‘Jack Ryan’ Season 4 Episode 2 Recap: “Convergence”

“Turn Pluto on. You have 24 hours.” That was Domingo Chavez’s mandate to Jack Ryan at the conclusion of the Jack Ryan Season 4 premiere (“Triage”), and it’s the thread Jack follows as he returns to the mountain of redacted files left behind by Miller, the CIA’s disgraced former director. Nobody would have had to put a gun to his head to do this. (Even though Chavez did.) Jack’s the wonderboy President Bachler paired with Acting Director Elizabeth Wright to restore order at the Agency, and if that requires his getting messy with Miller’s files, then by golly Jack’s gonna do it. He’s a boy scout going for his merit badge in Black Bag Shit, and once he digs deeper into the data with the help of a nebbishy CIA tech, Chavez is revealed to have been the chief operator for a program, codenamed Rainbow, for which he ran numerous kill missions. Missions like Pluto, all off-the-books and all authorized by Miller. And that’s a huge problem, especially with the senate confirmation hearings for Wright and Ryan’s director positions looming. But the more immediate problem, as Jack learns during a secret rendezvous with the operator, is that Chavez didn’t even know it was Miller signing the checks. He says his strike teams were run by “Walters,” also known as Tuttle, the guy we last saw coordinating a hit on the president of Nigeria. So somebody’s got a lot of explaining to do.

According to Chavez, after he helped eliminate the cartel’s competition in his shadow role as an enforcer for Marquez – remember the box with the hands? Yeah, that – Chao came to him with some serious info. “He said my entire operation was controlled by the triad,” Chavez tells Jack. “That whoever was running us in Washington was in their pockets.” Chao also said that the Silver Lotus Triad’s arrangement with Marquez was only the beginning, that it didn’t stop with control of borderland drug smuggling routes. Which is probably why the Silver Lotus Triad executive is so pissed when he calls Miller from Myanmar and demands clarity about the debacle in Yucatan. The ex-director has none. He’s a sputtering mess, backtracking with excuses and trying to pin the chaotic gun battle in Mexico on Chavez, and the phone tree continues when Miller calls Tuttle to continue his sputtering. Whatever the system was, with the triad on one side and Tuttle via Miller on the other, it’s running into operational static.

Given Chavez’s disturbing intel, Jack decides to expand the circle. He sends Greer to sweat Miller about Pluto – they used to work in the same office, but clearly despise each other – and the former director spits that it’s Greer and Jack who’ll take the fall for pulling on this black ops thread. Jack also tells Elizabeth he’s ready to read her in on what’s been uncovered, and during another Oval Office meeting with President Bachler, they explain their concerns. That the former director may have been a patsy for the Silver Lotus Triad; that he was using CIA assets to consolidate Marquez cartel power and secure its infrastructure for the triad; and that the fusion of a drug cartel with an international terrorist organization like the Burmese are running means “unlimited resources paired with undying hatred.” America’s southern border could become an open market for drugs, guns, human trafficking – even suicide bombers. Convergence!

Jack also expands his circle another way. Reached by phone in what looks to be a Turkish bathhouse frequented by senior citizens, Mike November (Michael Kelly) – once a government spook, now a private one, and always the chillest dude – is happy to hear from his old buddy. “What’s up, Deputy Director?” With November in the mix, we’re getting closer to Jack Ryan ditching his stuffy office in Langley for the juice of field work.

If Jack does end up back in the field – well, we know he does in some fashion, because season four opened up with him in the future, being tortured by Burmese goons – it might put a damper on his suddenly back on the front burner relationship with Dr. Cathy Mueller. But maybe Cathy’s gonna be busy, too? After delivering a well-received speech at a World Health Organization conference, Cathy is approached by Zeyara Lemos (Zuleikha Robinson), chief of the Nigerian Consulate in DC, and they schedule a lunch. There are plates shifting, so far beyond our view. But there are definitely moves being made in Nigeria after the assassintion of its president, and it seems not coincidental that Cathy’s work coincides with the situation in Lagos.

The president expressed his concern with Jack’s working theory about Miller and Tuttle, the cartel and the triads. But he also extended his wonderboy’s leash, allowing that what Elizabeth refers to as Jack’s “unorthodox” methods have a proven precedent. (After all, he did prevent the US and Russia from nuclear escalation.) While Jack, Greer, and Chavez continue to pressure Miller, Acting Director Wright appears before a senate committee. It’s another “microcosm of America” moment as Elizabeth describes her upbringing in Queens, where different forms of communication could spark unintended conflict. “I wanted to be a person who acted as a mollifying agent to end those conflicts,” she tells Senator Henshaw (Derek Cecil), and as director she pledges to bring that attitude to the CIA. Transparency, honesty, and morality will be her guiding principles. Deception, unchecked actions, and the stoking of conflict? “Not on my watch.” Jack’s unorthodox methods better work this time around, because Elizabeth is out here making very public pledges that they will.

Miller, the sputterer, had called Tuttle to complain about Chao and the increased heat from Jack and Greer, and even put a hit out on the acting deputy director. And during a contentious nighttime meeting in a DC park, he basically tells Jack that, because he messed with Pluto, his days are numbered. “Do you realize the cost of what you’ve done? Who do you think you really work for? You do not know who these people are.” But as it turns out, it’s Miller who doesn’t know who these people are. A few hours later, Tuttle shows up at the former director’s house, incapacitates him, and arranges a manufactured suicide with the help of a rubber hose, pills, and booze. And by the time Jack, Greer, and Chavez arrive, former CIA Director Miller is dead. Chavez, ever the operator, just bleeds into the inky winter night. “Now they’re gonna come for me.”  

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges