‘Treason’ follows the sudden turn that Adam’s life takes when he assumes the position of the chief of MI6. With the ghosts of his past haunting him, Adam tries to keep his family safe. The series is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Adam Lawrence is the deputy to the chief of MI6, Martin Angelis. When Martin meets the President of the Supreme Court to blackmail him, he gets poisoned by a woman.
With Martin out of commission, Adam takes the position of the chief. When he goes to visit Martin in the hospital, he finds a stack of books there. He deciphers a secret code using the titles of the books and goes to the mentioned location.
There, he meets Kara, his ex-lover. She was an SVR agent, but she was thrown out of the agency because she gave a valuable piece of information to Adam years ago.
He realizes that she is the one who poisoned Martin. She had been secretly feeding him intel over the years that had helped him secure his current position in the MI6. She needed him to be the chief to get her the information she requires.
Adam’s wife, Maddy, is visited by an old American friend, Dede, who served with her in Afghanistan. Maddy married Adam after the death of his first wife, Sián, and his two children consider Maddy to be their mother.
Kara asks Adam for the MI6 files on Baku in exchange for information about an attack on a ferry. Adam makes a deal with her and stops the attack. However, the MI6 official files do not contain the name of the agent who killed Kara’s men in Baku.
Maddy gets suspicious about Adam’s secretive deal and shares her concerns with Dede. Unbeknownst to Maddy, Dede is the agent sent by the CIA to target Adam. Dede gives her a listening drive that would help her find out what Adam is up to.
Adam’s daughter, Ella, gets kidnapped, and he suspects Kara, who denies having a hand in it. Adam targets Kara, who escapes but loses her money and hardware in the process.
To get help, she approaches Anton Meliknov, a powerful man who is now funding Robert Kirby’s campaign to be the prime minister.
Meliknov agrees to help her, but in exchange, he wants intel on Audrey Gratz, the current foreign secretary and the other candidate for the post of prime minister.
Kara finds Ella before Adam and takes her. She asks Adam to get her the intel on Gratz as ransom.
Maddy uses the listening device to overhear Adam’s conversation with Kara. She informs Dede about the same, who in turn reveals that she is here on an assignment to find Adam’s asset.
The CIA believes that Adam has been compromised and has been working for Russia as a spy. Although Maddy does not believe this, she still shares the recording with Dede when she promises that she would help them find Ella.
Maddy goes through Adam’s personal belongings and finds a picture of him with Kara. She hands over the picture to Dede.
Meanwhile, Adam gets an unofficial file on Gratz from Martin’s house. He discovers that Martin keeps a file of compromising information on every person, including Adam, to use the information against them when needed.
Adam rescues Ella by giving the file to Kara. He decides to resign from his position as he has committed treason, but he is advised by Kit, Sián’s best friend, to first find Kara and use her to get immunity from prosecution.
Meliknov sends Kara to blackmail Gratz. They ask her to pull out of the race or they would leak to the press the fact that she used a government plane to fly in a palliative care doctor for her mother.
Kara discovers Meliknov’s plan. His money is frozen in Russia, where he is no longer welcomed. He plans to make Kirby the prime minister and use him as a puppet of the Kremlin, which would get him entry into Russia again.
Maddy plants a tracking device in Adam’s wallet when he goes to meet Kara to help the CIA follow him. She finds out too late that it was the CIA that kidnapped Ella, and they were using her all along to get evidence against Adam.
Adam sees Maddy with Dede and takes his children with him to Martin’s house before she could return. He intends to help Kara get a file on Baku from Martin’s files.
However, Martin gets released from the hospital and tells Adam that he has moved his files because he suspects that Adam is a double agent who has been working for the SVR.
The SVR used an MI6 agent, codenamed Dorian, in Baku to kill Kara’s men, which caused an uprising. The Russians then took control of the city, while Adam saved the embassy and became a hero. Martin believes Adam is Dorian.
A furious Adam, unable to convince him, takes his children to an old property of Sian’s. Adam tries to prove his innocence, but he gets thrown out of the MI6.
