The Veil Finale Recap: Did Adilah and Imogen Save the Day? Plus, Grade It!
When last we left The Veil’s unlikely road-trippers, Imogen had just given Adilah an ultimatum: Choose the right thing and get in the car… or else.
So… does she? And does Adilah ever give up the name of the ship carrying the bomb? While we’re at it, do we ever get clarity on Imogen’s backstory? Find out as you read on for the highlights of the season finale, “The Cottage.”
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ALIGNED AND ON THE LAM | Looks like Adilah chose to trust Imogen, given that when the hour starts, they’re in the back of a shipping truck in England. They eventually commandeer the vehicle and wind up getting chased by a helicopter and a whole lot of police officers in Canterbury. The women split up, making plans to rendezvous at the cathedral. Meanwhile, back at the DGSE, Max and Malik get into a shoving match as they track — and then lose — the pair.
Inside the cathedral, Imogen strikes up a conversation with an older woman sitting in a pew. Imogen spins a sob story about how Adilah is traumatized and needs to get away. “If I had a car I would… do God’s work,” Imogen says gravely. And because Imogen is so good at her job, the mark — er, woman — she chose sees their interaction as a divine intervention, and she volunteers to drive them to London.
Once there, Imogen uses an ATM located between two rail stations, which she knows will make every intelligence agency following them think that she and Adilah might be hopping a train. Instead, though, thanks to a call she made earlier, a car pulls up; Imogen invites Adilah to get in. “Welcome to the deep state,” she says. “We’re going to Michael’s.”
NOT-SO-SAFE HAVEN | Michael, of course, is the mysterious man in Imogen’s past whom we have not yet met. As they drive to his country estate, Imogen fills Adilah in. Michael also was MI6, but very off-books. “His special skill is inventing new identities for people. I told him I Had a friend who has to be reinvented so she can start a new life.”
When the car finally comes to a stop in front of a palatial home, Michael (played by James Purefoy, The Following) comes out to greet his guests. “Hello darling,” he purrs to Imogen. Inside, he pours them some scotch and reveals that he knows everyone’s looking for them: Apparently, the law-enforcement call is for Adilah is to be kept alive, but Imogen is categorized under “lethal pursuit.” Then he announces that their passports will be ready in a few hours, and leaves them alone.
Imogen already knows something is fishy, so she tasks Adilah with slipping out to the garage and getting the keys to the LandRover, because she’s guessing they might need to run at a moment’s notice. Adilah is successful, but she also runs afoul of Michael’s driver, Patrick, who was a royal marine and who does not waste time letting Adilah know that he’s a strident racist.
Meanwhile, Max and Malik run into each other at Imogen’s London home. After some bickering, Malik admits that he thinks he knows where Imogen is. He’s going to back her up — and he’ll only allow Max to accompany him if he agrees to do the same. Max says yes. On the drive, Malik tells Max all about Michael and how Imogen was in love with him. Max assumes that Malik is jealous of the older man, but Malik says he’s not. “You sure about that?” Max goads.
WHAT’S MICHAEL’S GAME? |While Adilah is in the garage, Imogen sneaks into Michael’s office and realizes that he’s been surveilling her/the situation the entire time. There are photos of her with Adilah, photos of Emir the sniper, photos from the United Nations camp and notes from the djinn book that Adilah showed her earlier in the season. The shredder is full of Russian documents; on one, the only words she can make out are “djinn al raqqa,” which leaves Imogen highly unsettled.
That’s when Michael walks in and easily cops to keeping tabs on her. She asks where he fits into all of this, and he gives a nondescript answer about having “friends all over the world” and how chaos can be “a moment of opportunity” if you play it right. OK, Littlefinger. She presses for details — “Opportunity for what?” — but he doesn’t answer and instead asks her to have dinner with him. He says he’s missed her, and she tells him that he’s always with her, “this voice in my head.” He ups the creep factor a LOT (and that’s saying something) when he replies, “And I hope to keep it there,” as he caresses her face. After she leaves, he realizes that she saw what was in the shredder.
TIME TO PIVOT| Spooked, Imogen quickly makes a call (though it’s not clear to whom) and then asks Adilah if she saw any hints of Russian involvement in the terror plot. She says yes, that she overheard Russian spoken on the phone, and a Russian truck got her out of Raqqa. She designed the plot because she thought it was the only way to have a free life with Yasmina, but “I thought maybe you’d help me find another way,” she tells Imogen.
Imogen doubles down on her promise to get Adilah on a flight with her daughter, but in exchange, “tell me the name of the ship.” Adilah refuses until Yasmina is in her presence. As they talk, we also learn that Yasmina was the product of Adilah’s being gang-raped after she ran away and was captured following the thwarted hotel bombing. “You’re a mother,” Adilah notes. “As you know, it doesn’t really matter who the father is, does it?” Imogen’s eyes are wet as she replies, “No, it doesn’t. I love her. I love her and I miss my daughter every day.” Then she announces that she’s going to have dinner alone with Michael. “I have an idea, and I need you to listen to me very carefully.”
