[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for FBI: Most Wanted Season 6 Episode 14 “100%.”]
FBI: Most Wanted‘s first episode to air after news of its cancellation with its current sixth season is a memorable one — and the show’s 100th! — putting one of the Fugitive Task Force’s own in the middle of a hostage situation and teasing the possibility of a major loss.
Hana (Keisha Castle-Hughes) accompanies Ethan (Michael Raymond-James), who promises he’s done with oxycodone, to the VA, and he’s filling out the paperwork for rehab when two vets take them and three other hostages. Danny wants Carver’s disability rating upped to 100 percent (from 50); he took two bullets to the spine and is now a paraplegic. (“You basically signed a blank check with your body,” she tells him. “This is the only way to make them hear us.”) Hana quickly texts the rest of the team about the situation (before her phone, with the others, is crushed), and soon, Barnes (Roxy Sternberg), Nina (Shantel VanSanten), and Ray (Edwin Hodge) are on site. (Remy’s out of the country.)
During the initial chaos, Danny shoots a security guard (thinking he had a gun, not a taser), and once she answers the negotiator’s call, asks if they can get him out. Ray poses as one of the medics who goes in to get him, and he hides a phone for Hana. Ethan provides the distraction she needs to get her hands on it, and the reason he’s there comes up in the process. He says he promised Hana he was done with the pills. Are they together? “Not at the moment, no,” Hana says.
Barnes takes over negotiating when Danny wants to talk to someone else and convinces her to let a hostage go in exchange for pizzas, to build trust. But they’re not getting anywhere with the VA on getting Carver’s disability rating changed: There’s no record of his paperwork, the committee refuses to meet because they don’t negotiate with terrorists, and even Isobel isn’t getting anywhere. S.W.A.T. then breaches — Hana tries to warn them of IEDs on the stairwell door but is too late. The hostages are then moved into a physical therapy room, and Hana tells Ethan to talk to Danny since they have a lot in common.
Ethan remarks that he thought he was the only one who got weird about being thanked for his service, as she did when the janitor Danny let go earlier when they got the pizzas did just that. Danny shares that Carver was hurt saving her after her truck rolled over an IED. She blames herself for him being in a wheelchair, but Ethan argues that if their roles were reversed, would she want Carver blaming himself?
Hana’s able to alert the team to their location using a number on an outlet, while Carver takes Ethan to the restroom when he’s vomiting from the withdrawal. There, Carver offers him his oxy, but Ethan turns him down. “I made a promise,” he insists. But then Danny and Carver see the news reporting that one of the hostages is an FBI agent. Danny singles out the man she thinks it is — ruling out Hana as “little miss wallflower” — and threatens to kill him, then everyone else. That’s when Hana speaks up and identifies herself as FBI.
Danny then video calls Barnes and warns her that she has 30 minutes to get Carver’s rating raised or she’ll shoot Hana. SWAT and snipers then move into place. Carver argues he didn’t drag Danny out of the truck for this, but she insists they owe him and it’s all for him. He doesn’t think it’s about him but rather that she needs it.
Danny ducks down to pick up the lid of a tobacco can at the exact moment the snipers fire, and so only Carver is killed. She moves the hostages to the chapel, and Ethan insists Hana give him the phone, worried what would happen if Danny finds it on her. He tries to text the team to alert them of their location, but his hands are too shaky from withdrawal. And so when Danny aims her gun at Hana, Ethan calls Barnes to tell her where they are and that there are no bombs — and tells Danny he is the agent and Hana was covering for him. “There’s no more cleaning up my messes,” he says. He only requests Danny not shoot him in front of Hana. Danny takes him out into the hall, and Hana watches from the doorway.
Ethan again tries to connect with Danny after she makes him get on his knees and puts his gun to her head. He talks to her about there being a way back, especially if there are people who care and are willing to lay it all down for them. He knows that it feels like she’s falling and shooting him will bring back a semblance of control, but it won’t. He knows that she wants to be heard and seen and feel like she matters, and she does.
But Danny’s not going to shoot him. Rather, she warns him to stand back. But Hana refuses to let her die by suicide by cop, tells her not to abandon her family and use her voice to help other vets who fall through the cracks, and stands in front of her when SWAT and the team burst in. Danny is taken into custody, alive. Both emotional, Hana and Ethan hold each other, and he tells her he loves her. “I know,” she says.
This isn’t the typical Most Wanted episode, but it is one of the most powerful. We see the team doing what they do best, even split up and not chasing a fugitive on the run. And the 100th episode puts the two cast members still around from the very beginning of the series — Castle-Hughes and Sternberg — at the center of the story. Putting Hana and Ethan at the center of the conflict and danger allows for the stakes to be high both for the team outside and for Hana. It feels like a real possibility that Ethan could be killed — can’t you imagine Hana unable to do anything and crying as a gunshot rings out? — and what especially works is that their relationship doesn’t feel suddenly fixed at the end. The same problems still exist, but it does feel like they have a chance at a future together.
What did you think of the show’s 100th episode? Let us know in the comments section below.
FBI: Most Wanted, Tuesdays, 10/9c, CBS
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