The Day of the Jackal: Episode 3 explained Hero Image

What happens in The Day of the Jackal episode three?

WARNING: Major spoilers for episode three ahead.

After finally discovering Emma has died, Larry and Alison head from Belfast to the UK to retrieve their daughter’s body.

Bianca, fresh from her trip to Belarus, finds out that the suitcase she found, when reassembled, can be turned into a sniper rifle. With the team under threat of being shut down, the suitcase keeps the mission alive… for now.

She later reaches out to Alison, apologising for what happened, prompting co-worker Damian to snarkily comment about it.

In Munich, The Jackal dresses in disguise and heads to a funeral parlour under the pretence that his mother has died. Faking a migraine, he is left alone in the funeral director’s office, allowing him time to install remote access software.

Through this, he discovers Fest’s beneficiaries and information on his funeral.

Elias Fest is continuing his rehab, struggling to walk after being badly injured in the Jackal’s initial attack.

Back in Spain, Nuria is dwelling after spotting her husband in the back of a taxi, believing him to be having an affair. When he calls, she confronts him. While he denies it, she makes him go on video call to prove he’s not with another woman, and the pair later argue as they struggle with him constantly being away on business.

Later on, she looks through his office, and is confused to find nothing in his desk drawers at all, but in his wardrobe, she finds his secret safe.

As Larry and Alison prepare to identify Emma’s body, Larry is left in a catatonic state and refuses to leave the hotel room. As Alison leaves, Larry receives a call from Norman.

Alison meets with Bianca at the river, and while Alison is apologetic, the pair begin to argue over what went down with Emma. By the time Alison gets back to the hotel, Larry seems to have shifted from upset to anger, and he confronts her about passing Norman’s number over to the police.

Checking through her phone, he finds the messages, and when she makes a run for it, he attacks her before dragging back into the room by her hair.

At MI-6, Bianca is analysed by Carver, and probed about her family history and her financial record. He suggests that she tipped off Norman Stoke herself in order for a payment to maintain her lifestyle, and tells her she “can’t trust anyone, as everyone lies”.

Bianca later meets with Halcrow, who shares her suspicions that there’s a mole at MI-6, noting that he thinks it may be Damian as one of the few people who know about the investigation. He also shares that Americans are beginning to worry the assassination could cause a spike in attempts on their own team.

Later, when Damian returns from investigating the potential Armed Forces connection, Bianca keeps him at arm’s length, and later is told that a recovered mobile phone had numbers from someone under the code name Jackal.

Nuria, her mother and her brother continue to investigate the safe. After failing to crack the code, they opt to find the receipt for its purchase, so they can contact the manufacturer to reset the machine. They later find a bigger, hidden locked door hidden behind a mirror.

At Fest’s funeral, Elias arrives but gets a cold reception from his mother and sister, Julia, both of whom ignore his own recovery from being shot in favour of worrying about the will and their own feelings. In the motorcade, The Jackal is the driver of Elias’s car, kidnapping him and killing his minder as they speed through the streets of Munich.

Once they’re alone, Elias confesses to hiring him to kill his father, and getting angry that he was shot in the process, withholding the payment. However, his security detail is on the phone, hearing him beg for his life and offering any money he wants. The Jackal tells him it’s not about the money, shooting him dead before planting a bomb in the car.

As one problem is solved, another begins as his family break into his secret room with power tools - revealing millions in cash, multiple passports, and prosthetics. Witnessing it all via a security camera, there’s nothing he can do as his secret double life is exposed to his family.

The Art of Lying

For both The Jackal and Bianca, lying and manipulation is the biggest tool in their arsenal in order to get what they want – no matter who it hurts in the process.

Determined to get to arms maker Norman Stoke, Bianca was even prepared to hide the death of a teenager to terrified mother Alison, with Emma dying in police custody.

“Manipulation is something that Bianca lives by,” explains Lashana Lynch. “Alison is someone who's been in her professional life for many years, and with Alison being so mentally fragile and physically in a position whereby her life is constantly in danger, she knows that she can get exactly what she wants.

“I think that Bianca, being who she is, how determined she is, her like zest for being the best comes out a lot in Allison, and how she deals with her and how she deals with that family in general.”

“The amount of times that the anchor lies and gets away with it, but also keeps it very professional, is beyond me,” she adds.

“But I think it helps us track where her mind is every single time she makes a choice.”

On The Road

One of the key scenes of episode three is a brutal car chase, with The Jackal zooming through the streets and killing multiple civilians in the process as he tries to evade Elias’s security detail.

“In this episode, the filming of the car chase, it felt big,” explains Jackal actor and executive producer Eddie Redmayne. “A lot of Budapest was shut down for that. We had the camera guys in right up close and personal.

“I did some of my own driving, but a huge amount was done by our brilliant stunt team.”

“One of my overwhelming memories was right at the end, when Elias Fest asks who I am,” he adds of the intense scene. “He was so brilliant in that moment, Lucas, who plays Elias, that he started desperately trying to get out of the car, and they put reinforced glass in in order that it didn't get smashed.

“He managed to smash the reinforced glass, which I take as a testament as to how threatening I was!”

The Day of the Jackal available now on Sky Atlantic and NOW

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