Diksha Sundriyal
The final two episodes of the second season of Netflix’s ‘The Recruit’ put CIA lawyer Owen Hendricks on a path that takes him to some very dangerous circles. Unexpected alliances are made while the people that Owen should have been able to trust prepare to betray him. The titles of these episodes also reflect this turbulence in the story while also giving us a sense of what to expect from whom. They also highlight the urgency of the situation, be it in the context of the mission or the characters’ emotional and mental state. SPOILERS AHEAD.
W.S.T.W.T.P. Turns the Focus Towards the Higher Ups of the CIA
“We’re still tinkering with the programmatics,” said by Walter Nyland in Episode 5 is a good representation of what is actually going on with the characters. So many things go wrong all at once that the final episodes of the show have all hands on deck. While Owen and his team are busy figuring out how to get Jang Kyun’s wife out of Russia, his superiors are busy putting out the fires left in the wake of his mission that was supposed to have gone much more quietly. There are so many things to take care of all at once that they don’t know which one to focus on first. One of the major problems for the CIA emerges in the form of the NIS when the latter discovers that one of its agents has been working with the former without their knowledge. They fear that Jang Kyun has turned into a traitor and will be selling all of their secrets to the CIA.
To assuage their fears, West tells them that Jang Kyun graymailed them, which is why they got involved with him. But this only makes the NIS more paranoid as they now want to know what Jang Kyun knows and what he could have told them to use against the American agency. At the time of the meeting, West and Nyland don’t have much to go on except empty words to feed to their allies, who could possibly turn into enemies, so they try to stall as much as possible, which is where the tinkering with programmatic phrase comes into the picture. Meanwhile, Owen and his team come up with a plan that seems to get more suicidal by the minute, but it is the only way forward.
I.D.N.W.T.B.D.I. Represents Owen’s Humanity in the Face of Darkness
Owen’s “I do not want to be dead inside” line shows how much he is struggling with the moral challenges of his job. Whatever preconceived notions he had about working with the CIA are completely rewritten when he discovers how morally grey everything is. He thought he’d help save the world from behind the desk, but the circumstances turned out such that he had to leave the relative comfort and safety of his desk and be out on the field where the worst things happen. Soon enough, Owen kills people, sees other people kill, is betrayed by people he thought he could trust, and worse, finds himself hardening towards these dark things such that they become usual for him. He finds himself losing a grip on whatever is human inside of him, and that is when he says, “I do not want to be dead inside.”
This line comes in reference to the part where he is told that leaving Jang Kyun and his wife, Nan Hee, to their fate is the best thing that the CIA can do now that they know how to stop Jang Kyun from exposing them after his death. This isn’t a surprise because he was told previously that finding Nan Hee is not their mission. Their purpose is to save the agency, and that’s what everyone but Owen seems to focus on. By the final episode, he gets so frustrated with everything around him that he has to scream these words not just to the people around him but also, in a way, to console himself that there is still good inside of him, and that hasn’t been completely erased despite everything. It’s him standing his ground even when everyone around him tells him to do otherwise. He cannot abandon the people he promised to help, and as he comes through on his promise, his faith in himself is reignited.
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