‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 Episode 6 Review

Everything has been leading to this — The Night Manager Season 2 finale.

Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) and Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) stand at their long-promised reckoning. Teddy dos Santos (Diego Calva) has sided with Pine, betraying the father he spent a lifetime trying to earn. Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone) appears to have aligned herself with Roper for the sake of survival. Basil Karapetian (Paul Chahidi) is dead. Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) is left to hold together the remains of an operation unraveling across continents. The stakes have never been higher or more personal.

The finale opens on Teddy, contemplative as water from the showerhead sluices over him. But then again, aren’t we all contemplative in the shower? Teddy’s reflection, however, carries real weight. It’s fragile and serious in a way that immediately signals what lies ahead. Throughout the season, his Catholicism has wrestled with the violence and moral compromise of his life, and here that conflict returns in the face of the decision he has made.

As he runs his fingers across the healing self-inflicted cuts on his arm, we glimpse a flash of childhood — young Teddy tracing the nailed wrist of Christ on a crucifix, reaching toward suffering in search of closeness to God. The imagery is startling, especially because of how obvious a metaphor it is: a sacrificed son, devotion intertwined with pain, faith inseparable from punishment.

Love at first flight risk.

His mission, however, is firmly in place. Roper tasks him with contacting the Cabreras and preparing the operation’s next phase, sending him out alongside Juan. Teddy steps just far enough away to maintain appearances before placing a call of his own. This call is not to their partners, but to Jonathan Pine.

It is clear, right here, that everyone is maneuvering. Everyone believes they’re ahead. Everyone thinks they are walking out of this the winners.

Pine, working with Sally Price-Jones (Hayley Squires), begins executing the counterplay. Rather than attempting to stop the shipment outright — a move that would alert Roper too early — they redirect it. The goal, instead, is exposure. The incoming weapons convoy is quietly steered toward San Marcos, an abandoned firing range strategically suited for interception. Isolated enough to stage the seizure safely, yet accessible enough to ensure visibility, it becomes the perfect theater stage for bringing Roper down.

Authorities are tipped off. Press is positioned. Pine and Sally split to put the final pieces in motion.

Juan last betrayal.

It’s a carefully calculated move that reflects Pine’s strategy this season. Roper going quietly simply will not do. Not again. The last time the net closed in, Roper slipped through it, resurfacing more insulated and more dangerous than before. This time, he must be dismantled in front of the world, his crimes undeniable and impossible to bury, ensuring he can never rebuild in the shadows again.

And yet, beneath the logistics, the emotional undercurrent continues. Pine isn’t executing this plan alone. Teddy’s cooperation, newly earned, hangs over every decision, making the operation not just tactical but deeply personal. The success of San Marcos would mean more than exposure. It would sever Teddy’s final ties to Roper’s legacy and his dangled love in a way neither man can undo.

Teddy and Juan depart, and just as their car clears the driveway, Pine makes a call of his own — not to more allies, but to Richard Roper.

Two’s company, Roper’s a crowd.

The exchange — like all exchanges between the two — is deceptively simple, almost cordial on the surface, yet charged with the kind of tension only shared history such as their own can create. Pine presses first, asking whether Roper has reconsidered his standing offer: abandon the shipment, step away from the operation, and face the consequences through surrender. It’s less a negotiation than a moral provocation, Pine extending a path he already knows Roper will refuse.

Roper responds in kind, amused rather than threatened. He counters with his own standing offer: $50 million and a place at his side. Join the enterprise, join the power, join the winning side before it’s too late. Pine declines without hesitation. Because of course he does.

The art of the deal with the devil.

What follows is almost surreal in its civility. The two men exchange polite farewells, each expressing hope that they’ll see the other soon. There’s something unhinged beneath the politeness as both are aware that this reunion will almost certainly end in violence, ruin, and/or death. Then the call ends, and the game between them resumes.

As Pine prepares to leave and meet Teddy at their chosen spot, he receives a frantic call from Roxana, her voice trembling as she claims she’s fled, that she’s been discovered, that she needs his help. It plays exactly as it should, urgent and vulnerable and convincing. Pine responds, diverting course to meet her. But, thankfully for him, Teddy is on his side. 

Best laid plans of spies and men.

Driving with Juan, Teddy begins pushing for answers about the conversation that abruptly ended when he entered earlier that morning. Juan is evasive. Teddy presses harder, invoking Jonathan Pine’s former alias, Matthew Ellis, and asking whether that was the subject of discussion. Juan dismisses it, claiming it’s being handled, but the reassurance is thin. Teddy doesn’t accept it.

