‘Jack Ryan’ Recap: ‘End of Honor’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

When it comes to storytelling, the villain’s backstory is extremely important to the overall plot, simply because it’s important to understand what drove this particular person to perform their twisted deeds and uncovering the secret to their special brand of evil makes reading or watching a particular tale all the more fulfilling. Yet oddly enough, the spy drama is the only place where a storyteller can get away without offering any of that up, simply because those stories are grounded in a structure where the adventure and the experience matter over anything else, allowing for the bad guy or gal to be evil without ever having to explain what made them turn their back on mankind.
 
But thankfully, as Jack Ryan continues to reinvent the genre in new and exciting ways, it’s clearly looking to put an end to the two dimensional villain by adding depth and understanding to their lives as well and in the wake of the sobering and terrifying attack on Paris in the last episode, the next tale in this chapter, ‘End of Honor’, focused upon what drove Mousa bin Suleiman to murder so many people without giving it a second thought and well, I have to admit that I am fascinated as to how our villain is driven by something more than a desire to create the world’s largest and greatest Islamic State, since the man is in fact…an outcast who wants to be admired by others and feel as though he belongs to something greater and this episode provided us with a grand exploration when it comes to the formative moments that pushed him to take that need for acceptance, this far.
 
As it turns out, the fire in his heart was stoked during his time in Paris, because as a young man growing up in the city of lights, he only found darkness and disdain coming his way. Because no matter how hard he tried to clean up his image as a Muslim refugee, and offer good answers and ideas for job interviews that would have given him and his brother stability, he was rejected and dismissed at every turn and to compound matters further, a run in with the police, where he took the fall for his brother is what landed him in prison and it was there that he was radicalized. For it was behind bars that he discovered the wonder of religion and found his true north since he suddenly felt like he belonged to something greater and the rest as they say is history and it was fascinating to see his origin story play out and come to learn just how much Mousa loves his brother.
 
That last part mattered in this tale, because Mousa wasn’t aware of the fact that his brother was dead and that was an angle that a rattled Jack and Jim were planning to use against him in order to bring him and his cohorts to justice for the Paris attack. But alas, their plan to contact Mousa through the game he and his brother used to communicate didn’t quite go as smoothly as planned since Mousa was able to expose Jack during their chat. But in doing so, Jack was able to outright confirm that a mystery woman in a refugee camp in Turkey, who was offering information on Mousa was Hanin after all, and now it would seem that both Mousa and Jack are racing against time to find Hanin in order to get what they want respectively and it should be interesting to see who gets to her first. 
​
Either way, I really dug the fact that this episode dove deep into Mousa bin Suleiman’s psyche and past. It was simply fascinating to learn what makes this man tick, but truth be told, this exploration of said psyche also makes Mousa a far more terrifying villain when all is said and done. Because in many ways, this man truly has nothing to lose now, and men like him, the kind who have no attachments to a world that’s rejected them, will stop at nothing to create the utopia that suits their psychological needs and that adds a sense of urgency to Jack and Jim’s hunt for Hanin because if they take too long in finding her, they buy Mousa more time to prepare a more devastating and vengeful attack. Until next time… 

---