The Old Man Finale Recap: It’s a Race to Save Chase — Plus, Grade It!
The clock is ticking as The Old Man wraps up its second season on FX, with Dan Chase’s life hanging in the balance.
As Thursday’s finale kicks off, Chase is in dire need of an antidote after being poisoned, while Harper just discovered that Marion wants to convert Emily into a Chinese asset… and oh yeah, Emily is alive after all. We see her side of her phone call with Chase when he thought she died, with Russian mercenaries storming in and shooting Hamzad’s sister dead. Emily offers to give them what they want on Hamzad, and they stick her in a cell, ordering her to write down everything she knows. Her intel checks out, and a guard rewards her with a bottle of vodka… which she uses to clock the guard over the head and escape.
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Marion reports to Harper that local fighters have seized control of the mine from the Russians, led by “an American woman.” Harper realizes Emily is alive… and she’s now a target. He tells Marion he’ll do anything to save her, but Marion isn’t sure she can trust him. (And she knows him pretty well.) Meanwhile, Zoe and Julian are in a car together when he offers her a deal: If she helps him kill Pavlovich, he’ll help her find Chase. As they approach a heavily guarded compound, Julian gets instructions from Harper: With Marion’s help, the Chinese delegates have ordered all security details to stand down, allowing Julian to slip in undetected. “Do it, and get out,” Harper tells him.
With Zoe in the car listening along via earpiece, Julian heads into the compound, taking out two Russians on his way to Pavlovich. Zoe warns him that two more Russians are heading his way… and they left their car unattended. Julian mows through Pavlovich’s bodyguards with ruthless efficiency, finally making it to Pavlovich himself. “You’re the guy who killed the old man,” Julian tells him before shooting him dead. “I’m the guy that got you.” He then turns to helping Zoe, but she’s way ahead of him: She jumps into the Russians’ unattended car and heads for the last location keyed into the car’s GPS, convinced that must be where Chase is. And Marion informs Harper that the job is done… before having two large men escort him out, adding, “I’m sorry.”
Zoe rushes to the GPS location and finds Chase lying there dying. She gets instructions from Julian on how to administer the antidote, and she does, but it doesn’t seem to work. She gives him CPR, too, but there’s no sign of life. We cut to a wounded Chase waking up in bed, though, with Zoe assuring him they’re at a safe house where no one can find them. They enjoy a peaceful existence there, reading books and taking walks, and Zoe uses a local library’s computer to contact her son and let him know she’s OK. It all seems perfect… a little too perfect, Chase thinks. One day, he sees a delivery truck pull up and leave a package at his mailbox. He approaches the package with great caution, but he opens it to find a burner phone and a slip of paper with a phone number on it — which he dials.
He and Zoe head to a greasy spoon diner, where they meet… Emily. Chase gives her a warm hug as he tears up, introducing her to Zoe. Emily promises to tell him all about what happened to her, “but not now.” She needs his help: “You don’t know about what happened to Harold, do you?” He hasn’t been seen since he went to see Marion, and Emily reports that Marion is using him to barter for control of the mine. Who controls the mine now, Chase asks? “Me,” Emily replies. “Marion is using Harold to f–k with me, and I don’t want to be f–ked with.” To get at Marion, they’re going to need the help of Lou Barlow, she tells Chase. Who is Lou Barlow, Zoe asks? “I was,” Chase admits.
He’s told Zoe about some of the violent things he used to do, but “there are things that are uglier than violence,” he says ominously. He doesn’t want to go into Lou Barlow mode, but Emily insists it’s the only way to get Harper back. They owe it to him, too, because he sacrificed his life to save them. Emily thinks that Chase may not want Zoe to see what he’s capable of, as cars pull up to whisk them away. Oh, and Emily tapped Zoe’s phone to find out where they were hiding. “Parwana Hamzad gets what she wants,” Chase concludes. Sounds like a great Season 3 setup to us. (FX has not officially renewed the show yet, for the record.)
Give the finale a grade in our poll, and then hit the comments to share your post-Season 2 thoughts.
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