“This is my operation, Juan…I have a right to know what’s going on.”

Juan’s response lands with deliberate cruelty. Roxana, he says — “our Miami beauty” — has returned to the fold. And Pine? In the end, nobody believed Pine was ever truly just an associate of Teddy’s. “Your English loverboy had you round his little finger,” Juan says, and with it, the implication is clear. Teddy’s loyalty has been noticed, judged, and quietly condemned. His place within the hierarchy of Roper’s empire is no longer secure because of perceived affection. 

Baptism by firefight.

They continue driving, tension thick and unresolved, until Teddy pulls over under the pretense of contacting the Cabreras again to confirm the meeting point and time. Stepping just far enough away to avoid making Juan suspect, he places a different call.

Pine answers as he himself is preparing to step out of the car to retrieve Roxana. When Pine mentions the detour, Teddy replies carefully, his voice neutral enough to pass scrutiny if overheard: “I wouldn’t bother with that. We’re here waiting.”

It’s coded, much as the conversation they had first thing this morning was, but Pine hears what’s actually being said — that something is wrong with the situation in front of him. Testing the lead, Pine gives Roxana directions to a different car than the one he’s in.

Wrong number, right idea.

The trap she’s helped lay with Roper springs instantly. Armed men pour out, riddling the vehicle with gunfire that would have killed him without hesitation. It’s efficient, and a message as much as an execution attempt. Pine drives away, leaving Roxana behind with one final farewell: “Goodbye, Roxana, and good luck.” It doesn’t sound vindictive, nor particularly sentimental. It does sound accepting, however; an acknowledgement of the choice she’s made and the reality that will follow it. 

Meanwhile, Teddy’s own confrontation unfolds on the road. A message comes through stating that “Matthew Ellis” has escaped and it ignites suspicion immediately. Juan turns on Teddy, probing, circling, testing the strength of his loyalty. Teddy meets it head-on, performing indignation with convincing ease, completely offended at being doubted and at being treated as anything less than devoted.

Juan demands Teddy’s phone. Teddy refuses — until, suddenly, he doesn’t. He tosses it at Juan’s feet. And action. Teddy kicks him down, gun drawn, fury breaking through the composure he’s so good at maintaining. The question he fires at Juan isn’t tactical, but personal. Did he know? Did everyone know that Roper never intended to take Teddy with him, that he was always meant to be left behind?

Juan’s answer is as cruel as his earlier barb about Teddy’s “loverboy.” Of course he knew. Teddy was simply too foolish to see it.

Tender is the Pine.

He begs for mercy seconds later, but the damage is already done. In the scramble that follows, Juan lunges when Teddy’s focus slips, and the two clash violently. When Teddy finally regains control of the gun, the outcome is swift and irreversible — two shots fired, one to the chest and one straight to the head.

It isn’t framed as a win. Not really. This is Teddy cutting himself off from one of the strongest threads tying him to Roper’s world.

The failed ambush of Pine comes to a head when Roper confronts Roxana, accusing her of falling for Jonathan Pine and tipping him off. Roxana meets it with anger rather than submission, insisting she did not warn Pine.

Roper goes on, unconvinced, and the confrontation escalates until Roxana steps closer and delivers her counterstrike. “You’re right about him,” she says. “He is so easy to fall in love with. But I chose not to. I didn’t lose my heart to him. And if someone did, it wasn’t me.”

The silence that follows is deafening. Understanding dawns across Roper’s face, the realization settling with the chilling clarity of who that someone could be. Teddy. With that single line, Roxana — intentionally or not — seals Teddy’s fate.

Ready, Teddy, go.

Roper’s response is not rage but admiration. “Oh, you beauty,” he murmurs, speaking not to Roxana, but to the elegance of Pine’s work, recognizing the emotional infiltration that has unfolded within his own household. 

From here, the finale escalates into its web of interlocking deceptions and betrayals. Mayra and Roper clash over control. Angela Burr pressures Sandy Langbourne in London for actionable evidence. Pine and Teddy construct a dangerous gambit involving staged betrayal, manipulated audio, and Pine submitting to torture to sell the lie. The mechanics of espionage unfold with precision, all as physically risky as they are emotionally risky.

