The first season of “The Old Man” comes to a nicely rounded-up end with episode 7, as it takes all its major characters to important thresholds while setting up a base for the already announced second season. The previous episode had already shown Emily Chase kidnapped by a special-ops team led by ex-CIA old man Morgan Bote, and Harold Harper and Dan Chase finally reuniting to save their shared daughter figure. “The Old Man” Episode 7 now deals with how the two men go about their ways, what happens to Emily, and finally, what had actually happened in Afghanistan so many years back.
Spoilers Ahead
‘The Old Man’ Episode 7 Recap And Ending
As Dan Chase and Zoe wait around near a Tunisian harbor, Harold Harper talks on the phone with one of Morgan Bote’s men, who has abducted Emily Chase, for reasons Harper wants to find out. Zoe tries to make herself useful to Dan, like she has always tried to be, by revealing her suspicion about a shaky relationship between Faraz Hamzad and his lawyer, but Dan dismisses her speculations. Harold finally gets to know of Bote’s intentions and shares it with Dan—the ex-CIA operative, who still remains highly influential in American intelligence, wants to get rid of this entire sticky situation, especially since news of the FBI assistant director (Harold Harper) himself trying unlawful means has been made public. Bote had also, earlier in the series, accepted that much of the mess was due to his own past actions as he had made access for Emily to get into the FBI and become an agent under the identity of Angela Adams.
On the other hand, Faraz Hamzad, now a powerful man with sources deep inside American Intelligence, was also on the hunt for Dan Chase, and Morgan Bote now decides to try and resolve both of his problems together. Holding Emily captive, through his three-man team consisting of Raymond Waters, Julian Carson, and another operative/hitman named Mike, he had cut a deal with Faraz Hamzad, with Dan Chase in the thick of this deal. He has promised Hamzad that Dan Chase will surrender himself and go to meet the Afghani via a private plane that the latter is sending; and if Dan does not follow this plan and keeps escaping as a fugitive, then Emily will be handed over to Hamzad and sent to Afghanistan, beyond which the CIA or the FBI won’t take any responsibility of her. Unsurprisingly, Dan agrees to this deal quickly, realizing that there is no alternative, and he now asks Zoe to return home. Zoe tries to express her concern for the man and seemingly wants to be of help to him, but Dan convinces her that he needs to go protect his daughter alone. He apologizes to her for dragging her into all this inconvenience and then ending their journey together all of a sudden, but Zoe is clearly not too impressed.
Harold Harper and Dan Chase drive in a convoy of cars through a desert highway to reach the private plane that Hamzad has sent for them. The two men finally get to catch up, and most of the discussion is unpleasant, with an air of distrust, as Harold wonders whether Zoe would pose a threat to the integrity of the FBI as she had been inside the operation and was now suddenly out. Understanding that Harold is considering Zoe as another loose end to probably think of removing, Dan quickly convinces him that the woman is harmless. Harper then cuts to the point and tells Dan about the puzzle Hamzad had set for him with airplane passenger details earlier (shown in “The Old Man” episode 6), and asks for his help to uncover the truth. Harper had guessed that he would have to dig out the exact flight number and seat numbers that he had booked for Dan and Belour to escape to the USA, and he had done it correctly, too, only to realize that he had failed to solve the puzzle. This clearly meant that there was something else Hamzad wanted to know from him, something that the FBI agent himself did not know, and he now asks Dan what it could be. Dan does not elucidate the matter at all, and instead tries to claim how not all things should be known to one. Harper claims that he wants to know so that he can give these answers to Emily, but the conversation instead turns to how Emily actually remained faithful to the relationship she had built with Harold Harper and his family. Dan now also expresses a new notion that has found its place in his head since his recent meeting with Suleyman Pavlovich: that Belour might have used him to cultivate an exit strategy in the same way she had used the other men in her life.
Within this while, Harold receives news from Raymond that the safe house where they had kept Emily was now under attack by unknown men. Dan figures out that Hamzad must have played dirty, ignoring the terms of the deal, and has now sent men to abduct Emily anyway, irrespective of whether Dan surrenders to him or not. The two men quickly get their cars around and rush to the location, but the next obstacle comes from within the CIA, as the agent accompanying them says that he has received orders from his superiors to make Harold and Dan go through the old plan of driving to the private plane. Unwilling to trust the Intelligence anymore, Harold too decides to go rogue, and with Dan’s help, he gets rid of the hostile cars and makes his way to save Emily.
Despite working together on the orders of Morgan Bote, Raymond Waters and Julian Carson are seen to be distrusting of each other as well. As the three men hold a sleeping Emily inside a safehouse, awaiting more orders from the CIA, Raymond and Carson discuss each other’s pasts in an attempt to run their personal checks on each other’s credibility. Carson claims to have been a part of the Joint Special Operations Command, which seems odd to Raymond, as he says that he does know most of these men personally and yet had never heard of Carson. However, before they can grow more suspicious about each other, the third operative, Mike, spots a group of armed men around the safehouse who have definitely come to attack them.
Knowing that they have to move from the place soon, Raymond wakes Emily up and promises to keep her safe and explain everything later, as the woman is understandably confused. Mike and Raymond decide to drive her away in a van while Carson goes to clear out the men to avoid any dangerously fired shots at the van. Carson takes down the men and signals Raymond to drive the van out, but in a short while, the car is stopped by a random pedestrian, an elderly woman, who suddenly pulls out a gun and shoots the two men dead. When Dan and Harold arrive on the scene sometime later, they find the van in the middle of the road, with Mike and Raymond’s bodies inside. There is no sign of Emily or Julian Carson at all. Realizing that they have lost on this front, Dan and Harold now make their way to the airport to board Faraz Hamzad’s private plane and play the rest of the game on the Afghani’s terms.
