The international espionage drama series “Liaison,” starring prominent acting personalities like Vincent Cassel and Eva Green, dropped its second episode this week. Stephen Hopkins’ direction is focusing on the terrorism in London getting more serious while the French bureaucratic atmosphere grows more toxic with each passing day. It’s certain that there’s a lot at play at the highest levels of office, and petty politics is coming in the way of guaranteeing safety for the lives of innocents. As politicians pull strings and independent contractors strongarm the weaker into following their will, the global tension intensifies with each episode. Let’s find out what the second episode has in store for us.
Spoilers Ahead
Another Attack, Closer To Home
The second episode begins with Gabriel Delage darting away from the window panes when he spots Alison’s stepdaughter Kim approaching, and Alison is left staring at the emptiness in front of her. She sits down to search for Gabriel on the database but has to quit early as her boyfriend Albert comes back. While embracing, she spots Gabriel looking at her from a distance.
In the French presidential palace, tension is soaring as Sophie Saint-Roch argues that the agent Didier Taraud hired is being blamed for roughing up the Syrian hacker, who could be linked to DGSE, while Taraud responds that they have plausible deniability since the agent was hired indirectly. Gabriel was hired by Telkis, an ex-DGSE official who runs his own private security company. Saint-Roch advises alerting the British about the information they have on the cyberattacks, while Taraud responds that it’ll be foolhardy to deny France the advantage they have in the matter. The president, too, is satisfied upon learning that the UK is protected by the cybersecurity agreements they’d signed and lets the matter rest. Sophie is far from convinced.
At Alison’s place, Albert prepares lunch for his daughter Kim before she leaves for a school trip, and the coldness she has toward Alison is palpable. Alison spots a hand-written pamphlet for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and upon turning up at the said spot, she’s met with Gabriel, who sits beside her. While walking back, the two converse in fluent French, and he says although he always knows where Alison is, he just needs Walid Hamza right now, and he’ll disappear the second he has him. As Alison drives, Gabriel divulges that Walid and Samir Hamza are cousins, and they wiped out the Syrian police databases after discovering terrorist attack plans in England, but the attacker remains unknown. He adds that they wanted French help in exchange for the information, but upon thinking that the French had double-crossed them, they turned to the British for help. However, seeing as Alison isn’t saying anything, Gabriel says he knows where the attack plans are, but he needs his fingerprint to open the USB that has the data, and she stops the car at the side of the road. She asks him to turn himself in, and he’s not a fan of repeating what has happened before. He asks about her husband and children (Albert and Kim), but she admits she’s not married and doesn’t have children either. While Alison finds out where Hamza is admitted, Gabriel spots a policeman approaching them, and he immediately cocks his pistol, ready to use. She learns that the Syrian is at St. Callum’s ICU, and moments later, the policeman arrives and says they can’t park here and leaves. However, something bugs Bobbie, and he checks the criminal database to realize that the passenger in the car is none other than Jean Petit—the French criminal being hounded. Gabriel is immediately aware of the danger and flees after Alison says she won’t be heading to the hospital with him.
Albert sees Kim off at King’s Cross Station for her school trip after having a talk with her about giving Alison a chance to show that she’s a good person before writing her off, and heads to his new workplace as the lawyer to revoke Petit’s diplomatic immunity. He’s speaking to DI Hobbs about how to bring in Petit when she gets a call alerting her that the Frenchman was seen in a car, but they didn’t get the registration, so she sends a few teams to search the area but does not make an arrest. Albert is curious why the whole of British Intelligence is obsessing over an elevator fight, so she reveals that it may be related to a terrorist plot. He’s not convinced, however, because the CCTV footage of Walid shows a Druze Star necklace on him, and Albert clarifies that the Druze are heavily opposed to radicalism in Islam. Hobbs notes that the necklace was missing after he was brutalized—of course, the star itself concealed the USB that Gabriel currently possessed.