Amid the plotting, however, the episode pauses for something quieter and far more affecting. As I noted in my last episode review, this season has consistently reserved its quietest and most intimate moments for Pine and Teddy, and the finale continues that pattern. In a militant shack far removed from our familiarity, Pine sits bloodied and beaten while Teddy risks everything he has built to reach him. 

Pine, desperate for Teddy to grasp the gravity of what lies ahead, cups his face and forces eye contact. It’s not aggressive, but it is grounding, an act of urgency, need, and trust all at once. The two cling to one another in a shared space of fear and hope.  And of longing, longing that words could never adequately articulate.

Method to the sadness.

Their connection has threaded through the entire season at least once an episode since their first meeting in Season 2 Episode 2. The narrative has paused to allow them these pockets of stillness amongst all violence and lying and betrayals. Here, that intimacy sharpens into something both tender and devastating. Teddy cleans Pine’s wounds with quiet care. Pine presses their foreheads together. It reads unmistakably as a goodbye, one that should have been bittersweet, filled with unanswered “what ifs” and shaped by the knowledge that their lives would simply carry them in different directions. Teddy needed to disappear quickly. Pine had his own war to continue. It should have been the kind of farewell defined by distance and possibility.

Instead, it becomes final. There’s a fragility to the tenderness, a sense that the world they live in was never going to allow softness like this to survive, never going to be fair to someone as spiritually earnest and wounded as Teddy. When he loosely restrains Pine again, it’s done to be convincing enough to sell the illusion and loose enough to ensure escape if needed. 

Their last exchange is silent. They meet each other’s eyes, and the moment carries everything they cannot say aloud. It doesn’t resolve their connection, and it certainly doesn’t provide closure. It simply exists, incomplete, before Teddy walks away.

Like father, unlike son.

Once that quiet moment breaks, the operation proceeds. San Marcos fills with media and officials. Roper arrives at the militant camp. Pine is presented as a traitor, Teddy as an accuser. Guns are drawn, loyalties are announced, and Teddy confronts Roper openly, his voice shaking with years of suppressed hurt.

Teddy accuses Roper of using him, of planning to return to his son Danny while leaving him behind. “You die tonight under my Colombian sky. I will bury you myself.” He draws his gun.

Roper gives Pine his due — “Oh, you are very good.” — before turning his attention to Teddy, goading him as the gun presses against his forehead.

Pine urges Teddy forward, pushing him to pull the trigger. But it’s impossible to ignore what this moment truly demands of him. All Teddy has ever wanted was love from his father. This isn’t a simple task, but a betrayal of his own identity.

And just as the moment peaks, a shrill piano tone cuts through the air. Roper’s phone. He answers. And we learn, as we have before — as we always do — that Roper remains one step ahead.

Gone too son.

Teddy presses the gun back to Roper’s head, but the moment falters as the distant roar of a plane cuts through the night air. Pine looks to Teddy for answers, but Teddy has none. All we can do is watch as Roper’s plane carries the weapon he always promised arriving exactly where he said it would.

“Watch the cups, Jonathan,” Roper says, a callback to something he told Pine ten years ago, a reminder of the rules in this deadly, never-ending game. The cargo that lands for Sally, the authorities, and the press gathered at San Marcos? A single rose. And just like that, the entire plan shatters.

Roper gets to play his game now, in his favorite way: right in front of Pine’s eyes. He accuses Pine of hunting big game — first recalling Pine’s affair with Roper’s own girlfriend back in Mojarca, and now insinuating at whatever has existed between Teddy and Pine since the start.

But bygones cannot be left as bygones. Roper turns his attention to Teddy, the son who betrayed him so publicly. Teddy is withdrawn, the dream of freedom slipping farther out of reach, when Roper leans in. “When you were a baby, you had the face of an angel.”

No country for old sons.

He pulls Teddy close, like a father might, adding, “I forgive your immortal soul.” Knowing what forgiveness means to Teddy, this is everything. Then — “But not your mortal one.” Roper shoots Teddy squarely in the forehead.

Pine sees it coming, screams, struggles against his bindings. But it is too late. “Nothing is so precious that it can’t be sacrificed. Nothing and no one.” Roper had said this to Roxana earlier in the episode. Now we understand fully: even his own son can be sacrificed.

Pine’s sobs are quiet, disbelief etched across his face. Teddy lies dead, his beautiful brown eyes fixed on the Colombian night sky. In one final, cruel gesture, Roper nudges Teddy’s head with the toe of his boot, smearing dirt across his son’s face.

