Abhiroop Das
Created by Neil Forsyth, Netflix’s ‘Legends’ reimagines the true story of a group of Customs employees who joined an undercover program to combat the UK’s heroin crisis in the 1990s. In this crime drama show, we focus on four enigmatic Customs officers who are bored with their dull work and yearn for a second chance to prove their worth. Fortunately, that chance arrives when Don Clark, the Customs head of operations, tasks them with donning entirely new identities, called Legends, and infiltrating two of the most powerful drug gangs in the country. As the season nears its end, Guy, Kate, Bailey, and Erin find themselves wrestling with their conflicting identities, all the while gathering information at the risk of death, so that they can bring a definitive end to the smuggling of drugs. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Legends Plot Recap
‘Legends’ begins with a young girl and a boy meeting their tragic death due to a heroin overdose, and soon the news takes over all of the UK. What makes things even more complicated is the fact that the dead girl’s father is a minister in the government, which calls for a fiercer crackdown on the heroin supply across the border. Angus Blake, Director of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, is given six months to conduct a covert operation that can bring down the nation’s leading drug gangs for good, but without enough resources at his disposal, Blake is forced to get creative. He assigns his lead operative, Don Clark, to recruit regular Customs employees and train them in espionage techniques. Over the next few days, fliers are put up all over the office, and catch the attention of Customs officers Guy, Erin, Kate, and Bailey, amongst others.
All officers interested in the program undergo a three-week training regimen, and by the end, only Guy, Erin, Kate, and Bailey emerge as promising candidates. With hardly any time to waste, Don declares them the foot soldiers in the UK’s war on drugs, and the way to win is by giving them “Legends,” or alternate identities. Using those, the unit is tasked with infiltrating the two distinct drug networks of the country: the Green Lane Turks led by Hakan and situated in London, and the Liverpool network of drug dealers, led by a man named Carter. While Erin and Bailey take on the persona of property agents and head to Liverpool, Guy is given the risky job of becoming a criminal and working with a double agent named Mylonas.
Over the next few weeks, Guy, Kate, and Bailey infiltrate their respective networks bit by bit, while Erin takes charge of the logistics. While Kate and Bailey find early success and pinpoint the vehicles used for shipment, they mess up by bringing in an unacquainted Customs officer named Shaun. Though he manages to briefly become the Liverpool gang’s drug transporter, his cover soon gets blown, and he has to escape before his house is burnt down. Meanwhile, Carter’s second in command, Eddie, learns that his son died due to a heroin overdose and decides to betray the gang and destroy their operations. Meanwhile, Guy slowly works his way into the system, emerging as a trustworthy transporter of large volumes of drugs.
Zeki, Hakan’s intended successor, dislikes Guy’s involvement in the operation and tries to strike a deal with the suppliers in Istanbul to cut Hakan and Guy out of the equation. However, that plan soon backfires, and Hakan orders the murder of every single traitor, even if it means erasing his transportation channels. With no incoming supply of drugs, Hakan is left with no choice but to strike a deal with Carter’s gang and plan a one-time transport of a whopping 2 tons of heroin. Though this shapes up to be the perfect opportunity for a bust, Carter remains suspicious of Guy. To that end, he ensures that it’s Guy, and not the others, who have to ship the drugs out of Pakistan, which threatens to ruin the entire operation before it can even begin.
Legends Ending: Do Hakan and Carter Get Arrested? What Happens to the Drugs?
‘Legends’ ends with the undercover customs officers taking down Hakan and Carter before seizing all 2 tons of heroin. Though all hope seems lost when the ship sails away from the British police, Don and company throw a final Hail Mary when Guy reinitiates contact with Hakan and the Turks. After nearly dying at sea, the team somehow manages to bring the entire payload back in one piece, and the only step that remains is baiting Hakan and Carter to complete the transaction. Luckily, Hakan and Carter deem it necessary to personally go and check the goods, given how tight-knit this operation has been. In doing so, they essentially dig their own graves, giving the police ample time to catch them red-handed.
Though the mission is technically a success with Carter and company being caught, Don goes an extra step to make the entire operation look as natural as possible. For Guy to still maintain his appearance as a drug dealer, it is necessary that he and Mylonas also get caught during the bust. Erin, Kate, and Bailey, on the other hand, get to shed their personas and come to the forefront as Customs officers. This marks a particularly intense exchange between Kate and Carter, as he recognizes her as the girl downstairs and realizes that his instincts were right all along. Catching Hakan takes a bit more effort, as he manages to escape during the initial rush and looks for shelter in the Green Lanes. However, as fate would have it, the one house he does end up in belongs to Zeki’s mother, who doesn’t think twice before turning him in.
