The Day of the Jackal – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

Collecting The Debt

Episode 3 of The Day of the Jackal starts with Allison receiving the news about Emma. She and her partner, Larry Stoke, head off, while Bianca goes back to work. She’s had the suitcase investigated, and then brings this to her superiors. They immediately reprimand her for the botch snatch and the deaths on her hands.

Bianca ignores all of this, doesn’t even bat an eyelid to the deaths, and shows off how the suitcase is actually holding a sniper rifle in disguise. Isabel sees this and backtracks, deciding that the operation is still on thanks to new evidence coming to light. Outside, Bianca rings Allison and apologizes. She wants to sit down and explain herself, and for them to do it face to face.

Meanwhile, the Jackal is on the hunt and he bugs a computer with a remote surveillance device at Mahkler. He poses as an old man to do so, struggling to walk, which brings us nicely along to Elias, who’s similarly desperate to walk but remains adamant about getting back on his feet again.

The Jackal’s target is Elias, and he finds the name of his driver, Stefan Wolf, to attack. He rings Nuria just before though, who questions him about whether he’s having an affair. The Jackal shows off the room he’s in, and finds his situation difficult. With Nuria begging to be with him and wanting him home, the Jackal has no answers and it all ends without anything resolved.

Nuria is desperate for answers though and she’s a woman possessed. She knows there’s something untoward here and goes digging through her husband’s things. She finds a hidden safe in the floor, and also a hidden locked door too.

Back in London, Allison shows up, grief-stricken and angry. Bianca is nonchalant and instead brings up that Larry’s number was on Norman’s phone, believing that assisting an offender would result in jailtime. She claims that she’s “helping” but of course Bianca was also responsible, indirectly, for Emma’s death, so Allison is not playing ball. However, Larry is angry that night when he realizes Allison has given out Norman’s number and betrayed him, and he takes his anger out on her.

Back at work, Bianca is questioned over her mental state by a guy called Carver. She brings up here that Bianca’s mother is an alcoholic, living in sheltered accommodation which she’s currently paying for. The general thinking here is that she was paid to help fund her mother by feeding information to an assassin. Bianca is incredulous to this claim but she’s definitely in the hotseat right now. There appears to be a leak inside the Embassy and the only ones who knew about the operation are Isabel, OC and Damian so it could be any of them.

While she works on this, Bianca does learn that a flurry of messages leading up to Manfred’s death came from a codename of Jackal. She’s also trying to figure out what this Rodin means too.

Speaking of which, in Munich the Jackal has a bomb prepped, ready to kill Elias. He poses as Stefan Wolf, killing the real driver after making him get in the trunk of a car. He takes off with Elias after picking him up. Elias admits to hiring the Jackal to kill his dad, and just like Elias did with the Jackal, he smirks and retorts “Fuck you” before killing him. With a change of clothes, the Jackal takes off after setting a bomb to blow in the car.

Allison begrudgingly decides to help Bianca after all, while Nuria enlists her family’s help to break into the hidden room in their house. Inside, Nuria finds face moulds, guns, passports and stacks of cash. Unfortunately, she’s being watched as the Jackal has cameras set up and he realizes that she’s onto him now.

The Episode Review

Elias is now dead, but the fact he was on the call to Muller could be a crucial clue and link back to Bianca figuring out who the Jackal is. After all, he wasn’t using a voice distortion device this time so it may be easier for her to track down.

However, Nuria has broken into his secret room and seen first-hand all these passports and the stacks of cash, meaning he’s going to have a hard time explaining himself to his wife!

Meanwhile, we have Bianca who continues her tirade of doing no wrong and always being in the right. She gets questioned by Carver, where we learn a little more about her family set-up, but beyond that there’s really not a lot to this woman beyond being incredible at her job. We don’t see any moments of vulnerability, which I’ve mentioned a few times, and even when she fails, it’s not her fault, it’s everyone else’s around her.

Hopefully this will change and improve as the series progresses but right now, that’s the weak link in all of this. Even with this glaring fault, the show is still a compelling watch and it’ll be interesting to see where this one goes next.