Roper feels nothing — or at least, nothing recognizable as remorse. It is shocking, cruel, and definitive. More than narrative tragedy, it is a thematic synthesis: devotion, identity, love, and faith can all be sacrificed at the altar of power.

Everyone’s got skin in the game.

The final minutes of the episode are pure chaos. Martín — the investigator who has been a quiet hero all season — intervenes, allowing Pine to escape, but at the cost of his own life. Roxana flees to Miami. Angela Burr is murdered. Pine survives, though wounded, broken, and alone.

Roper returns to England, reclaiming his legitimate son and his empire intact, while Colombia descends into civil unrest and madness. The use of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” over this ending lands with bitter, unforgiving clarity.

As a finale — and as a season — this episode delivers everything and more. There is tension, devastation, and emotional payoff in abundance. The performances across the board elevate the material. 

And they all lived miserably ever after.

Tom Hiddleston returned to The Night Manager better than ever, embodying Jonathan Pine with precision. Everything that defined Pine in Season 1, such as his intelligence, moral code, and simmering intensity, has been amplified this season, and Hiddleston’s performance reflects it fully.

His chameleon-like ability to slip into Pine’s multiple aliases, making each one feel distinct yet unmistakably Pine, is a testament to his range. Whether he’s quietly observing, manipulating, or letting his righteous anger surface, Hiddleston commands the screen effortlessly, reminding us why Pine is one of television’s most compelling and complex protagonists, and why he won the awards he did for this role a decade ago.

Diego Calva’s performance as Teddy is nothing short of remarkable. In just a handful of episodes, he has emerged as a fan favorite, bringing a depth and range to the role that feels far beyond his years. He navigates Teddy’s complex journey from brash arrogance and calculated defiance to quiet vulnerability, moral torment, and, finally, heartbreaking tragedy in a way that feels natural.

Every look, every subtle gesture communicates volumes, making the character’s internal struggles and fleeting moments of tenderness vividly real. That someone so young can command such presence, evoke such empathy, and leave such a lasting impression in a single season speaks to both Calva’s raw talent and the meticulous care he brings to his craft.

Spy hard with a vengeance.

Hugh Laurie continues to bring Richard Roper to life with a terrifying mix of charm and moral vacancy. He makes the character’s ruthlessness almost magnetic, drawing in the audience even as he commits unspeakable acts. Laurie’s ability to balance charisma, menace, and cunning while maintaining an unsettling calm turns every scene he’s in into a masterclass in controlled evil. His performance ensures that Roper isn’t just a villain to be defeated, but one to never be forgotten, just as Jonathan Pine has never — and will never — forget him.

Camilla Morrone was so wonderful as Roxana, a character who consistently proves she is no damsel in distress. She navigates her own path with intelligence and agency, making choices that serve her survival and desires rather than simply reacting to the men around her. Morrone gives Roxana complexity in a way that looks effortless, shifting the character between anger, grief, and quiet moments of vulnerability. Her performance captures a character who is morally ambiguous yet very real, and she emerges as one of the season’s most compelling presences.

Curtain call.

That said, the finale, and the story as a whole, isn’t without frustrations. Roper’s omniscience occasionally strains plausibility as his off-screen strategic looks into the future sometimes functions more as narrative inevitability than an earned advantage. Meanwhile, Teddy’s arc, while emotionally devastating, feels unresolved in ways that leave lingering questions rather than catharsis. Perhaps that incompleteness is intentional, but it doesn’t make the absence sting less.

The relationship between Pine and Teddy — sensually charged, intimate, and never fully consummated — likewise remains suspended in implication. The ambiguity fits the tone just fine, but it leaves a haunting sense of lost possibility that stays long after the credits roll. To sort-of-quote the Internet’s newest obsession, Heated Rivalry: “They didn’t even kiss.” 

Final thoughts.

With Season 3 confirmed, the path forward promises fallout, vengeance, and unfinished business. Roxana’s survival highlights her strength, yet raises new uncertainties. Burr’s death reshapes the power structures at play yet again. And Pine — battered and grieving — enters Season 3 poised for a reckoning that may consume whatever remains of him.

Roper’s murder of his own son solidifies his monstrous nature beyond debate. The question now isn’t whether he can be stopped, but what stopping him will cost. Until then, I’ll live in the six-minute compilation of happy moments from Season 2 and pretend it all worked out as Pine planned. It has been a brutal ride.

The entirety of The Night Manager Season 2 is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and Amazon Prime Video.

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Images courtesy of Prime Video.