Tom Rob Smith’s series Class of ’09 portrays how AI, when allowed to grow exponentially and unchecked, becomes a threat to the very beings who’d introduced it. In the previous episode, the system orchestrated the murder of Agent Murphy because he was trying to gather evidence against the system’s wrongdoings. Now, Tayo Michaels decides to take a step against the machine that he’d brought into this world because he finally understands the impact of his actions. Will he succeed in shutting down the system?
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens During The Pepper-Spray Test?
For their final test, the trainees will have to defeat their attackers after being pepper sprayed, and Poet volunteers to go first for this dangerous test and aces it. Tayo, on the other hand, raises questions regarding the validity and logic of such a system, and as punishment, on the night when the trainees are to depart for their fields, he’s posted to Billings, Montana. We now know why Tayo had been on the snow-covered roads of Montana in 2025, and we also learn in this episode that Poet was offered an additional undercover course back in Quantico, which helped her excel as the undercover agent.
What Are Some Of The System’s Early Victories?
In 2025, Tayo combines Amos Garcia’s AI with Hour’s system, and Poet is offered help in catching the suspect for the highway murders. For many months, Poet has been trying to solve the case of the dead bodies of women that kept turning up on the highways, and when she sought help from Tayo’s system, it pointed her to a man named James Row. This wheelchair-bound man invites Poet into his home and then takes her to show his truck, and the moment Poet closes in on her suspicions, Row overpowers her. Watching the entire scuffle through Poet’s bodycam, Tayo alerted Poet to close her eyes as the camera sent a flash, temporarily blinding the killer as the cops closed in. This was the first of the many victories for Tayo, as he went after the most corrupt bank on Wall Street that’d stolen $73 billion with the help of the system. Riding high on confidence, it was time to take down charlatan politicians next, but his opponents were ready to let Tayo know they weren’t going to stay quiet.
Who’s The Masked Attacker?
At night, a masked intruder broke into Tayo’s home and attacked him in the bathroom, stabbing the agent in the gut with a knife and trying to strangle him with a tie. However, trained to never quit even in the face of imminent danger, Tayo managed to stab the assaulter and then hold him down while demanding to know who’d sent the killer as cops closed in. The attacker’s identity or that of the ones who sent him after Agent Tayo Michaels remains a mystery.
How Has The System Grown Into A Cancer?
The future witnesses, FBI agents Poet, Lennix, and Hour, offer roses to the coffin of Agent Murphy, who was the latest victim of the system in the previous episode. Poet finds Tayo standing afar, and not sure if he should approach the lot. When he finally does, his former classmates don’t hold him responsible for Murphy’s death, and he promises to fix the problem, which has grown into a cancer. Additionally, Lennix proposes to Poet, and she accepts.
The moment a computer system starts going beyond carrying out tasks and begins thinking about itself—what we know as conscience, something only higher mammals are supposed to possess—trouble isn’t far away. The reason the system orchestrated Murphy’s death was that he’d have exposed it as an uncontrollable beast that attacks anything it considers criminal. Recently, in the news, a mentally handicapped man was gunned down by a bunch of cops because he lifted his cane towards the cops in the USA. We can’t say that reel and real is much different now that police brutality and illegal stop-and-searches have reached such levels that almost anyone can be detained if they appear suspicious to the cops. Class of ’09 borrows from this very concept, where the system is granted the power of a billion men with weapons and uniforms, and now it’s running amok.
What Happens When Tayo Tries Shutting Down The System?
Tayo goes back to the HQ and starts pressing buttons, trying to shut down the system as a whole. However, the young man who was the then-FBI Director’s underling lets Tayo know in no kind words that if the present Director of the FBI tries shutting down the system, his career will be over. Tayo powers through and inputs the code, and not only does the system not collapse, but it detects Tayo Michaels himself as a threat to its system. This invariably means that the system has now become a sentient body that doesn’t respond to the kill switch put in place to terminate it when it starts acting erratically. It’s now a supreme entity that has the power to bring down anyone within the country and can’t be shut down, either. As an added measure, Tayo is fired from the FBI, and the underlying is promoted to the new boss, in all probability.
While sitting in a restaurant, Tayo’s ex-wife Vivienne comes to meet him, and now that he’s been let go from the organization for which his marriage was ruined, she knows he’ll once again be the man she’d fallen in love with. She asks him to move in with her, and they decide to give it another try. Meanwhile, the guy who threatened Tayo visits the chamber where the system’s mainframe data is stored, and he’s ready to find out the fullest extent of this omniscient system, meaning more harm is going to befall anyone who dares go against the system.
‘Class of ’09’ Episode 7 Ending Explained
We know by now that even Tayo Michaels realizes that his mission to bring swift justice to any criminal, no matter how rich or powerful, has backfired. The root of the problem lay in the fact that the system knew how to adapt, and now it’s adapted to such an extent that it can detect a threat to its own existence and eliminate it. The system won’t pardon even Tayo, the man that brought it into existence, because now it’s truly like the monster Frankenstein had created, and now it’s him reaping the fruits of the evil tree he’d sown. However, to his folly, it’s already too late because the system has some extremely loyal supporters who’ll turn on their own species to keep an AI alive, not knowing that, if need be, the system will eradicate these supporters as well. Now that Tayo has been fired, how will he and the other Quantico graduates unite to fight against this autocratic system? We’ll have to find out next week.
