The 6th episode of Prime Target saw Edward and Taylah reaching Orleans to get the 17th-century imprint of the missing piece of the Bayt al-Hikmah’s puzzle from the state university’s Mersenne Collection. But right when they were about to obtain it, Bogdan seemingly showed up out of nowhere and snatched all the ancient pages from the aforementioned collection and began making his way to England via the Channel Tunnel. Edward and Taylah conducted a heist to retrieve what they needed from Bogdan, and it was during this process that Edward learned that Taylah’s boss at the NSA, Jane, was working with Axiorn and Kaplar to control the narrative regarding this whole conspiracy around prime numbers. This caused the two to have a bit of a falling-out, and they went their separate ways. Taylah was promptly cornered by one of Jane’s operatives and asked to come in for a debriefing; another NSA agent began silently tailing Edward. What happened next? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Adam is a traitor
Episode 7 of Prime Target opens with Edward reuniting with Adam and working on that 17th-century imprint out of the basement of the pub where his boyfriend works, while Taylah reunites with Jane at a lavish office owned by Axiorn. One of the first things that Jane clears up is that, even though she and Andrew are working with Axiorn and Kaplar, she didn’t call the hits on Olson and Edward. Well, that’s kind of a lie. While we didn’t see Jane explicitly asking those hitmen in Cassis to take out Olson and go after Taylah, she did pass on information that led to that outcome. And she was definitely involved in the assassination attempt on Edward. Sure, she can say that it wasn’t her decision, but she was carrying out the killing, and if Bogdan hadn’t intervened, his blood would’ve been on her hands.
So, I don’t know what she’s trying to do by claiming that she is not the one in control when it comes to these decisions. And upon realizing that Taylah needs some time to calm down or else her “Axiorn is cool” propaganda won’t work, she leaves her be for a while. Coming back to Edward, Adam offers to take him to his auntie’s flat in East London so that he can stay there for the time being and continue his work. Edward isn’t exactly a naive person, and he is pretty paranoid, but I suppose he is blinded by love, which is why he walks right into Adam’s trap, as he ends up delivering Edward to Axiorn. This is a twist that I was anticipating in every episode until now, and, well, I can finally say that I was right for not buying into Adam’s lovey-dovey nonsense.
Edward Is Axiorn’s Prisoner
After being sedated, when Edward regains consciousness, he finds himself in a room whose walls are whiteboards for obvious reasons. There are CCTV cameras everywhere and a projector to display a 3D holographic image of the Bayt al-Hikmah and the constellations that were studied by the builders of the House of Wisdom. There is a stretcher-like bed for Edward to rest in and a desk with Edward’s diary and Safiya Zamil’s thesis on it. And there’s a two-way mirror from where Andrew and his cronies will be observing Edward. Andrew reiterates the obvious, that he, Jane, Axiorn, and Kaplar are “basically the good guys” because they aim to create the prime finder to stay ahead of the curve.
They know that there are people out there who are in the same pursuit to find the key to every digital lock in the world, and Axiorn and its allies want to stop these people from doing so. But, in order to make that happen, they need to create said key first so that they can reverse-engineer any attempt to unlock any digital vault and stop them from doing something catastrophic. Andrew is willing to give Edward everything he needs to complete the formula that’ll make the prime finder, but he’ll be confined to that room during this period. It’s unclear what Andrew plans to do with him after his job is done. Mallinder and Safiya were killed, but that’s maybe because they were unwilling to cooperate. There’s no guarantee that if Edward does Andrew’s bidding, he is going to be treated favorably; and now that Edward has become more disillusioned, I think he knows that.
Andrea Discovers Akram’s Involvement
I didn’t quite anticipate the twist with Professor James Alderman, one of the senior professors over at the fictional Darnell College, to be the one who is in cahoots with Akram and Bogdan. In the previous episode, when it was revealed that Bogdan was taking the imprint from the columns of the Bayt al-Hikmah to England, the thought should have crossed my mind, especially because Alderman is the one bankrolling the study on the House of Wisdom. But seeing Andrea, who has returned to Cambridge, talk to Alderman about the fact that the Bayt al-Hikmah wasn’t accidentally discovered—and that the shop atop the structure was purposefully blown up to uncover the library—is when I realized that he is involved in this whole mess.
Andrea also kind of begins to put together the pieces as she goes through her thesis on the possible location of the Bayt al-Hikmah and then notices that the digital copy of those files had been accessed by Akram a few days or weeks before the explosion. Andrea tries to inform Taylah about this, but since her phone has been confiscated by the Axiorn-controlled part of the NSA, Taylah is unreachable. So, she goes directly to Alderman and tells him that she suspects that Akram is the one who set off the explosion which unearthed the House of Wisdom, thereby taking innocent lives in the name of academic and historical research. Alderman starts showing his hand—maybe not to Andrea but to the audience—by telling Andrea to not reveal her findings to anyone else because it’s going to “defame” the college.
