You know, when Angela Burr first visited Jonathan Pine, he had a copy of “Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” She called T. E. Lawrence the lonely genius who wished only to be a number. And if you draw the parallels here, then the story of our “Night Manager” is no different. The similarities between the two are abundant. Lawrence of Arabia once said that it is difficult to keep quiet when everything is done wrong, and the same goes for Jonathan Pine. He’s not the kind of man who can stand by and watch, because if he does, then he will go mad himself. He can’t ignore evil like the rest of the world does. He has to take action, which often lands him in trouble. In the second season, Pine came across a ghost from his past life, which left him with two options: to either ignore the whole thing and move on with his new life, or pursue this ghost to get to the bottom of the truth. Well, you can already guess which path Pine chose, so without any further ado, let’s explore what new trouble Pine found himself in.
Spoiler Alert
Pine Is Still Haunted By His Past
These nightmares, the sleepless nights—it all started with the death of Pine’s secret lover, Sophie Alekan, who was brutally murdered under his watch. Pine held himself responsible for Sophie’s death and swore to take revenge against Richard Roper, the man who took her away from him. But even though Pine witnessed Roper’s dead body with his own eyes, he is still haunted by the demons of the past. The first episode began with a flashback sequence that took place four years after the events of season 1. At the end of the first season, Roper failed to deliver the weapons he had promised to his Arab friend, Omar Barghati, because Pine blew the shipment up. Omar and his partner, Kouyami, asked Roper to return their money, but he didn’t have any, because Pine had already transferred it to another account. Furious about the whole ordeal, Barghati and Kouyami abducted Roper and took him away, and since then, no one has ever heard from him again. Cut to four years later, Angela Burr received intel from Syria, where Roper’s corpse was being held. It’s possible that Burr used her connections so that the Syrian army would let them identify the body, because Burr knew that Pine wouldn’t experience peace otherwise. She herself had been obsessed with Roper her whole life and wanted to put an end to this chapter, which was why the two arrived in Syria to identify the body, but even after seeing Roper’s corpse with his own eyes, Pine just couldn’t move on. There are things that keep him awake at night, or maybe he has just gotten accustomed to the life of a night owl.
The Night Owls Unit
After Pine returned to London, Rex Mayhew, Burr’s closest ally and superior at the Foreign Office, helped Pine erase his past and start anew under the identity of Alex Goodwin. It’s likely that, before retiring, Burr put in a good word for Pine, which was why Mayhew brought him to MI6 to fill the seats left empty by the previous management. Do you remember Geoffrey Dromgoole and his deputy, Raymond Galt, the corrupt MI6 officials who had close ties with Roper and were helping him to forge illegal documents to smuggle weapons from the US and UK? Well, long story short, they are no longer with the agency. It can be theorized that after Roper went missing, Rex Mayhew and Burr cleaned the River House and brought in new management to run things smoothly and lawfully. We have a new Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, Mayra Cavendish, who ironically is no different than Dromgoole, but I’ll get to that later. Speaking of the Night Owls, it’s a small surveillance unit made up of 5 people: Graham, Mike, Sally, and Waleed under the leadership of Pine, aka Alex Goodwin. Created some 3 years ago, the surveillance unit had helped MI6 perform clean-up operations in Central London and avert terror attacks across the city. And assessing the unit’s performance, Pine had asked for a three-year extension, which was duly sanctioned by Cavendish.
In episode 1, while keeping an eye on Kadarov, a man with links to the Bulgarian Mafia, Pine came across a familiar face from his past. Inside a private casino, he saw Jaco Brouwer, a mercenary from Roper’s private army, the Haven, whom Pine had met in Istanbul. Pine knew that Jaco’s presence in London couldn’t be a mere coincidence, which was why he quickly took the matter to Mayhew, so he would allow him to follow the man and investigate further, but Mayhew turned his request down. Mayhew told him that they’d worked very hard to create this new identity for Pine, and he couldn’t just compromise it all over one chance sighting. But like I said earlier, Pine isn’t the kind of man to let things go. He started having visions of Roper, which made him restless. Hence, he decided to go against Mayhew’s orders to find out what Jaco was up to.
Jaco Is Working For An Arms Dealer
So Pine and his team dug out all the information they had on Jaco and put him under surveillance to figure out what really brought him to London. In Richmond, Jaco met a man named Adam Holywell, a middleman who connects dozens of UK companies with clients abroad, and through their conversation, Pine found out about an arms shipment that would arrive in Cartagena Port in 3 days. So it turned out, after Roper’s death, Jaco started working for another arms dealer, and someone in England was either working for him or with him. Later, Pine went after Holywell and followed him to a house, which was surprisingly owned by his own agency. And the person Holywell met at this location was none other than Mayra Cavendish. Well, I think it wouldn’t be wrong to say that there’s something in River House’s air that makes every second agent turn corrupt. Earlier it was Dromgoole, and now we have a new replacement, Cavendish. However, we still don’t know why Cavendish is facilitating an arms deal or what her true motive is.
