find his grave. When Cassandra shows the video to Mohammed and asks him to cooperate if he wants to reunite with his son again, his knee-jerk reaction is to not believe it. Cassandra confirms that the boy is Kamal by showing the necklace that Mohammed had bought for him. She says that the kid is safe in a refugee camp in Italy, and if he does the job that she wants him to do, he will get to see him. At the end of Atomic episode 3, we see Max making a call to Alam and claiming that he has missed the plane to Marrakech because the car broke down. He doesn’t say that he is being helped by the CIA to get the plan back on track, but he peddles enough lies to convince Alam that he is on his way to Marrakech. Alam isn’t an idiot, though. He knows that Max and Mohammed are being helped by someone, and he vows to kill them all.
Based on the teaser for next week’s episode, Max and Mohammed will reach Marrakech, but Mohammed is going to betray Max and run away with one half of the uranium. Max will go to Alam to save Laetitia, and he’ll try to take him to Mohammed so that he and his girlfriend can walk out of this whole affair unscathed. But I suppose that plan will fail, and Max and Laetitia will be taken to a discreet location to be executed. Of course, they won’t die because the CIA and the Brits have their back. While all this is going on, Cassandra will go after Mohammed to send him to Alam, because that’s the only way to track down Ahman. She will fail, get captured by Alam’s men, and she’ll be taken to Ahman to build the bomb with him because she is an expert on this subject. In addition to all this, Oksana will try to back out of this whole arrangement because she is afraid of the Americans; however, Alam will soldier on until he sets off that bomb for a reason that remains a mystery. Anyway, those are my thoughts on Atomic episode 3. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
