'COBRA' Recap: Season 3 Episode 1

COBRA airs Thursdays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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The crises never stop when you’re a world leader. Not long after weathering a cunning cyber attack (and a solar storm before that, and various government scandals and protests and rivalries), Robert Sutherland again faces a significant challenge as the prime minister of the U.K. The radical anti-capitalist environmental group Planet Resistance, under the leadership of an activist named Henry Wicks, has for the past three weeks occupied a village called Godley Commons to protest the government’s construction of a new “metro ultra line.” While their surface encampments have been mostly cleared under a new civil disturbance bill pushed through by Robert’s government, there are still six protesters residing in tunnels that they have dug through the path of the proposed train line.

Home Secretary Joseph Obasi and Defense Secretary Victoria Dalton both want to send in the army to clear the remaining protesters, but the police commissioner Neil Millar is reluctant. Heavy rain over the past few weeks will make things difficult.

Robert at least has his chief of staff Anna Marshall back. She was meant to be off for a while after surviving a car bombing, but is recovered and eager to return to work, so Robert allows it.

He’s doing less well with his wife Rachel, who spent some months with their daughter Ellie in Chile to escape a manufactured scandal tarnishing her. The absence only deepened tensions in their marriage, so Rachel and Robert are now in counseling. It doesn’t help that Robert’s schedule is understandably tight; he has to leave before a session is over because someone messed up his calendar. Rachel tells him that she’ll divorce him if he screws up that evening.

What’s happening in the evening? Ellie is finally returning home. Robert cooks an elaborate dinner, and Ellie explains that she broke up with her Chilean boyfriend. She’s looking to become an activist for women’s rights back in the U.K.

That’s only sort of a lie. Ellie does want to become an activist, but not for women’s rights and not a professional one with a salaried job. She has been in contact with Polly Wright, a leader of Planet Resistance, for months. They devise a scheme to separate Ellie from her security handler: Ellie goes to the vintage shop where Polly works, then slips out through a back door while supposedly trying on clothes. She then escapes on the back of a motorcycle.

Ellie is not the only one close to the government with sympathy for Planet Resistance. Anna’s friend and Robert’s erstwhile ally Francine Bridge is in touch with Henry Wicks of Planet Resistance, as the opposition environment secretary. As she and Anna walk past a Planet Resistance protest in London, she wonders if the controversial civil disturbance bill would have been passed had Anna not been on leave.

Francine later visits a Planet Resistance camp in Godley Common, and Henry explains that they’re resisting the new train line because the ground can’t take the strain. Years of extreme rain have weakened ground already pockmarked by old mines. Henry makes sure the press see Francine at the camp.

Henry has another high-profile protest planned. Servers at a horse race don masks and outfits splashed with red paint, then sit down in the path of the horses with a sign reading, “No deal with the devil.” They’re protesting the presence of a Middle Eastern government at the race.

Robert is trying to open a new renewable energy facility, and needs investment from the Middle Eastern government to do it. King Zyan, the head of that government, is ailing and so sends his favorite son and heir apparent, Crown Prince Samir, in his stead. Robert and his team are surprised to learn that Samir’s sister Yadira is also attending the races, given that she is the black sheep of the conservative family because of her advocacy of women’s and workers’ rights.

Samir assures Robert that his country will invest in the planned facility; his father is a dinosaur who’s on the way out. Meanwhile, Yadira pins Robert’s Foreign Secretary Archie into a meeting. Victoria, the defense secretary, warns Archie not to take it – it could ruin relations while King Zyan is still alive.

Archie may not have to make a decision. As Samir and Yadira leave the race, Samir tells his sister that their father wants to see her. Samir wants her to come home, too. She protests, and then says that she feels ill – has Samir drugged his own sister?

And what of the protesters at the races? They are carried off the track by security, but one breaks free and runs back to grab their dropped sign. She’s trampled by one of the horses – King Zyan’s.

Planet Resistance’s next planned action is a protest during the government’s planned eviction sweep of their camp in Godley Common. They want to challenge the new civil disturbance bill and see how far the government takes it. They view being arrested as a boon, not a deterrent.

When the government learns of this plan, Anna suggests moving the eviction up so that Planet Resistance can’t prepare. But heavy rains are currently making that difficult. The soonest the eviction could proceed is that night. Robert okays that plan. Planet Resistance gets word and calls for supporters to show up earlier than expected. Francine starts making her way to Godley Common to join them.

One very prominent supporter is already in Godley Common: Ellie. Because Polly has been detained for her role in helping Ellie disappear, Ellie asks to take her place and go down into one of Planet Resistance’s tunnels to camp for several weeks in the way of the train line. The activist Nate Stevens is wary of using her, but Henry is all for it. Nate reluctantly goes down into the tunnels with Ellie and records a video of her explaining to world what she is doing before leaving her to survive alone with a radio and supplies.

Back in London, Rachel walks into a briefing room to learn about her daughter’s situation, and Robert angrily orders her to leave. He tells his government that Ellie will face the same consequences as anyone else would, regardless of her relationship to him.

Then the briefing room loses all of its feeds from Godley Common. The ground there is collapsing.