The fourth episode of The Iris Affair finally reveals that the diary everyone had been looking for is not on the island of Sardinia, but somewhere else. Back in episode 3, Commissioner Krauss triggered the bomb that Iris had planted in the suitcase, thereby killing his partner, Commissioner Claude Baptiste, and Officer Teo in the explosion. Iris’ employer, Cameron, fled the scene on his helicopter, taking Iris’ student, Joy, with him so he could use her as leverage to get back Jensen’s diary, which was the key to unlocking the greatest quantum computer ever built. Meanwhile, Iris saw the trail of police vehicles approaching the explosion site and therefore took Joy’s car to escape and evade the police. Officer Nico Casterman, who was handling Iris Nixon’s case, was devastated by the death of a fellow officer and swore to track down Iris by any means necessary. She alerted every single officer on the island and even requested drone surveillance so that they could locate the culprit before she left the island. So, will Nico and her team be able to catch Iris before she disappears from the face of the earth once again? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Iris Escaped to Rome
At some point, we have to ask: is Iris really as smart as Cameron thinks, or is that what the makers of the show want us to believe? The reason I am saying this is because Iris just escaped from under the nose of the Italian police, and they didn’t do anything to catch her. In episode 4, Iris stole a boat from Riviera del Corallo to reach Talamone, on the Italian mainland. From the beach, she stole a few bags from inattentive tourists and took a bus ride to Rome, where she had actually hidden Jensen’s diary. I believe Iris hadn’t xeroxed the entire thing and left a few pages from the diary just to make sure that the notes didn’t fall into the wrong hands. I mean, if she had photocopied the whole diary, then what was even the point of the original textbook? Couldn’t Cameron have just asked the officers to bring him the notes they found at Iris’ safehouse, and then given them to another guy to help him crack the code? Well, whatever the case might be, Iris needed the diary to finish solving the puzzle, but she couldn’t retrieve it by herself. Everyone was looking for her, and she would have easily been exposed the moment she had stepped into the library. That’s why she needed an ally to help her get back Jensen’s diary.
Cameron Took Joy To Slovenia
You see, Cameron’s not a bad guy. He’s just an investor who wants to leave behind a legacy, but it seems like with Charlie, he made a really bad investment, and now there’s no way to get out of the mess. After the explosion, Cameron acted on impulse and abducted Joy, believing he would be able to use her as leverage against Iris, but Joy told him that she wasn’t even remotely related to Iris, nor was she attached to her in any way. She was just her student who’d known her for the past few months, and that was it. Cameron understood that Joy was nothing but a mere puppet in Iris’ grand plan, and even though he wanted to get rid of her, he couldn’t. He wasn’t that kind of guy. So Joy convinced Cameron to keep her alive, and he eventually brought her to the secret facility in Slovenia so he could find some use for her.
Hugo Pym contacted Cameron
Remember how Cameron told Iris that he had taken money from some really dangerous people to invest in Charlie? Well, he wasn’t lying. The company that had lent money to Cameron was tired of his excuses and therefore escalated his case to the top management so that their agents would recover the shareholders’ money as quickly as possible. A shady guy named Hugo Pym contacted Cameron and gave him a subtle warning to speed things up from his end, or else he would have to pay back with his life. Cameron improvised and told them that he had a person in his custody through whom he would be able to get back Jensen’s diary. Hugo suggested a few ideas to blackmail Iris, but Cameron didn’t want to harm Joy in any way, especially when he knew that she had nothing to do with the whole mess. Okay, time for some truth. If you remember the ending of episode 3, Iris deliberately faked concern about Joy so Cameron would believe that she cared about the young girl. However, Iris’ actual plan was to get Cameron to take Joy with him so she would have a mole inside the secret facility through whom she could get in touch with Jensen, as she needed his DNA to solve the last piece of the puzzle.
