Diksha Sundriyal
Apple TV+’s political thriller ‘Liaison’ comes to an end with its sixth episode. All the secrets are revealed by the end, forever changing Alison Rowdy’s life. The story started with a series of cyberattacks on London and slithered into Alison’s life and past, where her choices and actions define the route her future will take. In the end, she discovers that things had never really been black and white with her, be it her personal life or professional. As Alison and Gabriel try to stop Antropa and their evil plans to take over the entire Europe, a terrible secret rewrites her understanding of the whole situation. Here’s what the ending means. SPOILERS AHEAD
Liaison Episode 6 Recap
Gabriel and Alison arrive in London with Samir, Myriam, and their child. They hide in Alison’s house while she waits for Richard to arrive. Albert is irked by Gabriel’s presence, and after a minor fallout between them, Alison throws Gabriel out of the house. He goes back to Dumas, who is in London with Saint-Roch, to catch Didier and Miller. DCI Hobbs is the head of the operation, and she is focused on capturing the mole. The French don’t want to risk losing Didier, so they send Gabriel to Antropa’s headquarters.
Richard arrives at Alison’s place, and she tells him everything that happened in France, including the French involvement. Samir and Myriam are taken away to safety. Later, Alison gets a call from Richard, asking her to return to work. She takes a cab but discovers that the driver has kidnapped her. She is taken to the Antropa headquarters, which is being monitored by Dobbs and the French. They’d been expecting the mole, and seeing Alison makes them think she is colluding with the enemy.
Liaison Finale Ending: Was Richard Working for Antropa?
When Alison is taken to Antropa’s office, it becomes clear that she has been set up to make it look like she is the mole. This happens when Dobbs, Saint-Roch, and Dumas see her entering the building. Later, Miller confirms that he will use her to cover up the identity of the real mole, who is still working for them. They plan to kill Alison and make it look like she has run away. An international alert will be sent to capture her, but she will never be found. It seems like Alison is doomed, but unbeknownst to her, Gabriel is also in the building.
Gabriel is brought into the same room just when Alison has discovered that she will be Antropa’s fall guy. While everyone is distracted by Gabriel, she makes her move and shoots two of Antropa’s men, allowing her and Gabriel to run away. They meet Myriam, who leaves her baby with them and acts as a distraction to give them time to run away. Later, Alison and Gabriel are separated, and it looks like he might have been killed. She leaves the building with Ronald’s phone in her hand.
Before she and Gabriel escaped, Miller had asked Ronald to call his boss. By checking the call log, Alison hopes to find out who the boss is. Before she can do that, the phone rings. It’s Richard asking Ronald where he is. Alison tells him how Ronald kidnapped her and took her to see Miller. She tells him that Miller, Didier, and Bob are on a helicopter and are escaping. Richard asks her to go on the private line by pressing a button. As soon as she does that, the helicopter explodes. As Richard asks Alison to throw away the phone, she realizes Richard is the mole.
Like Didier in the French government, Richard was Antropa’s mole in the British government. However, his motivations were different. He claims that he didn’t work with them for the money. He wanted to use them for national interests, but he got rid of them when they didn’t prove useful any longer. He tries to convince Alison that he is just looking out for the country and invites her to join him, but she refuses.
Why Did Richard Kill Miller, Didier, and Bob?
There are many things that ‘Liaison’ don’t outright clarify. The revelations come to us through Alison and Gabriel, giving room for interpretation while keeping the characters’ real intentions in the dark. Here’s what we think happened with Richard. On the surface, it looks like he was working with Antropa for the money. But as he tells Alison, it was more than that. Antropa was using him to get to the UK’s cybersecurity, and he must have assumed he was disposable to them. In one scene, Miller and Bob discuss continuing their plan and getting rid of Didier once his part is done. It looks like Richard was smarter than Didier regarding trusting Antropa.