Mayhew Is Murdered
As soon as Pine found out about Cavendish’s involvement in the arms deal, he quickly called Mayhew and asked to see him the next day, as he had some urgent matters to discuss. It seemed like Mayhew too had uncovered something about Jaco and the arms deal and wanted to talk to Pine about it, but before Pine reached Mayhew’s house, someone had already gotten rid of him. Basil Karapetian, a senior MI6 agent, told Pine that Mayhew popped a few pills and took his own life in the shed, but Mayhew’s wife, Celia, knew it wasn’t true. She later told Pine that Mayhew was agitated and wanted to talk to Pine about his man, but before he could reveal anything, someone shut him down. On the phone, Mayhew had asked Pine to use the side entrance to the library, which made Pine realize that Mayhew might have hidden some clue there. He immediately went to the library and suddenly remembered that before his death, Mayhew had given him a new number to memorize. Pine remembered the phone number and rang it up, only to find out that Mayhew’s secret cellphone was hidden behind a book on the shelf. On the phone, Pine found a link, and the words “The Chief” were written under it. He took the phone back to his apartment to investigate further.
The New Players
So, the link Pine found on Mayhew’s phone was a direct drop with some pictures of Teddy Dos Santo, aka the Chief. Pine immediately remembered Jaco’s surveillance audio, in which he was talking about this “chief” who calls himself Richard Roper’s true disciple. These photographs made Pine realize that whoever this man was, he had close ties with his former rival, Roper. It could be possible that he was the chief of Roper’s private army, but before we could find out more about him, Pine received a call on Mayhew’s secret phone. It was from a Colombian shipping broker, Roxana Bolanos, the one whom Pine had seen at Mayhew’s 60th birthday party. Mayhew only had two contacts on this secret cellphone. One belonged to Pine, and the other one to Roxana, which made Pine certain that Roxana might know something about Mayhew’s murder, and therefore he immediately went to see her.
However, to Pine’s disappointment, Roxana didn’t know much. Or should I say, she didn’t want to disclose any information with him. Pine believed that her life might be in danger, and therefore took her to a safe location, that is the Bridcot Hotel, and asked her to give him everything she had on Mayhew and tell him how she knew him. Roxana told Pine that she was working with an import company in Cartagena that was buying UK machine tools for oil pipelines, but something didn’t feel right, which was why she contacted Mayhew to look into it. Well, if you remember, Cartagena was the same location Jaco and Holywell were talking about, and it seems likely the Colombians were using machine tools as a front to import guns from the UK, and MI6 chief Cavendish might be helping them to forge papers for the trade. In season 1, Roper had the same modus operandi. He used an agricultural tool manufacturing company as a front to smuggle arms and ammunition, so Teddy is likely following in the footsteps of his mentor.
Nevertheless, as per Roxana, the import company, Barquero Commerce, trusted her to broker the deal, as she grew up in Cartagena. And this was when she came in contact with London-based intermediary Adam Holywell, who was facilitating the deal. So if you connect the dots here, when Roxana contacted Mayhew, he might have started looking into Holywell, and through him he might have found out about the River House’s involvement in the arms deal, but before he could tell anyone about his findings, he was silenced. It’s possible that Cavendish was aware that Mayhew had been hiding something from her, which was why she mentioned to Pine that Mayhew had been acting strange recently. And I think it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that she was the one who ordered a hit on Mayhew, as he had dug up too much dirt on her and her new business partner. Mayhew knew that there was a threat to his life, which he’d also indicated during his speech in his birthday party, when he spoke about his funeral. So it’s possible that Mayhew stopped Pine from investigating Jaco because he didn’t want him to go down the same rabbit hole, and risk his life.
The Curious Case Of Teddy
So who is Eduardo “Teddy” Dos Santos, exactly? Well, that’s the question, Pine himself had been trying to figure out, but was only met with dead ends. Sally’s cursory research on the internet revealed that Teddy lives in Medellin and runs a cargo company, Barquero Commerce, the same organization that’s allegedly shopping for weapons from the UK. However, no one really knows where Teddy came from or who he was before. There’s no information on him until 2018, which suggests that Teddy might not be who he seems. It was just another identity, a name to carry out his dirty work, just like Roper had changed Pine’s name to Andrew Birch to sell weapons to the Arabs. But that’s not the only similarity between Teddy and Roper. Just like Roper, Teddy had created a charitable organization, called Aurora, to make the world believe he was a good man. But we all know that deep down, both Roper and Teddy were cut from the same cloth.
To find out more about Teddy, Pine went through some old albums of Roper, in which he saw a young Roper in uniform, along with a photograph of young Teddy. It could be possible that Roper met Teddy when he was young and maintained a friendship which lasted all through these years. I really wanted to entertain the possibility that Teddy might somehow be related to Roper, but I think it’s too soon to go chasing that theory. But whoever Teddy is, and wherever he came from, he is likely looking to carry Roper’s legacy and exact revenge from his adversaries. The question is, does he know about the man behind Roper’s downfall?
