Netflix’s Treason season 1, episode 2 recap: The secret files of MI6

As the last episode of Treason finished up, Adam’s daughter was being kidnapped, and Adam was threatening Kara over the phone, saying that whatever was going on was between the two of them didn’t involve his family.

Treason season 1 episode 2 recap: Kara claims to be innocent…

As the second episode starts, Kara defends herself against Adam’s accusations, saying that she isn’t the one responsible for his daughter’s kidnapping. We’re kept in the dark about a lot of things, just like the first episode, but we the viewers, are given just enough to suggest that she may in fact be telling the truth about this.

Regardless, Adam doesn’t believe her and uses his MI6 resources to track her down and bring her in. Kara manages to avoid Adam’s agents, leaving him without another move to play.

Meanwhile Adam’s wife, Maddy, is understandably upset about the whole kidnapped daughter thing, and not too excited about Adam keeping information from her. Even if it is part of his job.

She uses the pin that Dede gave her in the last episode to record a phone conversation between Adam and Kara. (There was a pen that Maddy got that worked as a recording device.)

(It wasn’t mentioned in the last recap because there was so much to cover, and it wasn’t that important. But now it’s super important for this episode.)

After telling Dede about the recording, she comes clean about her reasons for being in town. It turns out that she isn’t on vacation, but instead is there on assignment for the CIA.

It seems that the CIA is taking a special interest in Adam, given how his suspiciously meteoric rise through the ranks of MI6 have resulted in him being the youngest person in control of the organization ever. They suspect that he may be compromised and are looking for evidence to prove it.

Maddy obviously doesn’t want to believe that her husband would be a traitor, but she is shaken by the reveal. Especially when she snoops around the house and finds a picture of Adam with a woman (Kara) that he’s never mentioned before.

Kara, meanwhile, goes about trying to find Adam’s daughter. She reaches out to an old contact for resources.

The old contact is a Russian businessman who is currently backing a challenger named Robert Kirby for the Prime Minister office. He tells Kara that there is secret information that could destroy the current Prime Minister’s reputation and he wants access to that information.

Kara believes that if she can get Adam’s daughter back to him, then he can get her the secret information. Kara contacts Adam saying that she has located his daughter.

The two of them set out to retrieve her, but in the chase that ensues, Kara double-crosses Adam. She rescues his daughter only to kidnap her herself and gets away, leaving Adam behind.

Adam is understandably upset with this turn of events, but Kara promises that she will return his daughter in exchange for the secret blackmail information on the Prime Minister. Adam tells her that MI6 has no secret information on the Prime Minister and that as far as he knows she’s clean.

However, as he looks at the secret blackmail file leftover from Sir Martin Angelis, the previous head of MI6, he realizes that there might be more information that exists that MI6 may not officially have.

Treason season 1 episode 2 recap: The secret files of MI6…

He heads to Sir Martin’s house and chats with his wife, saying that he believes there are additional secret files that were kept in the house, not in the office. She tries to brush his suggestion aside, but he insists, and she relents.

She leads him to a secret room in the house, complete with filing cabinets filled with potentially damning information on pretty much every person in the British government. Adam finds the file on the Prime Minister, and just like Kara said, there is information that would prove useful.

Before Adam leaves, he looks up his own name in the blackmail files, and sure enough, there’s one on him as well. Adam sets up a time to exchange the information with Kara and tries to get his wife to cover for him at home, so that he can meet with her in secret.

Instead, Maddy insists on coming along for the exchange. Adam agrees, but tells Maddy to wait in the car for the actual exchange.

She says she will, but after he leaves she sneaks out of the car and follows after him. Maddy is too far away to hear the conversation between Kara and Adam, but she does see (and more importantly, takes a picture of) the exchange of the file with the incriminating information.

After Kara has possession of the file, she tells Adam where to find his daughter. Her information turns out to be true and the family is reunited.

Afterwards, Adam begins to assess the consequences and possible fallout of his actions. Given that Kara is a former Russian agent (and possibly still a Russian agent given that he doesn’t know what to trust), giving her the file could very possibly have been considered an act of treason.

It’s also possible that his wife could be in trouble as well, given her limited involvement in what he has done. Now, Adam’s best course of action is to try and root out Kara and whatever she is doing in hopes that he will be able to use the information to bargain for immunity for him and his family.

Treason season 1 episode 2 recap: A mixture of truth and lies…

Hey “treason,” that’s the name of the show. By the end of this episode, it feels like we’ve got a clear picture of what the stakes are, and where the show is headed.

We’ve even got the title mentioned in the text of the show to really drive home that this is exactly what this show is going to be about. And yet, as much as it feels like we’ve been given all the information that we need, it still feels like what we really know might be something close to nothing.

We have hints of motivations for each of our main characters, but so much of what they want or why they want it, is still shrouded in mystery or half-truths. We know that Kara is giving Adam, (and us) a mixture of truth and lies.

We know that Adam is lying to his wife about what exactly is going on, though it feels like we’re being kept deliberately in the dark as to how much of that lying is a part of the job and how much of it is personal information that he is trying to keep secret. We know that Dede was lying to Maddy as well.

While she’s come clean about her reasons for being in the country, it still feels like there is more information that she isn’t saying yet. The scene in this episode featuring all of the secret files, feels like a perfect visual metaphor for where we are at the end of the episode.

In that moment, Adam is surrounded by literally hundreds, if not thousands, of secrets. Some government related, most of them likely personal.

And he has to leave the room with the vast majority of that information left untouched. We know that it’s there.

We can see evidence of it’s existence, but we don’t know what it is. And because of the way things are structured, we can’t know.

At least not right now. It’s a compelling moment, at the end of the episode, when Adam is talking about treason for the first time.

The storyline that it feels like the show is setting up in that moment, is an intriguing one that would be worth another three episodes to follow. But because of how everything has been laid out up to that point, it feels like a lot more is being promised.

And we can only wait to see if those promises are delivered on.

What did you think of Treason season 1 episode 2? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

You can watch Treason season 1 on Netflix.