“The Old Man” Episode 5 continues following Harold Harper and Emily Chase as they board the flight to Faraz Hamzad’s unknown rendezvous point at the end of the previous episode. While episode 5 seems to be constructed a bit tighter, with mostly two major plots being followed, it can be argued that it provides very little new information to viewers. Nonetheless, it follows Emily and Harold’s changing relationship, while Dan and Zoe decide to embark on a deadly mission, perhaps with no return.
Spoilers Ahead
‘The Old Man’ Episode 5: Recap & Ending
As Harold Harper and Emily Chase spend moments of awkward and uneasy silence aboard the flight, Emily tries to break the ice, making a joke, and this bursts open the confrontation that had been coming all along. Harold expresses his tremendous anger and disappointment at what he has just recently learned—that his trusted junior colleague Angela was actually Dan Chase’s daughter and that she had been acting as a mole inside his operation. He admits to always considering Angela as part of his own family, but could never realize that she was hiding another identity. Emily now cracks down on this, disapproving of Harold’s claim, and instead reveals that she had already guessed that the man she considered almost like a father was suspecting something about her. But the man had instead chosen to keep quiet about it instead of talking about it to Emily, who he apparently considered like a daughter. At one point, Harold tries to put criminal charges on the young prodigy, saying that what she did was obviously unlawful as her two conflicting identities suggest that she had in some way infiltrated into the FBI in order to help her fugitive father escape. Although Emily admits that she is indeed torn between her two identities, guided by her two fathers, biological and professional, the young woman has already been established as a character strong enough to fight back. She quickly makes Harold aware that he, too, could be easily incriminated over the fact that he had personally hired a professional assassin to kill Dan Chase before the FBI SWAT team arrived on the scene. However, it is also true that Harper had tried to help Dan escape before the situation escalated, and Emily tries to use this to establish how they should really work together. As their plane finally lands at a small airport the next morning, estimated to be somewhere in North Africa, Harold and Emily are led to a room full of documents related to flights and passenger details. Harper explains that it is some sort of a test set by Faraz Hamzad to prove that the FBI counterintelligence officer knows the exact details of the thirty-five-year-old case. Harper successfully finds out details of the flight Dan Chase and Abbey Chase/Belour had taken from Karachi to escape so many years back, but when he lets Hamzad’s lawyer know of this finding, she briefly states that the file containing Harper’s misdemeanors would still be released. Once again, realizing that there is no straight way out of the situation, Harper seems to agree to Emily’s plan of working together with Dan Chase, who Emily claims to be on the way to putting an end to Hamzad, and carving their escape.
When Harold had earlier asked Emily how exactly she had made her way inside the FBI, she mentioned that although she herself did not know all the details, a retired official her father had considered a mentor had helped her get in. This obviously meant Morgan Bote, the ex-US Intelligence man who had introduced Harper to the hitman Julian Carson in the earlier episodes of “The Old Man.” Morgan Bote now makes an appearance again, as he calls up agent Raymond Waters and asks to meet him. Bote mentions that he had looked at both Harold and Dan as his own two sons, as they were extremely closely associated in their profession, and had also helped Dan’s daughter get into the FBI when the man had asked for such a favor. However, Bote now also seems to realize that his decisions have caused a complicated web of problems, and he gathers a team of special agents, which includes Julian Carson and Raymond Waters. He makes the intention of such a group very clear—to track down and hurt the two men he had once considered sons.
In their sprawling Los Angeles apartment, Dan Chase and Zoe were last seen embroiled in a tense situation, as Zoe had just claimed that Dan should write off half his wealth and property in her name to give her some leverage to use against him. Now, in “The Old Man” Episode 5, Dan quickly follows Zoe’s demands and states that he has never cared for money as it has always been just a tool for him to ensure his family’s safety. Seeing him about to leave, Zoe asks him about his next actions, and Dan says that he intends to go save his daughter from imminent danger, which he has learned of very recently. As strained as their relationship might seem, though, the essential trust and companionship that had got Dan and Zoe close seem to resurface, as the man asks her to join him, and she agrees. They first drive to a pet hotel to drop off the two faithful Rottweilers, Dave and Carol, as Dan knows very well that this might be his very last mission. Then he tries to get in touch with Suleyman Pavlovich again, through the financial assistant Zachary, and he drives to the man’s house. When Dan suggests that he is now about to use force against Zachary to convince him to make the deal that would attract Pavlovich’s attention, Zoe steps in and says that she wants to have a word with Zachary first. Although her initial approach to Zachary is as a mostly shaky individual who is turned down by the assistant, Zoe takes one more chance as a firm professional and ultimately manages to convince Zachary to start the deal. Zoe now sharpens her already turning character, with boosts of confidence and also more familiarity with Dan’s life. Finally, as the two are seen aboard a flight, Dan and Zoe seem to have not just settled into the lives of their new alibis, Henry and Marcia Dixon, but they also now click in as a couple, who intend to be with each other till the very end.