IMOGEN’S NEW PLAN | At dinner in the ornate dining room, Michael calls Imogen “Violet” and refers to her as “Silly girl.” He asks why she came back. “I want you to tell me the truth about my father,” she says, almost as if she’s daring him. “All my life, I’ve never understood something: Why would they kill a British diplomat unless they knew that he had done something worth killing him for?” She says she’s deduced that he worked for the Russians, and “I think you knew.”
What’s more, “You were his protégé,” she continues. “He loved you, and he molded you as you molded me.” She’s near tears. “But you became something I could never become. Something beyond my father. With no conscience.” As she vibrates with anger, he patronizingly explains how “light needs darkness to exist” and blah blah “only the complete collapses of where we are now will allow the reemergence of another golden age.” You get the gist. He talks to her like she’s a child as he tells her he’s still in love with her, and “our girl” would’ve been 10. “Can you remember her face?” he wonders as Imogen cries and says she can, “every day.” Then he starts kissing her, and she kisses back like she’s in a trance. “I can take care of you again,” he goes on, complimenting her and kissing her again and generally being really groomy. “Is it still in my room?” she wonders. When he pants, “Yes, of course,” she says she’ll meet him there.
‘YOU ARE THE BEST OF US’ | Up in her room, Adilah gets a text from Emir and arms in the mobile phone that will detonate the ship’s bomb in a few hours. Outside, Max and Malik arrive on the grounds and draw near to the house, guns drawn. They eventually break in. And in her old bedroom, Imogen puts on a slinky, red nightgown.
The next part happens quickly, and simultaneously. Adilah jumps Patrick, stabbing him, then runs… only to encounter Max. As Max is talking her down and placing his weapon on the ground, Patrick shoots from where he’s bleeding out behind him and hits Max. Adilah runs.
Upstairs, Imogen meets a robe-clad Michael in his bedroom, where he instructs her, “Begin.” (Eew.) She puts “My Funny Valentine” on the record player and pours him a drink, which she sips before handing over. He caresses her. They dance. He lays back on the bed, and she straddles him. Then she grabs a knife she strapped to her thigh and holds it to him as she demands the name of the ship and where it’s headed. But she doesn’t know he has a handgun hidden under the blanket folded at the foot of the bed, and he cocks the weapon and holds it under her chin as he announces that she’ll never go through with killing him “because you are the best of us.” Then he apologizes (“I am so sorry, darling”) as we hear a gunshot… but the noise came from Malik, who is standing in the doorway, having just killed Michael. Imogen takes a nanosecond in shock then runs off, telling Malik she needs to get to Adilah.
SO CLOSE! |Imogen jumps in the LandRover, telling a waiting Adilah that Yasmina is two hours away. And just before they go through the estate’s gates, a shot pierces the car and kills Adilah: It’s from a very bloody Patrick, who limped downstairs in time to do the deed. Once Imogen realizes that Adilah is no longer living, she marches straight at the driver and shoots him dead while Malik watches.
Then she returns to the car, where she cries and apologizes as she holds Adilah’s lifeless hand. When she glances up at the windshield, though, she notices that Adilah wrote the ship’s name there at some point before she died. Just like earlier in the season, when the glass fogs, Imogen can see it. “Thank you,” she whispers.
Officials are able to get to the ship before Emir can detonate the bomb himself, and the terrorist attack is averted.
As dawn breaks in England, Malik finds Imogen, understandably, in a daze. He reports that Max will be OK and that Adilah will be buried in Paris, next to her grandfather. She doesn’t want any details where Michael is concerned. “It’s over, Violet,” Malik says, using her real name. “Come with me.” She asks for a minute.
‘WHAT’S MY NEW NAME?’ |And then, after seeing a card addressed to a cottage on the property, Imogen/Violet walks out to it. It’s clear someone’s currently living there, but they’ve stepped out. Inside, she realizes that her father didn’t die, after all; he’s been holed up on Michael’s property for years. And he’s been tracking his daughter that entire time. “You were watching me?” she says to the empty room. “You watched me become 100 strangers?”
She realizes he was behind the entire thing. “You were a traitor, and not just to them,” she monologues. “You were a traitor to me, and I will never, ever forgive you for that.” Then she quotes The Tempest (“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here”) and walks out into the meadow.
Back in London, Imogen hugs Yasmina and her aunt and sees them off to Canada, assuring them that she will personally make sure they’re safe. Then her phone buzzes. “I’ll be there in a few hours,” she says, looking at the departures board. “What’s my new name?”
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of The Veil? Grade the finale and the season as a whole via the polls below, then hit the comments to flesh out your thoughts!
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