‘SIX’ Sneak Peek: The Fates of Michael and Rip Revealed
There are just two episodes left in the first season of History’s newly-renewed drama SIX, and the tension is building.
At the end of last week’s sixth hour, Michael (Dominic Adams) — the Muslim-American terrorist whose unarmed brother Rip (Walton Goggins) had shot and killed while he was surrendering in 2014 — was placed in the same cell as Rip by his own mentor, Muttaqi (Jarreth J. Merz). The emir has decided to take Rip’s suggestion and exchange the former Navy SEAL for Guantanamo releases, while offering Michael’s head to Boko Haram to even their score.
Adams admits he enjoyed watching the reaction from the show’s fans on social media last Wednesday when Rip greeted a bound Michael with a simple “Hello.”
“That was the final line of the episode, and Walton delivers it wonderfully,” Adams says. “It was exciting shooting it because both Walton and I knew what we were about to encounter in episode 7. Throughout the whole season you see Michael very much in control of that facade, his mask — with Boko Haram, with his boss Muttaqi, with Rip when they’re finally face-to-face. He’s psychologically wielding power over Rip, as well as obviously physically, as Rip’s in captivity. And then, all of a sudden, that’s stripped away and you’re left with two people in a room, and that couldn’t be more exciting to me as an actor. As an audience member, wow, what a thrilling experience when you think, ‘What are these guys gonna do? What are they gonna say now that they’re on exactly the same playing field as captives in a cell?'”
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As you see in our exclusive sneak peek above, Muttaqi didn’t accept all of Rip’s advice: Muttaqi won’t set Na’omi (Nondumiso Tembe) and the schoolgirls free with Rip; instead, he’s going to send them back to Boko Haram with Michael. That sets the stage for Michael and Rip to have some interesting discussions as they ponder their fates — and reveal more about their pasts.
That shared screentime was something Goggins felt passionately about when signing on for the series. “I said to [the producers], ‘The story is the most important thing to me, and I can tell you right now that if Michael’s journey is not just as important as Rip’s journey, then we have failed. It will just be another piece of propaganda. But if we can humanize the other person on the ideological spectrum, if we can look at him and treat him as respectfully as we treat Rip and the Navy SEALs, then we will have done something that very few people have the courage to do,'” he told us before the series premiered. “Michael is very similar to Rip: He is a person fighting his own ideological war, and when you take the politics out of it, you take religion out of it, he’s a human being in the world affected by what his own morality dictates that he does. It’s time to examine that.”
Related: History’s ‘SIX’: 5 Things to Know About the Navy SEAL Drama Starring Walton Goggins
He looked forward to people seeing those conversations between Rip and Michael. “There is an episode in particular, Episode 7, where you get to see a beginning and a middle and a beautiful end to their story,” he said. “They see each other and they listen to each other in a way that we should all be motivated to do. … I think we collaborated in a way that we all felt like we were doing something bigger than ourselves. That’s how you want to end every day, man.”
SIX airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on History. Come back to Yahoo TV after tonight’s episode for a full postmortem with Adams.
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