This Red Eye ending explained feature contains spoilers... We've travelled from Beijing to London and back again, but at last we're finally nearing the end of this tense journey.
It all started around 24 hours before this finale begins, with Dr Matthew Nolan stumbling out of a Beijing club and fleeing back to Britain, only to be arrested at Heathrow and accused of killing Shen Zhao, the daughter of a Chinese General.
He claimed there was no one in his car when he crashed, so who killed her and how did she get into the wreckage? More importantly, why was she there at all? We now know she implanted a nano-SIM in Matthew's body when she stabbed him in that Beijing club, but what information does it contain?
Moreover, who is behind the death of Matthew's colleagues? At first we assumed it was the Chinese, then it looked like it might be the British, although after the final scene of the fifth episode, it seems like CIA operative Mike Maxwell could be behind it all.
We know a CIA assassin named Jones killed Sir George Chapman, but was that because the MI6 operative was working with the Chinese? Plus who were Air Marshall Zhang and the sinister plane killer working for? Everything is explained below...
Red Eye ending explained: Who killed Shen Zhao?
We open in Beijing on the night of Shen Zhao’s death, with Mike and his CIA colleagues watching on as she and Matthew share a drink in the club. We see Shen Zhao stab her companion and we now know she was planting the SIM on him at the same time.
Matthew flees, but Mike Maxwell and Jones confront Shen Zhao outside the club. “All we want is what the programmer gave you,” says Mike.
Shen says she’s giving the SIM to MI6, because if her government finds out what the Americans have done, it will be seen as an act of war. “They need to know it was you and not us!” she says.
When Maxwell and Jones discover Shen doesn’t have what they’re looking for, they kill her and leave the body in Nolan’s crashed car. They pay off the police to allow this, which might explain how the Chinese authorities were fooled. Although we'd say that police officer was taking one hell of a risk, because he's essentially betraying his country.
Maxwell goes looking for the injured doctor at his hotel and when he finds him gone, says he wants him stopped at Heathrow. Yet the CIA won't have to reveal their hand, as the Chinese will ask for Nolan's detention on their behalf, after a General's daughter was found in his car.
At Dunsfold Airbase, John Tennant awaits the return of Flight 357. However Hana and Matthew are intercepted by Jess and Delaney! The MI5 Director doesn't know who she can trust at Thames House and decided to take them to the US embassy, which isn't such a great plan.
While all this is going on, Tennant and Ruth identify Zhao and the plane killer as two “freelancers with no affiliations”. However it looks like both of them are being paid indirectly by the CIA, so it seems like the Americans are the villains of the piece.
Maxwell then takes Delaney aside and asks for the nano-SIM, yet his request makes the Director General suspicious... because she never mentioned that what they found was a SIM card.
Maxwell then instructs his colleague to drug Hana, Matthew and Jess and take the SIM, yet before they can tuck into their sedative-laced coffee, Matthew recognises Maxwell’s CIA colleague, Cohen. She was the person who spooked Shen Zhao in Beijing on the night she died! “I wouldn’t drink that,” says Matthew. “I don’t feel safe here.”
The CIA clearly wants the SIM, but it seems they’ll go to great lengths to disguise that. “Look what they’ve already done to throw blame on China or me!” says Hana.
With Delaney's help, the trio then take the two CIA operatives by surprise and escape, however Maxwell stops Delaney as she tries to leave the Embassy. She claims she's leaving because she doesn’t want to implicate the US, but before long the facade starts to fall.
It seems the CIA wanted to stop the information on the SIM reaching MI6 at all costs, but what’s on that SIM card and why don't they want the British security services to see it?
Delaney is furious that Mike has let innocent people die, to which he replies. “You don’t want Chinese power plants in England any more than I do. I just had the balls to do something about it.” Yet after fooling Maxwell with another SIM, they're allowed to leave.
What was on the SIM card?
Once they’re clear of the US Embassy, Delaney sends Thames House the files on the Nano-SIM. The first file - labelled ‘original’ - contains hacker code that’s designed to lie dormant in an operating system, before allowing a third party to take complete control of that system. It was developed in America by an MIT grad in 2022.
The second one - labelled CAE - looks identical, yet it’s been altered to hide within the control system of a nuclear reactor. “You’re telling me with this hack, someone could take remote control of a reactor and cause a catastrophic meltdown,” surmises Delaney adroitly.
It seems these hacks were both created in the States, but the second file was altered to make it look like it was written by the Chinese. “Mike was setting the Chinese up!” says Delaney. It’s safe to say, they’re not going away to Paris.
Yet rather than cause a nuclear catastrophe, Delaney believes Mike’s intention was for MI6 to find the code and blame China, thus ending the British-Chinese partnership. “That’s why Shen Zhao gave us both files,” says Delaney.
Basically Shen wanted MI6 to see the original hack and the one that was supposed to look Chinese. Shen knew that if the Chinese saw the files, they would likely consider it an act of war from America and she wanted to prevent that.
What happened to Mike Maxwell?
Delaney explains that Mike will be sent home and his career will be over, but that’s not enough for Matthew and Hana. After all, the rogue CIA agent had Shen Zhao killed, before murdering Sir George Chapman and the other British doctors. So Delaney agrees to try and get them some sort of justice.
When Delaney lets them out of the car in central London, Mike soon catches up with them. He says he killed Matthew’s colleagues on the plane because he couldn’t risk the SIM falling into Chinese hands. However when Delaney turns up, Mike shoots at Hana and Matthew jumps in front of her to take the bullet.
But Mike doesn't realised he's been lured into a trap in the gardens of the Chinese Embassy and Minister Tang and a host of Chinese soldiers soon turn up to arrest him. Presumably Mike could well be extradited to China to face some pretty serious charges and we doubt the British authorities will do much to save him.
Delaney decides not to share the contents of the SIM with Minister Tang, telling him it was destroyed at the US Embassy, which is wise and a fine tribute to Shen Zhao who died trying to prevent China and the US going to war.
Luckily Matthew pulls through after surgery and Delaney sits down to explain to Jess that while she can’t write the story about the CIA, she can write the one about Operation Blindside, which is still pretty good and won’t lead to World War III.
And finally, Hana reveals that Delaney shared her mother’s file, so she and her father will finally know the truth of what happened to her...