As Kim and her friends are chatting and enjoying their train ride, the Railway Signal Control Center in London falls prey to hacking. All the signals are turned green remotely, and any official is barred from accessing the board. Soon, two trains rush headlong at each other—one of which has Kim and the other students—and collide in a matter of moments. Alison learns of the attack while in a meeting with Richard, and the fact that a train filled with schoolkids collided with another outside King’s Cross is enough for her to rush to the spot. It’s a nightmarish situation at the scene of the accident, with crying students, severely injured people being stretchered away, and wounded victims frantically calling their families. Alison finds Kim being carried away on a stretcher, and even though she’s in severe pain, she’s conscious. Alison answers Albert’s call and assures him that his daughter is alright and that they’re very lucky that she’s survived with no severe injuries. At the hospital, Gabriel sneakily learns about the room in which Walid is being held amidst the crowd of accident victims being brought in and steals a doctor’s uniform from an ambulance. In a twist of fate, he comes face-to-face with Albert, who is accompanying Kim and sits beside Alison. She stares at him directly while Albert asks to get Kim some pain medications, and he leaves—but not to get pain medications. Gabriel enters Hamza’s room and gets his fingerprint on the USB, but he hears someone coming. Gabriel slams the intruder against the wall, only to find it’s Alison, and they embrace wildly and are on the verge of kissing when Hamza’s vitals start falling. As doctors rush in, Gabriel escapes, leaving Alison standing there with tears in her eyes.
At the French palace, upon hearing the news of the train collision, the French president gets very concerned that a similar event could happen to France, and he demands to know why Taraud said the British are protected when they clearly aren’t. Taraud boasts with pride that the hackers have been found and they’ll be questioned immediately upon arrival, but Saint-Roch wants the interrogation to be done by the DGSE. The president, by chance, agrees with her, further bolstering Taraud’s hatred against her. She even calls after him mockingly to know what to say when the British learn that the French knew of the attack but did nothing. While speaking to his boss Telkis, Gabriel says that Walid was killed by whoever organized the terrorist attacks, and even though he has Walid’s fingerprint, he also needs a password, so Samir is the only option they have right now. Telkis assures him that his diplomatic immunity will ensure his safety, but Gabriel suggests they can learn something from an acquaintance of his in exchange for intel. She can’t be bought off, contrary to Telkis’s suggestion, because it’s her—both men knew who was being spoken off. Taraud’s entry cuts the video meeting short, and the French official is seething that his rival Saint-Roch has handed the case to the DGSE and demands to know when Hamza shall arrive. Telkis chooses to lie and say that the moment he arrives in the country, Taraud will have his hands on the Syrian, avoiding mentioning that he’s dead.
Meanwhile, Walid’s brother Samir gets off a bus and heads towards a seaside location where several refugees have set up tents, but two other men start following him. They proceed to attack him and try snatching his phone away when one of the refugees charges at the attackers, and they flee the scene but manage to snatch Samir’s bag. The refugee invites Samir to their tent and hugs him upon learning that Samir, too, is Syrian. This was a Syrian refugee camp where everybody arriving from the country was welcomed with open arms and fiercely protected from outside threats. Elsewhere, Albert breaks down over what could have happened to his daughter, and Alison tries to console him when DI Hobbs arrives with news about Jean Petit. She has discovered that all his diplomatic immunity is fake, and his real name is Gabriel Delage, a mercenary employed by a friar named Telkis. She links him with the cyberattacks and theorizes that he’d arrived in London to kill Walid and Samir, so Albert agrees to greenlight his arrest. Moments later, while walking down a crowded street, Gabriel notices several suspicious eyes on him, and he breaks into a sprint and manages to escape his potential captor before calling Alison and asking to meet. Before leaving, there’s a soft moment where Kim thanks her for being there for her, and Alison hugs her.
