The Day of the Jackal – Season 1 Episode 8 Recap & Review

Episode 8 of The Day of the Jackal starts with us whisked off to Helmand in Afghanistan, 2013. The Jackal is there as a sniper, working to take out a man believed to be their target. Jackal is convinced it’s not him and is prepared to wait as long as is needed. This, of course, explains why he was able to lie in the theatre for 2 days with his weapon.

The Jackal, as it turns out, is the name on the jeep he’s driving with his teammates. Alexander Duggan? Yep, that’s definitely the Jackal’s real name as well. In Cyprus, there’s drama involving a Middle Eastern man, as Jackal’s spotter, Gary, is drunk and points out the woes of working in the army.

The man comes with a proposition though. Given the money paid within the army is poor (less than being a binman in the UK apparently), he has a solution. In exchange for 10k each, they can “take care of a problem”.

The pair agree, and begin working around to take out various targets. It’s easy money for them, given their talents and all expenses paid, they could be set for life.

For now, the Jackal decides not to go ahead with this, so Gary and Doug head back to the army and continue with business as usual. However, the operation ends up botched. Despite them needing to take the Deputy Governor in alive, an unsuspecting sniper from high up in the hills catches the Jackal unawares. He fires before his comrades can get hit, and birds flutter up into the air. This contextualizes all those shots of birds we’ve been seeing before.

Gunfire rains down and the Americans blow the place to bits, unaware that it’s actually a wedding taking place inside. Gary and Duggan race to the scene, where the place is bathed in blood. The other team members decide to cover up the whole affair, deciding that an RPG had them pinned down and they had to call in an airstrike to cover the whole thing up.

Back in the present, Leonore phones those in New York and brings up that the shooter came from the security detail within UDC. There’s pure chaos and pandemonium with this group, and they now have a week until River releases publicly, so this is enough for Jackal to go back after them.

The shooter though is a fanatic, and working within UDC’s own security counsel. While they scramble to work out how they allowed someone like that in their own ranks, Bianca and the others work on the connections to Duggan, and the cameras from the night at the concert.

Bianca figures out that Duggan is the only person capable of making that shot and the intel they have seems to indicate he went to Afghanistan… and then never came back. He has been declared dead but without a body, it’s definitely suspect. We know he’s their man and Bianca is closing in.

In Spain, news spreads of the attempt on UDC’s life. Nuria is rattled as she sees the composite sketch and starts to believe he’s their man. Her brother does too, and when the Jackal finds out, he’s adamant that he needs to keep his mouth shut no matter what.

Jasmine shows up that night to see her mum. She struggles to get the words out but at least agrees to hear her out.

Meanwhile, in Wakefield Prison in England, Bianca shows up to see Larry. He chuckles and resigns himself to his fate behind bars. He calls her rotten and that she’s just as bad as him, but Bianca is here to say sorry. He doesn’t listen and grabs a shiv he has stashed up his trouser leg, and slashes his own neck.

Bianca is shocked by what she’s seen and is rattled. Vince tries to calm her down as she heads back home to wipe blood off her hands. She does compose herself long enough for the brief on Duggan, where she learns that, after the operation we saw earlier in the episode, a massive explosion wiped them all out.

While OC is called into the hotseat by Carver, we cut back and see that the explosion was actually orchestrated by Duggan. He rigged the jeeps with a bomb, wiping out his own teammates while saving himself and Gary in the process.

The Episode Review

So the shocking truth about Helmand is finally revealed, with Duggan (aka. the Jackal) responsible for what happened that fateful day. Things are definitely slotting into place and all the little nods to the past, including Jackal, the contract killings, obsession with money and the blurring of right and wrong adds up to a fascinating characters that’s as damaged as he is deadly.

Meanwhile, we see more of Bianca’s past here too, and her struggles to try and retain some semblance of balance in her life is handled really well in this series. The show has done much better with humanizing her character during these later episodes, but she’s still the odd one out here. Everything is definitely going right down to the wire here.

Quite who will come out of this in one piece is anyone’s guess, but right now things are definitely tense, with the final two episodes looking like they could wrap things up in a suitably explosive manner!