As far as we understood, the character of Ashley Redfield in “The Night Agent” Season 1 seemed like an overly ambitious and treacherous man. He wasn’t the kind of person who would stay dormant just because he was on a post that a lot of people did not consider to be important. The general notion is that the title of Vice President does not have any significant duties. Additionally, they do not have a lot of say in policy matters, especially when it comes to the defense and security of the nation. But history is littered with examples of people who rose to positions of power not to solely enjoy the benefits but to effect change. Ashley Redfield had certain beliefs and ideologies, and he was not ready to abandon them just because his commander, i.e., the President, thought otherwise.
Ashley didn’t have a happy personal life, which is likely why he was channeling all of his anger, frustration, and disappointment into his professional life. Ashey’s relationship with his daughter, Maddie Redfield, was strained, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was at a rebellious age when everyone had a problem with authority. Ashley had another daughter named Sarah, who drowned in the swimming pool because Ashley was probably negligent and didn’t keep an eye on her. Ashley wished to avoid any accusations leveled at him by others or his own conscience. So, he made up a story and convinced himself that he was not responsible for anything that had happened in his life. He started blaming his other daughter, Maddie, for the loss of Sarah. Ashley’s behavior had an adverse impact on the mind of an innocent child, and we could see the damage it had caused when Maddie went to college.
Ashley was the most cunning and devious father a child could ever have, and it seemed like he would go to any length to maintain his public image. He portrayed him and his daughter as one happy family in front of the media, but only Maddie knew the kind of deranged person he was in reality. Maddie had so much hatred for her father that once, she recorded a video of him losing his temper upon her and probably beating her too. Maddie had thought a million times about making it public, but every time, she stopped herself at the very last moment because she knew that her father’s career would be ruined the moment it came out into the public’s purview.
In “The Night Agent” Episode 5, when Maddie was kidnapped by Colin Worley, she vowed to give testimony against her father to show the people that he was not the saint or the leader they thought him to be. Now, a lot of times, Maddie didn’t intend to do it, and perhaps, she was merely trying to gain the trust of the kidnapper so that he lowered his guard, and she could escape, but the dilemma in her eyes, for that fraction of a second, said a thousand words. Even back at the White House, Diane Farr and Gordon Wick believed that Maddie could go against her father, which is why they wanted to deal with her very cautiously.
A person cannot hold negative feelings inside themselves forever; they need to vent it out somewhere. Maybe that’s why Vice President Redfield decided to take such an extreme step and, in furtherance of it, risked the lives of hundreds of innocent people. Redfield saw Omar Zadar as a threat to national security, and he had tried telling President Traverse that they needed to sever all ties with him, but she hadn’t agreed.
Omar Zadar was loved by his people and was a member of the legitimate government, so the President of the United States of America saw nothing wrong with supporting him and maintaining friendly relations between the two countries. That’s when Ashley Redfield came into contact with an ex-marine, Gordon Wick, who ran a company named Turn Lake Industries that took on a lot of defense contracts all around the globe. They hatched a plan to kill Omar Zadar in a manner that made his death look like an accident. They knew that if the media or the government of any other nation got a whiff that the attack was intentional, then they would have to face severe legal consequences and, in addition to that, a lot of backlash from the international media too. So, Redfield and Gordon decided to hire Colin Worley to plant a bomb in the metro and blast it at a place where there was a gas line above it. They had assumed that the gas line would amplify the blast and cause destruction throughout the block. But Peter was coincidentally on that train, and he had been able to save the lives of a lot of American citizens. The Vice President made arrangements to erase all the evidence that proved his guilt, and then he waited for another opportunity to kill Omar Zadar.
It was in the tenth episode of the series that we got proof of how self-centered Vice President Redfield was. He and Gordon Wick had planted a bomb at Camp David, where the President was supposed to meet Omar Zadar. Redfield had already gone inside the safety bunker present in Camp David, and he had taken Maddie with him. Redfield wanted to believe that he was a good father and that he was looking out for the wellbeing of his daughter, but the moment she asked him to release her if he didn’t want her to tell the media everything he had done, he conveniently let her go outside the bunker. Redfield was more concerned about saving himself, even when he knew that if Maddie went out, she would live within the blast radius.
Redfield, in his own eyes, was a true patriot who wanted to save his nation from the wrath of an extremist who had been the mastermind behind various terrorist attacks. Even if we ignore the fact that he went against his President’s wishes for a moment, how can we accept him endangering the lives of hundreds of people on the train? He didn’t care how many people died as long as he achieved his political goal, which in fact, made him not only a traitor but also a ruthless dictator not worthy of leading a democracy. In his second attempt to kill Omar Zadar, his political ambitions and greed had a huge role to play in the scheme of things. He knew that if the President died, he would have to carry out her duties, and imagining himself as the most powerful person in the United States of America allured him so much that he couldn’t see the ramifications of his actions and how wrong they were moral. Ashley Redfield committed treason, and we will most likely see him face the consequences of his actions in the second season of the show, assuming the showrunners decide to have one.