What New Is Revealed About Dan Chase’s Past In Afghanistan?
Going back thirty-five years or so, Dan and Belour are seen in Faraz Hamzad’s camp, eagerly waiting for any result from Hamzad’s constant interrogation of the Soviet camp leader, Suleyman Pavlovich. While the rebel chief remains hopeful that every man has a breaking point beyond which he is bound to talk, Dan tells Belour that he intends to leave the camp in search of more CIA help. The woman, however, asks Dan not to leave, confiding in him that she fears what exactly the Soviet hostage will say out loud and what repercussions that will bring on her. Realizing something suspicious and disloyal is in the works, Dan follows Belour’s instruction and meets her in private that night. Belour reveals that she has indeed been working with the Soviet government, but only to help her husband and not against him. It was very clear at the time that the Soviets would ultimately leave Afghanistan very soon, and all Afghan rebel forces would quickly clash against each other to claim rulership of the newly liberated country. By helping the Soviets with information about the other rebel camps, Belour was ensuring that Hamzad would be in a better position than the other competitors to rule Afghanistan. While Dan insists that Hamzad would surely understand Belour’s intentions in acting in this manner, the woman now reveals that there is something even more sensational that she has kept secret from her husband. Sometime earlier, she had been to a village somewhere in the Afghan valleys where she had learned of a tremendously rich pool of natural resources. A group of Greek pirates had found a mineral deposit—a copper lode with traces of lithium and uranium underneath, but none of the men lived to disclose the location. While the Soviets were also in search of this mineral deposit, it was only Belour who knew of its location, as she had heard of the emergence of a foreign man in the village she had visited. Belour admits that she doesn’t want to tell her husband any of this because she clearly knows that access to such natural resources would easily give Faraz Hamzad too much power. She, too, claims that every man has a breaking point, beyond which he changes, and such resources would make Hamzad an autocratic ruler with all of the country’s power in his hands. Although she does not yet tell Dan about the deposit’s location, mentioning that she intentionally wants to keep the village and the valley unnamed, Belour finally clarifies why she has been telling the man all of this. She claims that she has now started to realize that she alone is powerless and vulnerable to threats, and so would want Dan Chase to help her.
Unlike how Dan and Belour’s relation was earlier seeming to have been established, “The Old Man” Episode 5 gives an idea that there was probably a matter of working together on a covert mission that the two shared with each other even before their subsequent romance. Is it possible that they actually decided to flee Afghanistan and settle down together more because of their situation than it being centered around romance? But then again, the question of why Belour would trust Dan with such crucial information does seem to suggest some sort of mutual trust that the two had already established. While this new angle and information is now introduced to us, Dan’s past still remains with a lot of question marks hanging about. As Dan continues to have apparitions of Abbey in the present, there seems to be something that the man still hides deep in his conscience, something that only he knows so far. As his conscience, in the form of this imaginary Abbey, makes it clear, it is very evident that Dan needs someone else in whom he can confide all these dark and secretive things from his past that he has been carrying around for so long. By the end of “The Old Man” Episode 5, it is established that Zoe is going to be this person; but exactly what Dan’s past was, still remains unexplained.
What To Expect Next From ‘The Old Man’ Episode 6?
It is now very clear that Faraz Hamzad’s present self is soon going to make an appearance, and what exactly he demands of Harold Harper and Emily Chase is to be soon. Also, how these two pair up with the incoming (quite literally) Dan Chase, is something that would definitely build up the climax of the show. Along with these, Dan’s real past and his escape from Afghanistan with his new wife, thirty-five years back, remains yet to be revealed. Also, whether Zoe can totally fit into the understanding support system that Abbey had been to Dan would be seen. It is gradually becoming clear that Abbey definitely had a large, if not equal, role to play in Dan’s secretive past, with more elements in their relationship than just romance.
