'COBRA' Recap: Season 3 Episode 6

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Despite having broken into his house and grabbing him from behind, the mortally injured Dan doesn’t want to kidnap Archie. He wants to convey a message: Robert must resign, or Dan will fire the mortar he stole. While working as a mercenary, Dan trained Shirasians on weapons made by Condor – the same company that designed the mortar – and witnessed the Shirasians using the arms for war crimes. Robert’s government is complicit in this, since they brokered the arms deal between Condor and the Shirasians and support the Shirasians. Dan used to try to hand out pamphlets in peaceful protest, but that didn’t work, so he has turned to violence in the wake of his daughter’s death while protesting herself.

Archie gives Robert Dan’s message. Robert refuses to concede to a terrorist demand and step down, so the government scrambles to figure out Dan’s target.

He reveals it soon enough. He says he will turn himself in and shares an address, but when police arrive there Dan is gone – and the mortar, set to a timer, fires. Meanwhile, Dan has chained himself to the Cenotaph memorial to the dead of World War I in London and scattered pamphlets denouncing the government’s arms deals. He tells approaching policemen to run, right before the he and the Cenotaph are hit by the mortar. He is the only fatality.

Robert and Archie are both now against supplying arms to the Shirasians or supporting them, especially given that they seem to have killed one of their outspoken princesses and lied to the U.K. Robert has also realized that Anna is right: they cannot continue their relationship if they are to retain their jobs, which they both want to do. They will end their romance.

Robert is willing to end other people’s jobs. When Francine relays to Anna that she tried to meet with the fake activist Nate Stevens on behalf of Ellie and he was chased away by men with guns, she explains that Nate survived – he texted Ellie, vowing revenge on her for accidentally leading his pursuers to him. Anna explains all this to Robert, who fires Eleanor for not revealing her investigations into Nate to Robert earlier.

Robert then meets with Ellie, who tells him she didn’t approach him sooner because she’s not sure anymore whether he will do the right thing, or the thing that will help him retain his job.

Robert offers Nate immunity, and Nate surrenders and reveals everything he knows. He was hired by a private security firm (run by Eleanor’s friend Zelda) to infiltrate and smear activist groups. While embedded with Planet Resistance, he tried to get them to escalate their tactics past nonviolence in order to ruin their reputation, with no luck. So he was ordered to plant an explosive that he thought would simply wreck the machine digging a tunnel for the ultra line, not cause a sinkhole and kill people. Nate insinuates that the company building the ultra line might have hired the security firm in order to get rid of Planet Resistance, which opposed them.

An investigation reveals that the company knew about the risks involved with digging under the compromised land of Godley Common but proceeded anyway in order to maximize profit. Robert realizes that Planet Resistance was right and orders the cancellation of the ultra line. What has already been constructed can become local train lines, and the remaining budget can be redirected to the carbon capture project financed by Shirasia, since they will pull out now that Robert is ending their arms deal.

Robert may not be in power long enough to right all these wrongs. Victoria, his defense secretary, has called a meeting of Robert’s enemies to call for a vote of no confidence in him as prime minister. She and Gerald Kendrick, the head of Condor, even approach a general in the army and relay their doubts about Robert and his desire to end the deal with Shirasia.

Soon enough, the military has occupied the area around the damaged Cenotaph for a “vigil.” Archie defends Robert to Victoria, but she explains that enough of Robert’s party is against him that he will lose a no-confidence vote. Either she will proceed with that, or Robert can replace Archie with her as deputy prime minister and then resign, thus handing her power instead of having it taken from him.

Eleanor is also questioning Robert’s decision – to fire her. She visits Zelda, who offers her a job – but Eleanor wants her old job in the government back. She insists that Zelda reveal who hired her company to infiltrate and ruin Planet Resistance.

Zelda hands over the contracts, and Eleanor brings them to Anna, Robert, and Archie. Gerald of Condor, the weapons company, hired Zelda’s firm to take down Planet Resistance after some of their activists vandalized an aircraft years ago and were then acquitted in court.

Robert marches into a Condor meeting and demands that everyone but Gerald leave, then hands over the contract, promising to leak it to the media if Robert is ousted from the role of prime minister. If Robert keeps his job and Gerald stops supporting Victoria, Robert will keep anyone else from learning that Gerald tried to infiltrate and defame an activist group. Gerald agrees.

Robert then gives Victoria a letter of resignation – for herself. He has recordings of her conversations scheming against him and in support of the Shirasians from Gerald and the general with whom she conspired, and he has gotten the general back on his side. Eleanor also did some digging and found that Condor has secretly – and illegally – been paying Victoria through shell companies, hence her ironclad support of all its controversial projects. Robert insists that Victoria retire from politics.

But he’s doing the same. Telling Anna he was only strong enough to do everything he has done because of her, he gives her the contracts between Gerald and Zelda and then announces his resignation from the prime ministership. He’s not prime minister anymore, so he’s not breaking his word to Gerald by allowing Anna to show the contract to Francine.

Stepping down will also allow him to be a better father to Ellie, as is evident a few weeks later when she visits him for a congenial lunch after their estrangement. His resignation also allows him to be in a relationship with Anna, so she is at lunch, too. A surprise guest appears: Archie, who is serving as a caretaker prime minister until a new one can be named.

Archie doesn’t want the top job, and the opposition candidate is shaping up to be Francine, who is enjoying widespread popularity in the wake of revealing the duplicity of Condor and thus exonerating Planet Resistance. Archie thinks the only person who can beat her is Robert, who once again has the backing of his party after his noble act of resignation. Plus, everyone now knows about his relationship with Anna, so they wouldn’t have to separate and she could remain his chief of staff.

Ellie tells Robert she’d vote for him. Anna shrugs and agrees that they should go for it.