Hakan’s arrest marks a full-circle moment in that he originally lied to Zeki about never shedding Kurdish blood before getting him killed. This time, it’s Hakan who is betrayed by his community and has to pay the price for his actions. In the aftermath of the grand arrest, several higher-ups from the government come to pose in front of the enormous stash of seized drugs, while the Customs officers watch from a distance. The scene, purposefully framed, conveys that the Guy, Erin, Kate, and Bailey might never get the credit they deserve. Don acknowledges that more than perhaps everyone, but a part of him also realizes that these guys were never in the game for recognition, and that’s precisely what made them so effective. Instead, what the group celebrates is their accomplishment, which is likely to bring heroin supply to a complete halt.
Does Guy Let Go of His Legend? Can He Shed His Persona?
With the heroin crisis averted for the time being, all Legends are allowed to return to their usual selves and go back home. That, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that the psychological toll also comes undone at the same pace. While Erin, Kate, and Bailey head out to celebrate their success, Guy decides to head home to his family, and yet things look far from all right when he steps inside the car, all alone. Though he vehemently claims that his Legend is gone for good, Guy cannot help but stay up the entire night, some parts paranoid, others too on edge. It soon becomes apparent that his carefully crafted persona has nestled itself deep into his subconscious and has no plans of leaving him or his life anytime soon.
The reason Guy is a lot more affected by his Legend than his peers boils down to the nature of his persona. While Kate and Bailey take on the roles of property agents who are merely passing through criminal networks as observers, Guy’s task is to become a criminal from the inside out and infiltrate the deepest rings of the smuggling network. To convince the top rung leaders requires a disguise so thorough that it even fools Guy, which is why he chooses to retain his first name. However, on a symbolic plane, it also means that the Guy from Customs and “Guy Stanton” the criminal end up coalescing on some level, prompting an identity crisis. On some level, Don seems to have always anticipated something like this, which is why he fails to stop Guy even in the moments he clearly knows that he must.
Guy’s obsession with his own persona isn’t just linked to his post-traumatic experiences, but rather, a genuine desire to inhabit the criminal life once again. Mylonas astutely notes that experiencing the thrills of such a life renders one unable to move on from it, whether due to a subconscious yearning or fear. For Guy, who has spent much of his life feeling he could do more with his skills, the life of a criminal ironically becomes an outlet unlike any other. While this doesn’t mean that his sense of right and wrong is skewed, he does seem to enjoy the thrill of masking himself with evil and then subverting that when it’s time to apprehend his targets. The fact that the entire drug network knows Guy as a criminal who got arrested means that he still has a way back into the system, and he might just want exactly that.
What Happens to Eddie and Mylonas?
While Don and his team of Customs officers leave the game as winners, things are less clear-cut when it comes to the insider help they receive from Eddie and Mylonas. The last time we see Eddie, he is with his family, delighted that Carter is now behind bars. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean he is out of danger, as we haven’t yet seen the full extent of his enemies’ political reach. When Carter claims to rule half of England, he is specifically referring to the connections he has within the government and other bodies of power. While his reach within the police force is stunted after Kate figures out the truth, that doesn’t mean that he can no longer get things done from the inside. As such, Eddie might have to remain under government supervision for an extended period and reflect on the damage he caused before deciding to switch sides.
For Mylonas, the entire operation seems indistinguishable from any other day in his life. To that end, he becomes the most formative influence on Guy’s psyche, forcing him to internalize a way of life in which every second is an invitation to death and chaos. However, that doesn’t mean that Mylonas is unable to look away from a life of violence and crime from time to time, as we see him return to peace with his partner. In a way, this makes for a tragic parallel to how Guy’s relationship with his wife and daughter is actively worsening by the day, as he isn’t as well-adjusted to the darker shades of life as his partner in crime is. However, that doesn’t detract from the fact that Mylonas is essentially walking on a razor’s edge and might just be pushing Guy to make riskier calls than he is prepared for.
Over the course of the show, the Customs officers’ Legends allow us to peek into the minute details of the UK’s drug networks. In doing so, both the audience and the Legends themselves cease to see the drug barons and their workers as one-dimensional targets. Instead, they become part of a much larger network, one informed equally by cultural and economic shifts. For Guy, this manifests as his ambiguous camaraderie with Hakan’s son, who is still in Pakistan while all of this unfolds. As he still fully trusts Guy, he might be eager to join hands and reignite the smuggling network. The question now becomes not of how soon the Legends can bring the drug rings to justice, but how far they are willing to go to achieve that goal.
Read More: Netflix’s Legends True Story, Explained
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