Maddy follows them there. She tells him everything, and he tells her that in Baku, Kara risked her life and career to help him, but he did not save her, even though she was his lover. He is helping her now to assuage his guilt.
Kara finds out that Martin has ordered Adam and Meliknov’s death, which he would then blame on her. Meliknov gets killed, but Kara reaches Adam in time and saves him with Maddy’s help.
However, killing the agent who was sent to murder Adam turns them into fugitives. They seek refuge at Kit’s house, where they plan their next move.
Treason ending explained in detail:
Why does Maddy make a deal with Gratz?
The compromising information on Gratz that Kara gave Meliknov with Adam’s help gets leaked to the press, severely impacting her chances of winning the elections.
Maddy reaches out to her and tells her everything that is going on. She informs her that Martin will wait until Kirby has won the elections and then expose the Russian plot, which would strengthen his own position in the MI6.
She then offers Gratz a deal. Adam would find a way to get Martin’s files, which would help her expose the Russian plot before the elections. In return, she wants Gratz to promise Adam immunity from prosecution.
Gratz is reluctant to accept this deal, but Maddy convinces her that this is the only way she can prevent herself from losing everything she has worked for and earned over the years.
Does Adam get the files?
Adam persuades a coworker, Malik, to help him take down Martin, as it would help Malik become the next chief of MI6. Malik agrees and gives him the location of the files.
Martin, on the other hand, asks Dede to execute Kara and Adam. He promises her that he would ensure she does not get into trouble for killing on foreign soil.
He tells her that he would give her the proof that Adam was working with Kara, making her a hero at the CIA. Dede agrees to his terms.
Martin has digitalized his files, which Kara and Adam manage to steal. Maddy also joins them. While they are escaping, the CIA intervenes.
Dede threatens Adam at gunpoint to hand over the files to her. He tries to convince her that he is not the traitor; it is someone else who is still working at the MI6, and he intends to find that person.
Dede does not believe him. When Maddy does not come out with the files, Dede kills Adam.
Does Maddy clear Adam’s name?
With Adam dead, Maddy does not need immunity for him, but she has to prove his innocence. She contacts Gratz to let her know she has the files.
However, Gratz backs out because Martin has called a Commons Intelligence Committee meeting to display evidence against Adam, which would also bring out the evidence linking Kirby to the Russians.
Gratz decides to take a step back now that she does not need Maddy’s help to defeat her opponent. She plans to fire Martin once she wins the elections.
Maddy, whose whole family is in danger, tells her that Martin would find another way to control Gratz.
Kara and Maddy take matters into their own hands. Maddy goes to the meeting herself with the files.
At the meeting, Martin convinces everyone that Adam was a traitor, but seeing Maddy there with the files, Gratz speaks against him.
She shows the committee the evidence that Martin has been keeping files to blackmail people in power for his personal benefit, whereas Adam gave his life to secure these files, which proves his innocence.
Who is the traitor?
Kara has spent years finding Dorian, the MI6 traitor, who killed her men because she wants to get justice for their families.
Kara reaches out to her SVR contact and asks her to arrange a safe passage home for her. She deliberately tells them that Maddy has Martin’s files and gives them information about the car she is using in order to use her as bait to draw out Dorian.
When Maddy goes to the meeting, she meets Patrick, Adam’s trusted coworker. Patrick tells her that Adam asked him to collect the files from her last night, but Maddy catches his lie.
She hits him and enters the meeting, but Kara, who has been on the phone with her, figures out Dorian’s identity. Patrick is the traitor who has been working with the SVR. She poisons Patrick and kills him.
What happens to Maddy and Kara?
Maddy calls Dede and tells her that someday in the future, she will destroy her career, for which she killed her innocent husband. She also confronts Martin about killing a loyal deputy and his failure to catch the real traitor.
As Kara’s search for Dorian comes to an end, she decides to go back home to Russia. She encourages an anxious Maddy, telling her that she just needs to be there for her children.
Maddy embraces her and bids her goodbye before going to her children, who now have no one except her.
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