In the previous episodes, Iris had figured out that Jensen had used a book code to hide Charlie’s password, but the issue is that a book code is impossible to break unless one knows the book that was used to create it. After doing some research, Iris came to the conclusion that instead of using an actual book, Jensen had used a symbolic book. He used a DNA sequence as the source of his book code, as DNA is the book of life. However, she didn’t know whose DNA Jensen had used to create the cipher, and it was in episode 4 that Iris finally solved the puzzle. Jensen had used his own DNA to hide the password, and so Iris needed his DNA to break Charlie’s activation sequence.
In The Iris Affair episode 4’s ending, Iris hacked into Joy’s Spotify account to leave her a message. She wanted her to locate the man, Jensen, and procure a strand of his hair so Iris could use the sequence of his DNA to crack the code. But how is Joy going to escape her chamber, especially when the CCTV cameras inside the facility are keeping a close watch on her? Well, she’s a smart kid, and I am sure she’ll find a way, but the main question here is, even if Iris breaks the sequence, will it give her the answers she has been chasing for 18 months? Why doesn’t Jensen want anyone to wake up Charlie? What’s really wrong with the machine? I think we have to wait for the upcoming episodes to get these answers.
Alfie Stole the Diary
I hope you all remember the conspiracy nut and YouTuber Alfie Bird, who had posted numerous videos on Iris Nixon trying to crack down on the conspiracy centered around her mysterious disappearance and unusually high price on her head. In the previous episode, Iris contacted Alfie and asked him to come see her in Rome if he wanted to find out more about her. Well, Alfie couldn’t miss the opportunity to meet this brilliant woman in person, so he took a flight to Rome. Iris met him on a bus and told him that she needed a favor from him. In exchange, she would tell him everything about Jensen Lind, his invention, Charlie Big Potatoes, and the Nine Horses. And he could do whatever he wanted with that information. This material could actually make his videos go viral, because no one knows about the greatest quantum device except for Cameron and his investors. It’s obvious that a machine that’s capable of such powerful computing could pose a threat to national and international security, and if the world’s governments found out about Charlie, they would hunt down Cameron to either confiscate his tech or destroy it before it falls into the wrong hands.
In episode 4’s ending, Iris sent Alfie to the library where she had hidden Jensen’s diary, and after a bit of struggling, Alfie managed to steal the book, but before he could hand it over to Iris, Officer Nico Casterman stopped him near the entrance of the library and asked him to walk to his apartment with her, as she had a few questions for him. At the beginning of the episode, Nico had contacted Alfie, asking him if he had any information about Iris that could help the police to track her down. During this conversation, Alfie not only withheld information but also lied to the police about his location; however, Nico heard a church bell in the background, which made her suspicious of Alfie. She quickly put in a request to track his cellphone, and that was how she located Alfie at the end of the episode. However, Nico isn’t much of a worry for Iris, as there’s another threat looming over her head. As soon as Iris arrived in Rome, she robbed a drug peddler, believing he wouldn’t be able to report the robbery to the police. But it turned out, Iris’ picture was all over the media, and this drug peddler informed his boss, who later instructed all his men to hunt down Iris so they could claim the reward on her head. In the closing shot of the episode, we saw these scavengers looking for Iris on every street, and it wouldn’t take them long to finally spot her. It’s possible that before Iris could reach Alfie’s apartment to take back the diary, these peddlers would find her, and she’d have to leave the city before she could get her hands on the diary. In such a case, she would ask Alfie to meet her somewhere else, but will he agree to risk his life, especially when he knows that the police have been tracking his cellphone?
And last but not least, we have Bruni, the leader of the special crime branch unit, who lost three of his precious men in order to claim the reward on Iris’ head. For him, it’s no longer about money but has become much more personal, and he’ll make sure to find Iris in any corner of the world. This is to say that he won’t let her be in peace no matter where she goes. So will Iris ever be able to evade these men and start anew? Or will eventually meet her tragic fate while trying to solve the most difficult puzzle in the world.
