‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 Episode 2 Review

MiliThe decade-long wait for The Night Manager premiered with the reopening of old wounds, but this second episode is about understanding that those wounds were never really set to heal in the first place. The fallout from the event in Barcelona, where our first episode left us, doesn’t simply fracture Jonathan Pine’s (Tom Hiddleston) carefully constructed second life, but confirms that Richard Roper’s reach was never as distant as Pine wanted to believe.

The Night Manager Season 2 Episode 2 opens amid damage control. British intelligence reels from the disastrous Night Owls operation in Spain and the deaths of several agents, including — officially — Alexander Goodwin. The response is swift, and even a little ruthless. Mayra Cavendish (Indira Varma), Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, disbands the Night Owls entirely, placing the blame on Goodwin’s “reckless” leadership. To the public record, the case is closed, “Goodwin” is dead, and the mess is buried away. But, as usual, it’s not that easy to get rid of Jonathan Pine.

Goodwin may be gone, but Pine is very much alive — and, crucially, no longer alone. In a quiet, conspiratorial meeting in Wales, Pine reunites with Sally Price-Jones (Hayley Squires), one of the few surviving Night Owls, and Basil Karapetian (Paul Chahidi), a senior intelligence operative who reveals just how much he’s been withholding. Basil didn’t merely know Pine’s true identity; he helped erase it. He was instrumental in “killing” Jonathan Pine a decade ago and replacing him with Alexander Goodwin. This time, he ensures that Goodwin’s death in Spain is permanent on paper, granting Pine something rare and dangerous: freedom.

That freedom, however, comes with conditions. Pine cannot dismantle what is unfolding in Colombia alone. The goal is no longer observation or containment. This time, it is intervention, and intervention begins, inevitably, with money.   The trail leads back to the shipment first uncovered through Jaco Brouwer, cargo tied to Barquero Commerce and its charismatic frontman, Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva). Through careful coordination with a public prosecutor in Medellín, Pine’s team manages to freeze Barquero’s assets, exploiting a legal vulnerability that Teddy can’t ignore. If the money stops flowing, Teddy will need investors. Quickly.

This is where Jonathan Pine steps in, reinvented yet again.

Gone are any of his familiar identities — Pine, Goodwin, even Andrew Birch from the early Roper years. This time, the bait is Matthew Ellis: forty-three, Norfolk-born, wealthy, volatile, and plausibly damaged. A man raised by a second-rate merchant banker and an alcoholic mother, Ellis has spent his adult life chasing risk, first through finance and then through self-destruction. A scandal at a Swiss bank in Hong Kong sends him running to Colombia, alone, flush with cash, and nursing an obvious drinking problem. He is reckless, detached, and available.

He is precisely the kind of man Teddy Dos Santos would find irresistible. The series indulges us briefly and enjoyably in Pine’s transformation montage, with Hiddleston trying on the excesses of Ellis’ world. But The Night Manager understands that disguise is never just a costume. Ellis is not a mask Pine wears so much as an exaggeration of traits that have always existed beneath the surface.

Colombia becomes the season’s central setting from here. At the luxurious Gran Meliá hotel, Ellis (Pine) establishes himself as an easy mark, drifting through lobbies and tennis courts with practiced carelessness. His introduction to Teddy’s world comes through Juan Carrascal, Teddy’s lawyer and right-hand man, whose fondness for gambling provides the perfect opening. A staged tennis match and a casual thousand-dollar wager allow Pine to demonstrate just enough competence to attract attention, and just enough volatility to invite scrutiny. When Teddy finally arrives, Pine loses angrily, sealing the impression.

Calva’s Teddy Dos Santos is magnetic in these early scenes. Handsome and finely dressed, he observes more than he speaks, measuring Ellis not as a threat, but as an opportunity. Their first conversation is deceptively casual: nationality, business history, vague allusions to trouble back in China. Pine plays ignorance masterfully, even feigning an inability to understand Spanish. At the same time, Teddy discusses meetings with General Sánchez, a chilling indicator that the Colombian military is not merely turning a blind eye to Barquero’s operations but is deeply entangled in them.

An unexpected arrival throws Pine for a loop.

That entanglement deepens as the episode unfolds. Military assurances brush aside the prosecutor’s frozen cargo shipment. The implication is unmistakable: this operation has state backing, and not just locally.

Back in London, Rex Mayhew’s funeral offers a grim counterpoint. Mayra Cavendish delivers a eulogy that borders on performative, her public grief undercut by the private maneuvering that immediately follows. In a closed-door conversation with Basil, Mayra reveals flashes of ambition and control that feel increasingly suspect. Basil plays along, even as he quietly installs surveillance overlooking the properties where Mayra has been meeting overseas intermediaries.

The episode’s social centerpiece is Teddy’s lavish charity gala, ostensibly benefiting orphaned Colombian youth through his Aurora foundation. The optics are immaculate, all wealth, elegance, dancing, and champagne — plus soldiers littered throughout the room. The contrast is deliberate and damning. Teddy’s public image mirrors Richard Roper’s almost perfectly, weaponizing philanthropy as camouflage for something far darker.

On the fringes of the gala floor, Pine and Teddy share a brief, liquor-soaked exchange. Teddy, openly curious and unmistakably assessing, wonders aloud why Pine has arrived alone. Pine, deliberately overindulging, circles him as he replies, “I’m always…open to offers.” The line lands somewhere between flirtation and strategy. It masquerades as banter, but the subtext is unmistakable: Teddy’s interest isn’t purely professional, and Pine understands that being an object of desire can be just as useful as being trusted.

It’s here, however, that Roxana Bolaños reenters Pine’s life with devastating effect.

