The Day of the Jackal – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

The Showdown

Episode 5 of Day of the Jackal starts in Tallin, Estonia. The Jackal is warned by Leonore that if he doesn’t deliver, there will be repercussions. Those he’s working for are more powerful than he can imagine. If he has doubts, then he just needs to speak to Norman Stoke about this. Well, the Jackal is not particularly enthused about having a babysitter, but this one’s non-negotiable.

The Jackal speaks to Norman and questions him over what’s been happening with him. He confirms there’s something “unusual”, which are a bunch of visitors who showed up while he was on a business trip, He “took care of them” before slipping away.

Jackal decides to work alongside Norman to make the deadline. He needs something to get through the metal detectors and contemplates whether he could use a cast to smuggle things through. For now, he meets up with Norman and the pair head off together.

Bianca shows at the hospital to see Larry. She immediately starts torturing him, suffocating the guy with a pillow, and offering up a favourable prison sentence and Norman staying alive, but Larry doesn’t play ball. At least not to begin with. Eventually he spills that Norman is in Budapest, and gives a visual description of the place to help them narrow down where he is. There’s about 11 locations meeting their criteria so they need to narrow it down.

Bianca does suss out that UDC is the next target, but she’s keeping this from Isabel. As advised, she’s keeping her circle close.

While work is a bit hit or miss, Bianca’s personal life is a mess. She shows up to see Jasmine and Paul, who brings up that they’re pretty freaked out by what’s happened. Paul is actually staying with his ex-wife at the moment, which isn’t doing their marriage any favours I’m sure, but bringing danger into their home has crossed the line.

Bianca opens up and explains the severity of her job but unfortunately, her marriage’s foundation has been uprooted. Paul tells her he doesn’t recognize her and walks away, leaving Bianca teary-eyed and struggling.

Nuria heads back home but she’s still not convinced her husband is who he says he is. The Jackal though is busy wrapped up with his drama involving Norman. He tries to find out where Norman went for his business trip. He brings up he was in Belarus and shot at by MI6 and Bianca. He got a tip-off from an anonymous number, telling him to clear out. The Jackal warns that this better not backfire

Vince rings in the morning with details that they’ve managed to find a location where Norman is hiding out. However, his construction of the cast is complete, and the whole thing cleverly turns into a weapon. As a cast, you’d never have guessed.

While the Jackal heads out to give the gun a test ride, he’s unaware that Bianca, Vince and the others are closing in on Norman’s safehouse. The Jackal happens to be watching from the coffee shop though, and he hurriedly rings Norman. As MI6 close in, the Jackal tells him to clean up.

After deleting files from the computer, Norman tries to buy some time but he’s soon apprehended. He doesn’t do a particularly good job of cleaning up after himself, and Bianca immediately questions him over the Jackal. Unfortunately, there’s a bag of Jackal’s things on the sofa so she decides to try and bait him into showing up.

Jackal though, cleans up and shoots Norman before leaving… on a horse. They don’t shoot the horse though, and aren’t particularly good shots to be honest, as the Jackal heads into the woods in the dead of night and after a tense cat and mouse chase, manages to slip away, avoiding the barrage of bullets Bianca unleashes into the water.

The Jackal survives, but it’s undoubtedly a close call. In fact, when he falls asleep in a barn, he awakens to find a gun in his face. He’s tied up and looks set to meet a nasty end.

The Episode Review

The midway point of The Day of the Jackal sees Bianca and the Jackal square off and we get out first taste of action between the two, as the latter gets the jump on the MI6 agent. For Bianca, she’s now out of leads but could that bag she has hold a clue to where the Jackal is?

I’d imagine we’re going to see Nuria get involved in this quite soon, and they may well use her to get to the Jackal, arresting him by using his family as a weakness. It’ll be somewhat poetic and foreshadowed, especially as Bianca found her family compromised by Larry earlier on.

However, with the brothers dead and things on a precarious knife-edge, this episode is arguably the slowest of the bunch, despite that ending. Hopefully this is just a temporary lull as there’s certainly enough in this to whet the appetite.