When it came to cybersecurity, there were two things that the government could do. Either they could sign with the EU, or they could give over to Antropa. Richard wanted the country to go with the EU. He used Antropa’s attacks as an excuse to push the agenda, which had been on the sideline for a few years now. He’d hoped the attacks would soften the EU’s stance towards the UK and the treaty would be signed. However, he also knew that Antropa was working to stop the signing, so he sent Alison, believing she could do what the others couldn’t. He also knew Bolton was in league with Antropa and would never sign if he went alone. Richard also didn’t go himself because Antropa would consider it a betrayal if he signed.
Another possibility is that Richard wanted the government to sign with Antropa all along, and his hostile stance towards the private company was just an act. Things would have gone over smoothly if Samir and Walid hadn’t discovered their secret. He wanted to get the drive back and kill Samir and Walid so that his involvement with Antropa wouldn’t come to light. However, when he discovers that the French have the file, too, and that they will catch Didier, he knows that the game is over. Now, it was all about saving his own skin. He knew Antropa was done for and didn’t want to go down with them.
Richard sent Ronald to rig the helicopter he knew Miller, Bob, and Didier would take. He could risk even one of them getting caught, as they could rat him out. Even if they didn’t get caught, it was better if they were all dead because then Richard wouldn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, wondering when one of them might come back and blackmail him. With them dead, Antropa would die, and all of their plans to attack Europe would go down, too, solving all of Richard’s problems.
Does Gabriel Die?
Throughout the season, Gabriel and Alison get caught up in situations where it looks like one or both might die. Somehow, they manage to come out of it alive, but things don’t look so good when caught inside Antropa, with no one coming to help. They try to flee, but they are outnumbered. At one point, Gabriel realizes that only one can survive. He decides to hold back their attackers, giving Alison time to run. However, she refuses to leave without him. He kisses her and then pushes her out, locking the door from the inside.
Alison hears shots firing and then complete silence. She runs away when Gabriel doesn’t come out, believing he was shot or killed. Soon after, the police force arrives. She sees dead bodies being taken out of the building. She looks for Gabriel in one of them. She sees Dumas and Saint-Roch leaving, and their expressions show disappointment over something. She believes that it might have something to do with Gabriel. But before she can check that, she bumps into him. It turns out that he survived the shootout. The shots that Alison heard were from Gabriel.
He didn’t immediately come out of the building because, with Alison safe, he returned to finish the mission. He was sent to capture Didier. So, he went back into the building. However, he didn’t know Richard’s plan to blow up the helicopter. Once that happened, Gabriel knew everything was over. When the cops arrived, he knew Saint-Roch and Dumas would be with them. After telling them everything inside the building, he reunited with Alison.
What Happens to Alison?
By the end of ‘Liaison,’ all the revelations leave Alison in a tight spot. Richard’s betrayal particularly stumps her. She trusted him so much that when considering the suspects for the mole, she never once doubted her godfather. She was almost killed by Antropa a couple of times, and surely Richard wouldn’t do this to her. However, it turns out she was wrong, and this changes everything.
Alison can’t return to working for Richard, knowing she can never trust him again. Even though he says he was working in the national interest, one cannot be sure what he considers a national interest. She asks him whether he will kill her if she refuses to work for him. Even though Richard answers matter-of-factly, the fact that Alison asked this question shows how far he has fallen into her eyes. She considered herself bad for making a mistake when she didn’t know any better. But here was Richard, who conspired with a foreign entity that orchestrated the attacks that claimed many lives, including children’s.
Because there is no evidence, Alison can never out him. The only thing she can do is leave her job and start a new life somewhere else, and it looks like she might do it with Gabriel rather than Albert. Earlier in the episode, she came clean to Albert about her and Gabriel’s past, and even though she loves Albert, she doesn’t want her past to ruin his and Kim’s future. She has convinced herself she is not good enough to deserve a life with them. With Gabriel, however, things are different. Meeting him again has rekindled their feelings for each other. Now that their missions are over and the secrets between them are revealed, they can start anew.