In the episode, Pine also paid a short visit to Roper’s son, Danny, to inquire about Teddy, but Danny refused to talk to Pine, because he knew he was the man who had destroyed his entire family. I think Danny might follow in his father’s footsteps or try to hunt down Pine to exact his revenge, but I am sure Pine will be ready to face Danny’s wrath and tell him the truth about his father. Speaking of truth, from the very first scene, Pine wanted to tell Danny about Roper’s death, but Burr stopped him. However, when Pine visited him in boarding school, he couldn’t stop himself from telling the truth. Pine believed that Danny deserved to know.
Jaco Brouwer Is Dead
Pine’s team, who had been keeping a watch on Jaco, found out that he had received a diplomatic briefcase, containing the “shipment list” that Teddy wanted Cavendish to arrange for him. The “shipment list” was likely a code word for forged MOD end-user certificates, which guarantee that the shipment will be delivered without any interference whatsoever. In season 1, Roper had paid Dromgoole to falsify similar documents so that no one dared open his shipping containers and stop the goods mid-transport. Also, these certificates would give Teddy some leverage over Cavendish so that she wouldn’t think of betraying him ever. So, back to the episode, Jaco was flying to Barcelona with these certificates, and even though the Night Owls weren’t authorized to conduct field operations, Pine requested his team to help him with his, as it was really important for him to get to the bottom of the truth. He even asked Graham and Waleed to bring firearms, which again was a violation of rules for their unit. At the airport, Sally planted a device on Jaco’s briefcase so they could track him in Spain, and as soon as he reached Barcelona, he went straight to Hotel Rusinol, where he was meeting with Teddy to hand him the papers.
Pine’s plan was to set up an audio surveillance device in the room next to Jaco’s room in the hotel so that they could listen in on his and Teddy’s conversation. It turned out Pine wanted to confront Teddy and talk to him directly; however, even before Jaco could enter his room, Teddy pointed a gun at him. Teddy had found out that the British had been keeping an eye on Jaco and had planted a tracking device on the briefcase. I think Teddy knew that Jaco was a loyal soldier, because he was chosen by none other than Roper, but Jaco had his vices, which couldn’t be overlooked anymore. Both Teddy and Holywell had asked Jaco to lay low and stay out of trouble, but shortly after he arrived in London, he went to a casino to play poker. And it was because of his gambling addiction that the MI6 agents recognized him and followed him, which could jeopardize the arms deal, something Teddy couldn’t forgive.
In The Night Manager episode 1’s ending, Sally called Pine, telling him that they had lost the signal, which made Pine certain that their operation had been compromised. He asked Sally to wipe everything from the system and quickly went into the room where Graham and Waleed had been hiding, but to Pine’s shock, Teddy had already gunned down his agents. It’s likely that the death of two agents would not only weigh heavily on Pine’s consciousness, but also give Cavendish an excuse to shut down the Night Owl unit. I know she just formally sanctioned a three-year extension to Pine’s unit, but if she wants to stop Pine and his team from digging up too much dirt on her and her business partner, Teddy, then she will do everything in her power to stop him. But Pine didn’t have time to worry about what could happen and what couldn’t. He had a mission at hand. He wanted to catch Teddy so he could find out how he knew Roper; however, as soon as Pine reached Teddy’s room, he got a call from the man of the hour himself. Teddy wanted to know who Pine was, which implies that Teddy had never seen Pine before, just like Pine or Danny had never seen Teddy before, and likely this man was from Roper’s past and had come out of hiding to resume his mentor’s work. Nevertheless, when Pine finally stepped into Teddy’s room, all he could find was a dead Jaco, rigged with a time bomb. By the time Pine reached the room, Teddy had already walked out of the hotel leaving behind a bomb to finish off his enemies, though I think it goes without saying that Pine likely didn’t die in the blast.
Roxana Is Missing
Okay, so before leaving for Spain, Pine had put Roxana under protection. He had left behind an agent, Tony, to keep an eye on her. However, Roxana tricked Tony and managed to use her phone, which likely gave away her location to Teddy, who sent one of his minions to bring her to him. In episode 1’s ending, an armed man arrived at the hotel room, shot Tony dead, and took away Roxana. So if Teddy’s willing to spill blood for Roxana, then it only means that this Colombian businesswoman from Miami knows more than she let Pine catch on to. He had shown her Teddy’s picture, and she’d told Pine that she didn’t know him, which was impossible, because she had been hired by his company, and Teddy’s photo was all over their website. So what I am trying to say here is that Roxana could have lied to Pine’s face, and she knew Teddy or where he’d come from, which was why she might have contacted Mayhew. And it’s through her that Pine will probably reach Teddy, but before that, Pine has a whole mess to sort out with the River House, especially with his chief.