On the other hand, Faraz Hamzad finally makes an appearance in the present, as the elderly man waits around eagerly for something, until Emily Chase is driven to his compound, and the two take glances at each other.
Why Was Faraz Hamzad Actually Trying To Track Down Dan Chase?
Scenes from thirty years ago finally show the Afghan rebel leader Faraz Hamzad confronting both his wife and chief advisor, Belour, and his recently made close friend, Dan Chase, or Johnny Kohler, as he was then known, about his recent learnings. Hamzad had already figured out that his two closest aides had helped his Soviet hostage, Suleyman Pavlovich, escape from the camp, and the man was now asking for answers regarding it. Belour stepped up and revealed how she had been feeding information to the Soviets and did not want Pavlovich to reveal all of it in public, but this does not clear Hamzad’s suspicions. The rebel lord says that he had already guessed something like this was in the works, and was now sure there was something even more serious that his wife was hiding from him. As Dan tries to cover for Belour, by lying that he had handed over Pavlovich to the CIA to better his own position, Belour herself now comes out with the whole truth to her husband. She tells Hamzad that she knows the location of the immensely rich mineral deposit that can easily turn the country and the rebels’ fortunes, and Hamzad is utterly confused as to why she had not told him any of this before. Belour expresses her fear that she suspected all this wealth and power in just one man’s hands could potentially turn her husband into a frightful dictator that he genuinely was not, but Faraz Hamzad dismisses any such possibility. The greed of fortune, perhaps, is already bright in Hamzad’s eyes as he demands Belour to tell him of the location, and when she hesitates, the man tells her to take some time, to sleep over the thought, and then tell him of the location the next day. As Belour frustratedly leaves the scene, Hamzad looks at Dan with disappointment in his eyes, and, perhaps even realizing that he does not need American help any longer, asks Dan Chase to be gone from his camp by the next day.
Dan, of course, understands the scary extent to which Faraz Hamzad would be willing to go to find out about the location of the natural resources that would turn him into the country’s leader overnight, and he wastes no time in contacting the CIA handler for operations in Afghanistan at the time, Harold Harper. Harold, too, sounds very surprised and disbelieving at the fact that Hamzad could suddenly kill his wife and most prized advisor, but he ultimately agrees to provide assistance only on one term. If Faraz Hamzad ever got out and made a name for himself, then he would definitely return to the US authorities and make this secret covert operation known, as Hamzad and the US were allies in this case. It is evident that Harper was agreeing to help Dan and Belour escape Afghanistan without the permission or authority of his CIA superiors, and would therefore land himself in trouble if word of this ever got out. Although Dan initially tries to explain how Hamzad cannot win any fight without Belour’s assistance, he finally agrees to Harper’s demand—that Dan must kill Faraz Hamzad before fleeing the rebel camp and the country via a flight in which Harper would book two seats for them.
However, there were a few changes in the plan that Dan Chase actually carried out that night, and one part of it remained unknown to even Harold Harper till the present moment, when he tells him of it. It was obvious that Dan had not killed Hamzad thirty years ago, but the reason he did not do it was because Hamzad’s young daughter, maybe five or six years old at the time, if not younger, was there with them in the room that night. Dan simply could not bring himself to kill the little girl’s father in front of her eyes, and instead left Hamzad alive and sleeping. Finally, when Dan and Harper reach the safehouse where Emily was kept in the present and find the empty van, Dan reveals to Harper that on that night, there were not two people fleeing Afghanistan for the United States, but rather there were three. Belour had decided to take her young daughter along with her and Dan, and for a brief time, they had even discussed whether to let Harper know of this, but ultimately decided not to tell him. They had flown in the young girl along with them; the girl named Parwana Hamzad, whose identity was also changed after their arrival in America. Parwana soon became Emily Chase, the only daughter of Dan and Abbey Chase, and then became Angela Adams, an FBI counterintelligence agent. It is finally revealed that Faraz Hamzad was not looking for Dan Chase to exact revenge for having taken his wife away, but rather it was more so for taking his beloved daughter away from him. Had Hamzad’s grudge against Dan been solely because of Belour, it could have still been considered a matter of the past, but with Emily being the biological daughter of Faraz Hamzad, who was taken away from him by his wife and friend secretly one night, the man now leaves no stone unturned to track Dan Chase down. Finally, with where “The Old Man” season 1 ends, Faraz Hamzad, Dan Chase, and the daughter, Emily/Parwana, seem set to be present in the same space and time for the first time, and the confrontation would be one to watch out for.
What To Expect From Season 2 Of ‘The Old Man’?
With its fair share of success, “The Old Man” has already been renewed for a second season by FX, and season 1’s ending also makes it clear that the major action has been kept away for the next installment of the show. The ending also silently keeps a few questions raised, like what Julian Carson might be up to and where was the man when his crew-mates were killed and the hostage in charge of them were kidnapped. Morgan Bote also does not make an appearance in the last episode of Season 1, and overall, not much has been revealed about him either. Season 2 might deal with both these characters, along with that of Zoe McDonald, and where she might be after the blind storm that suddenly turned her life upside-down. Oftentimes, “The Old Man” has also made itself about the mental strains of human emotions, and towards the end, Emily’s own confusion about her identity was evident. What might happen when she gets to know about Faraz Hamzad, and learns that his identity as her father had always been hidden from her by Dan Chase, perhaps remains to be the most interesting thing to look forward to. The last episode makes it certain that Emily had her doubts about her father’s identity, and which side she chooses after her doubts are confirmed would be something to look at.
See More: ‘The Old Man’ Season 1: Characters, Explained – A Mighty Cast Of Spies Past Their Prime