Upon meeting, Alison blasts Gabriel as a mercenary wanted for murder and says that he ought to be ashamed of himself before suggesting that he has to flee immediately. He throws it back at her, saying she hasn’t changed and is once again too busy to save herself. He then shows her the USB and says that it contains the entire plan, which is why it’s imperative that he finds Samir because the train collision wasn’t the attack since no one claimed responsibility. He adds that the two cousins are in the city for a reason and that they’ve got a contact here. The sexual tension between the two is immense, and she has to turn her back to keep her from acting on her impulses. As Alison leaves, Gabriel receives a call that Samir’s wife and son are in Europe now, and he agrees to return to France. At the COBRA meeting, Alison argues that British cybersecurity is too inadequate to handle these attacks and they need to make a deal with Europe, but the PM’s advisor, Toby, vehemently refuses to return to the EU. Richard, however, advises Alison to head to Brussels the next day and negotiate the deal that had been canceled at the last moment before Brexit.
Taraud comes home to find someone named Bob waiting for him, who informs the official that the British will be signing a deal the next day in Brussels and also reminds him of his promise to handle the Syrians. He asks Taraud to have his contact at the EU look into the matter, and he assures Bob that the UK won’t be able to sign the deal. In her office, Alison searches her phone when Richard arrives and gives her the contact information for Sabine Louseau, the Chief of Staff at Vander Meer. She looks up Sabine on the internet, and incidentally, Taraud happens to meet Sabine and greets her with a kiss. She’s come from Brussels to meet him, and he takes her for a walk to inform her that the British plan to re-enter the cybersecurity protection, but they can’t be helped at the moment because it collides with France’s interests. Sabine, who was able to move to France with a respectable job and a massive salary thanks to Taraud, questions if the interests hampered shall be of France or of his own. He asks about Pierre, and she shows pictures of a cute little kid, and Taraud gets emotional upon seeing the pictures of his son. He promises to have her salary negotiated, and she requests that he visit his son more frequently. Taraud makes her confirm the matter of handling the British, but she makes it clear that this shall be the final time. Samir borrows a phone from his new Syrian friend and calls Myriam, his wife, who says the mother and son have just arrived in Belgium. Albert and Kim are having a video chat with her mother, who’s suggesting that she see a therapist when Alison arrives and informs her boyfriend that she can’t find her phone. The phone in question is in the hands of Gabriel, who’s on a ship, heading to France, as he scrolls through the pictures of Alison with her new family until he pauses on a photograph. The photo is of Alison kissing Gabriel on the cheeks, and both look very content; he stares intently at the picture while she stands in the courtyard, thinking.
‘Liaison’ Episode 2: Ending Explained – What Happens To Alison’s Phone?
With one more cyberattack taking place in the second episode, this time a lot closer to home, the threat feels too real to ignore. Albert takes the initiative to get the first suspect they have, Gabriel, arrested, and even though he manages to escape, London is no longer safe for the mercenary. It’s very curious that Didier Taraud is so bent on getting his hands on the Syrians himself and why he wants to deny the British any information they might have on the matter, which also leads to the question, “Who is Bob? Why did the well-dressed gentleman arrive at Taraud’s residence and ask for the Syrians, and why is it imperative for them to stop the deal between the UK and EU from happening? These questions will have to wait for another week, but it’s almost certain that Taraud can rest easy knowing his girlfriend Sabine—with whom he has a son—will take his side over the British, and Alison’s entire trip to Belgium might be for nothing.
On another note, Alison and Gabriel’s previous connection is established, and it’s proven that they were lovers once, and the emotions have remained till now, although things ended between them the last time because Alison might’ve made Gabriel take the fall. He had been arrested previously, probably at Alison’s request, which makes him react incredulously to her suggestion that he turn himself in. In the end, he leaves for France with her phone and fondly remembers the time when the photograph of her kissing him was taken, while she remembers the moments she had had with him. Do they end up together, or does she choose her new family now? These questions and more will be answered as the series progresses.
