What happens in The Day of the Jackal episode five?
WARNING: Major spoilers for episode five ahead.
After tracking The Jackal down in Tallinn, Leonora warns him not to get on the wrong side of the clients, telling her they’re more powerful than he knows. To prove she’s serious, she tells him she knows about Norman Stoke. Urging him to succeed, she warns she’ll now be on his tail until the mission to kill UDC is complete.
Bianca and Vincent go to see Larry in hospital, and Bianca immediately tries to smother Larry with a pillow, periodically letting him breathe in a bid to get information out of him. Larry refuses, but after continuing to ply pressure, he relents that Norman’s in Budapest. He also admits finding out where Bianca lived via Norman, but he doesn’t know who he spoke to to get it.
Through a VPN, The Jackal contacts Norman, asking him what’s been going on and wanting some new weaponry, but Norman tells him he’s out of action after being shot in the arm from his “visit” by Bianca’s team. So the Jackal opts to meet with him to help him build it.
At MI6, Damian tells Bianca information he found out about a mysterious Alexander Duggan, who was supposedly killed in action during a bomb explosion in 2013 but fits the profile of the Jackal. She asks him to double check the body was recovered, but continues to behave shortly with him.
A newspaper article tips Bianca off to the fact target “Rodan” is UDC, and she makes plans to head to Budapest with Vincent. Before she goes, she tries to talk to her husband Paul and daughter Jasmine, but neither want to talk to her, with the teenager still terrified after being strangled by Larry and witnessing Bianca’s attempts to torture him.
Arriving in Budapest and picked up by Norman, The Jackal heads to his remote location, which contains a cache of guns, bullets and weapons. They start planning to build a fracture boot that can get through security, and can then be broken down and reformed into a rifle.
Later that evening, the pair discuss what went down in Belarus, with Norman later sharing that he was shot by a “Black, British woman” while there. The Jackal accuses Norman of lying to him before, realising it was an MI6 Snatch Squad who came after him. Norman says he doesn’t know who tipped him off, saying he got a warning from an anonymous number. He warns Norman to remain discreet.
The next morning, Vincent calls Bianca to inform her the location has been found. She lets Osi know before heading to the airport.
With the boot now built, The Jackal heads off to a nearby woods to try the gun out but Norman warns him it can only handle eight shots before it stops working.
Ahead of the attack, The Jackal calls Nuria, but is distracted when he spots Bianca in a car en route to Norman’s place. Bianca seems to spot him too, and as The Jackal hides in a café, she makes the decision to turn around. However, it turns out she just spotted Norman’s house, and The Jackal gets a warning to him to clean up and get out.
Unfortunately, it’s not long enough, and after a shoot out he’s caught. They interrogate him, with Bianca spotting The Jackal’s belongings, but he doesn’t talk, and The Jackal shoots him in the head before he can. Knowing he’s near, they try to track him down, but The Jackal escapes on horseback.
As nighttime falls, Bianca and the team are still giving chase, The Jackal takes out members of the team, but Bianca is on his tail, prompting him to dive into open water. While she shoots, it’s not clear to her if she’s killed him.
The Jackal later re-emerges and seeks shelter in a barn, but he’s caught by a farmer, who knocks him out and ties him up.
So Near Yet So Far
Episode five is the closest Bianca has come yet to catching The Jackal, having finally tracked down Norman, her primary target for the past five episodes.
The intense chase is something both Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch remember greatly, despite them never sharing a single shot together as The Jackal keeps just out of Bianca’s reach.
“There's a power shot that's used quite a lot that Chris [Ross] did throughout the show, which is the camera being quite low down on the protagonist, that kind of makes you feel like this person is about to do something, something's about to pop off, or that they are the authoritarian and you should listen to everything they say,” says Lashana.
“Bianca got given that chance, and that was a massive deal for me. We got to celebrate a different type of capturing of a woman on screen.”
However, the scenes proved disappointing for Eddie in one key element.
“It's a time when somehow the Jackal ends up showing his horse riding capabilities,” he explains. “Which was hilarious, because I spent many years learning to ride horses after having lied once about my capabilities, and I can actually ride a horse.
“I was quite excited to get to ride a horse on this and then the horse turned up, and it was actually a fake horse on top of a truck, which went into like a sort of rocking horse.”
Unfortunately for Bianca, The Jackal manages to escape, leaving her screaming in frustration in the middle of a forest.
“It was very, very close but no cigar, which is frustrating for her, because she's not used to losing in that way,” Bianca tells Inside The Episode special, The Jackal Files. “She's not used to things slipping through her fingers in the way that The Jackal does in that moment.
“She lets out this big roar that I'd thought of from episode one, there must be a moment where she releases frustration, anger, and it comes out in that moment in a big, big roar. It was, I think, important for me as a woman, playing a woman in such a high powered environment, to be able to just have that moment for herself alone.”