Alderman Wants The Prime Finder
We see that Akram and Bogdan are searching for Edward in Cambridge, and while Bogdan continues his hunt, Akram goes to meet Alderman at a pub. This sort of establishes the fact that while the NSA, Kaplar, and Axiorn are on one side, Alderman and whatever organization Akram and Bogdan belong to are on the other. “Who are the good guys?” I hear you asking. Well, I have a feeling that it’s Alderman, Akram, and Bogdan. I mean, they don’t sound sinister. Bogdan saved Edward from getting killed, and now Alderman is talking about a mission to rescue Edward. In stark contrast to them, everyone associated with Axiorn is really ominous and threatening. Also, Alderman wants to give the prime finder to the world. He doesn’t want to keep it to himself.
Probably after witnessing so many deaths over this particular theorem, Alderman doesn’t want any one person, organization, or entity to wield it; he wants everyone to have it. Maybe he thinks that if everyone has the prime finder, then it’ll be robbed of its value and power, and it’ll stop being a weapon anymore. Yes, it’ll lead to mayhem and chaos for a while. However, when the dust eventually and inevitably settles, the threat of someone unlocking every digital lock will be dead in the water because everyone will hopefully have an anti-prime finder program. It sounds idealistic, but if I have to choose between Alderman and Andrew, yeah, I’m willing to bet that Alderman and his friends are the good guys.
Taylah and Edward Enter the Endgame
After stalling for a long time, Edward picks up his notebook and Safiya’s thesis, and he begins arranging the pieces of the mathematical puzzle to unveil the full picture. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the same building, Jane gives Taylah the lowdown on why she has joined hands with Axiorn. Jane says that the NSA is subject to congressional oversight, but since Axiorn is a private firm, it doesn’t have any restrictions. So, the part of the NSA that Jane and Andrew operate has joined hands with Axiorn so that they can do illegal stuff like using Kaplar to fund Safiya and Mallinder’s work on prime numbers and then killing them off once they decide to defect. Jane assures Taylah that Edward won’t meet the same fate, even though he is way deeper into this swamp than his deceased predecessors, but Taylah doesn’t buy it.
As Edward slaves away, writing equation after equation, Taylah’s role in all this becomes clear: she needs to turn the finished formula into code and complete the creation of the prime finder. As long as Edward’s work is purely on paper, it’s not harmful. As soon as it becomes a program, it’s dangerous. Again, Jane assures Taylah that this prime finder program will never actually be used to do any harm, and Taylah seemingly uses the last dregs of trust that she has for Jane to align with Axiorn’s plan to help them simply keep the digital weapon away from whoever they perceive to be “enemies.” Based on that, Jane gives Taylah back her phone.
In a disturbing turn of events, Andrew brings in the amnesiac professor, Raymond Osborne, to help Edward overcome the speed bump that he has hit. This infuriates Edward immensely because he knows that whoever is made privy to this controversial and confidential information usually doesn’t get to walk away alive. Edward loves Osborne, and he can’t stand the fact that he has been dragged into all this for no fault of his own. Edward tries to erase all his research so that Osborne is in the dark and, hence, safe. But Osborne insists Edward let him be a part of this monumental task. After butting heads for a while, the master and the pupil make a breakthrough, or at least the beginning of one. That’s when Edward again begins to wonder if they’re doing the right thing by just handing over such an important thing to the people who have “allegedly” killed Mallinder and Safiya, abducted Osborne, and have drugged and abducted him after failing to kill him.
Professor Osborne Is Dead
At the end of Prime Target episode 7, Edward and Osborne seemingly complete the equation—they even dub it the Brooks-Osborne theorem—and Taylah bursts into their prison to turn it into code and form the prime finder. While working on it, Taylah secretly (but it’s kind of in plain view) fires up some app on her cellphone. When she finds an error in the equation, she goes to Edward and requests that he give her the correct one. She even calls him “Eduardo” as if to soften him up, but if you have watched the previous episode, you’ll know that it’s a safe word. Andrew kind of picks up on the fact that something is off about the exchange, but by the time he can do anything about it, Taylah glitches out the security system of the whole building with the app that she was running a few seconds earlier.
Taylah incapacitates Andrew and makes a run for it with Edward, Osborne, and all the necessary documents. Andrew catches up to them and threatens to shoot Edward if he doesn’t give up the notebook, which has the theorem in it. Osborne tries to protect Edward, but Andrew mercilessly guns him down. Taylah gets the drop on Andrew and knocks him out with a fire extinguisher. Then she drags Edward away from Osborne’s body so that they can avoid getting recaptured by Axiorn. Edward has been able to separate the math from its consequences so far because nobody really close to him had died because of his actions.
Every time Taylah tries to educate Edward about how dangerous his “curiosity” is, he has maintained his stance that he is simply analyzing nature and that’s it. But now that Osborne, a man who Edward loves, has perished largely because of him, he will understand the weight of his innocent little theorem. What’s he going to do with it, though? Well, Osborne’s final wish was to publish it. Alderman wants to do the same thing, and he hopes (he is pretty sure, by the way) that Edward is going to gravitate towards Darnell, hand the prime finder over to him, and fulfill Osborne’s as well as his academic desires. Edward and Taylah both know that Jane or Kaplar aren’t viable options anymore. If Taylah figures out, from Andrea’s voicemail, that Darnell isn’t all that safe either, then Edward has to go for some kind of a third option. Whatever that is, it’ll be revealed in the finale next week. So, keep your eyes peeled.