A shocking revelation reframes the story.

Camila Morrone’s Roxana arrives unexpectedly, her presence rattling Pine and recontextualizing everything she claimed in London. Introduced publicly as Teddy’s associate, she plays her role convincingly, even flirtatiously, while maintaining a fragile façade. Alone, Pine confronts her. He accuses her of lying, threatens exposure, arrest, and extradition. Roxana doesn’t deny everything, but she doesn’t confess much either. She admits to fronting deals without knowing their full scope, to being watched, controlled, and constrained by her situation. Whether she is truly a prisoner or simply a survivor remains frustratingly unclear, and the episode smartly resists answering that question.

Their uneasy alliance is transactional. Roxana can get Pine closer to Teddy. In return, Pine can offer the possibility, but not the promise, of freedom. She is now caught between two men who both require her complicity to survive. Teddy’s reaction to Pine offering Roxana his card is telling. He takes it himself, pecking it with a smile that reads as both amused and proprietary, though whether that possessive feeling is aimed at Roxana or Pine remains uncertain.

But a quieter, more haunting thread emerges when Pine notices a photograph in Teddy’s wallet, an image he recognizes from Richard Roper’s confiscated belongings. The discovery shifts Pine’s focus entirely, as anything directly involving Roper always does. With the help of a private investigator, he traces the photograph to a small town and a grave. María Vidal, deceased. Young. Her daughter Clara, who confronts them at the gravesite, recognizes Teddy not as Dos Santos but as Eduardo, her long-lost brother. A priest at a mountainside church fills in the rest: Eduardo was left behind after a scandal, visited once a year by his English father while he practiced English year-round just for him.

The implication lands with a horrifying clarity. Teddy Dos Santos is Richard Roper’s illegitimate son. It’s a revelation that reframes everything. Teddy isn’t merely Roper’s disciple, but his inheritance. His methods, his charm, and his cruelty are all learned behaviors passed down, refined, and modernized. Pine admits, quietly, that he feels like he’s chasing ghosts. Sally reminds him that stopping the shipment is the only way to make them stop.

Pine and Teddy share an unexpected, pointed moment of intimacy.

Opportunity finally arrives when Roxana calls. Teddy needs $20 million. Pine, as Ellis, fits the profile perfectly. A lunch becomes a negotiation. A negotiation becomes an invitation. What follows at Teddy’s estate is not merely a test of loyalty, but an orchestrated seduction that blurs strategy and desire until the distinction between performance and truth becomes almost impossible to parse.

The night unfolds under the guise of celebration. Music drifts through the hills, champagne flows freely, cocaine appears on a serving tray, and Teddy’s hospitality is warm. It’s all designed to disarm. Pine, as Matthew Ellis, falls for it convincingly. But when someone spikes Pine’s drink, the carefulness with which he usually operates falters.

The camera lingers as Pine’s body betrays him. His balance falters, the edges of his vision soften, the world slipping out of focus. Whether he anticipates this or is genuinely overtaken remains deliberately ambiguous. When Pine stumbles into the pool, the moment feels simultaneously like an accident and like something inevitable. He sinks briefly, disoriented, the water swallowing sound and light, before Teddy’s men pull him back to the surface. But they don’t rescue him, not entirely. Instead, they deliver him to Teddy himself, who sits in the shallow end, fully dressed and waiting.

He cradles Pine in his lap, the water lapping gently around them. Pine is soaked and pliant, his body slack with both intoxication and exhaustion. Teddy’s touch is unhurried and remarkably tender. He brushes wet hair from Pine’s face, cups his cheek, and steadies him with hands intent on soothing. The intimacy is startling — not because it is overtly sexual, though the tension is unmistakable, but because it is careful.

A sincere display of temptation.

They remain pressed close. Teddy speaks softly, reassuringly, about money, about trust, about making problems disappear. He frames himself not as a threat, but as the solution. Pine listens, eyes glassy, and for a fleeting moment, it feels as though he isn’t acting at all.  The physicality deepens still. Teddy traces Pine’s jaw. Pine allows it. He even hushes Teddy with fingers pressed gently to his lips, playful and dangerously familiar. It’s a tenderness that complicates the power dynamic, suggesting that Pine doesn’t merely ensure this closeness; he wants it.

What makes the scene so arresting is how sincerely the show allows that temptation to exist. Teddy offers a version of belonging that Pine has denied himself for years. Even knowing it cannot be real, the desire to believe in it is palpable.  And yet manipulation hums beneath the surface. Teddy’s gentleness is strategic. His affection is conditional. The offer of his care is inseparable from his need for control. Pine may be playing Teddy, but Teddy is playing Pine just as intently.  It’s an extraordinary sequence, one that is sensual without being gratuitous, intimate without being explicit, and, most importantly, deeply unsettling in how honestly it allows Pine to surface.

The Night Manager Season 2 Episode 2 isn’t without its flaws. At times, the pacing lingers, and the repeated suggestion that Pine alone can dismantle this system flirts with romanticism, even as the narrative insists otherwise. Still, it’s very early.

Tom Hiddleston delivers a layered performance, effortlessly shifting between Pine and Ellis while allowing cracks to emerge between them. Diego Calva is a revelation, playing Teddy with warmth that curdles into menace. Camila Morrone’s Roxana becomes the season’s most compelling wild card, neither a victim nor villain but something far more dangerous: undecided.  By the end of the episode, the stakes are no longer theoretical. Pine is deeply embedded. The machinery is in motion. And Richard Roper continues to shape the world through the son who took on the mantle of his empire.

The Night Manager airs on BBC One and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and Amazon Prime Video.

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Images courtesy of Prime Video.