What Happened in ‘Jack Ryan’ Season 2? Get Briefed Before the Third Season
Ryanverse fans, rejoice. The Prime Video action thriller Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, which stars John Krasinski as the titular CIA operative, is finally back for a third season, more than three years after Season 2 started streaming. Even Jack would have forgotten some plot details in a hiatus that long, so we’re here to offer a refresher.
As Season 2 starts, Jack has his eye on Venezuela, where Gloria Bonalde (Cristina Umaña) is running for president against incumbent Nicolás Reyes (Jordi Mollà). Jack suspects Russia is shipping weapons to Venezuela, but when he heads there on a diplomatic mission, Reyes denies the surreptitious dealings. And while he’s there, Jack reconnects with his old boss Jim Greer (Wendell Pierce), who has also been tracking the shipping containers, and spends a night with a woman, later revealed to be Harriet Baumann (Noomi Rapace), an agent with Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) intelligence service. who bugs his room while he sleeps. And the series premiere ends with Jack narrowly escaping an attack that kills Senator Jim Moreno (Benito Martinez), with Jack suspecting that Reyes is responsible for the bloodshed.
Jack vows to find out who killed the senator, and he gets an assist from Harriet in exchange for his help finding Max Schenkel (Tom Wlaschiha), a former associate she’s tracking — who, Jack later learns, turns out to be the same guy who took out Moreno. Harriet gives Jack a recording of Miguel Ubarri (Francisco Denis), Reyes’ chief advisor, talking about Bonalde’s likelihood of winning the presidential election. Jack plots to use the recording to turn Ubarri against Reyes. But then Jack is ambushed by Max again, and he only escapes the assassination attempt by stabbing Max in the eye. Jim tries to chase Max, but he’s enfeebled by the heart condition he has been keeping from Jack. And Jack confronts Harriet about whether Max, the man she’s been tracking, is the murderer who’s been taunting him.
Later, after Jack singlehandedly investigates the arms shipments in the middle of the Venezuelan jungle and nearly gets himself killed, CIA station chief Mike November (Michael Kelly) tries to send him back home to the U.S. But Jack follows a clue about the shipping containers’ origin and heads to London instead. That’s where he has another run-in with Harriet, who warns him that Max is also in London. She also says that Max took the fall for her for mistakes she made while working for Germany’s Kommando Spezialkräfte. After that debacle, she and Max both started working for the BND, but now Max is making a living as an assassin.
Back in Venezuela, Bonalde reluctantly accepts the Americans’ help, after one of her children is threatened and after Jim tells her that her husband’s disappearance might be linked to his involvement in mining projects in the jungle. Jim later lets Mike know that the disappearance of Bonalde’s husband and the murder of Senator Moreno might have to do with mining of tantalum, a chemical known as “blue gold.” Mike later presses Ubarri about that connection, offering protection for Ubarri’s family in exchange for information.
Meanwhile, Jack comes face to face with Max in London, and Max tells him that Reyes wasn’t his only employer. But Harriet sneaks up behind Max and kills him… and Max’s daughter, Anabelle (Áine Rose Daly), who arrives at the scene just afterward, thinks it’s Jack who offed her father.
Jack returns to Venezuela, but Reyes’ men capture him and Jim and bring them to a meeting with the president, who claims to have captured Moreno’s killers. But Jack tells him it was Max who killed Moreno. And as anti-American protests threaten the U.S. Embassy, Jack, Jim, and Mike — who’s none too happy to see Jack back in the country — head to a safehouse. Jack secretly asks a driver to take Jim to the airport, worried about his colleague’s health, but the driver instead takes Jim to Mateo Bastos (Eduar Salas), Reyes’ head of security. Bastos tortures Jim for intel, but Jim says nothing.
So Jim is kept captive at a prison camp, where he finds Bonalde’s husband. Reyes wants the prisoners at the camp killed, but Ubarri disagrees. Reyes soon silences Ubarri, slitting his throat. Jack and his team find the prison camp, but they find out Jim has been relocated.
As Reyes heads to an ill-gotten victory in the presidential election, Jack takes video of the prison camp and sends the footage to news agencies.
While protestors storm the presidential palace, Jack and Mike head to the residence, too, via helicopter. They find Jim in a prison cell. But Jack goes rogue again and goes on the hunt for Reyes, with Mike trying to stop him before he causes a diplomatic crisis. Jack finds Reyes and holds him at gunpoint, but Mike persuades him to let the man live, and the two of them flee the scene with Mike in tow. And with the election rigging exposed, Bonalde wins by a landslide, and she even gets to reunite with her husband.
And back in the U.S., Jack confronts the man he figured out co-owns the shell companies behind the mining projects: Senator Mitchell Chapin (Michael O’Neill), his current boss. Chapin, who initially opposed Jack’s Venezuela investigation, claims he didn’t want China monopolizing tantalum, but Jack has come to understand that he hired Max to kill Jack to stop him from uncovering his involvement in the mining operations. Chapin didn’t know that Reyes had hired Max to kill Moreno, too, so Chapin worked with Jack to take Reyes down. Jack leaves as the FBI shows up to arrest the senator.
Now Season 3 is upon us, with Krasinki, Pierce, and Kelly back to play Jack, Jim, and Mike, and Nina Hoss and Betty Gabriel joining the cast to play Czech President Alena Kovac and CIA Rome Station Chief Elizabeth Wright, respectively. “Crisscrossing Europe as he is hunted by former allies and new enemies alike, Jack races against the clock to stop the cascade of destabilizing conflicts from leading to global catastrophe,” Prime Video teases in a synopsis.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Season 3 Premiere, Wednesday, December 21, Prime Video
