‘The Night Manager’ Boss Explains Season 2 Finale Deaths & What’s Next

[Warning: The article below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Night Manager Season 2 Episode 6.]

The Night Manager‘s second season has come to a close, but unlike the last season’s finale, Season 2 closed with major set-up for the already greenlit third season, leaving plenty of loose threads for the story of Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) and his nemesis Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) to pick up.

While one could say it was a bit of a bloodbath, our hero and villain managed to make it out alive (mostly), but shocking revelations will surely ignite an even greater passion in Pine to defeat Roper once and for all. As viewers saw in the finale, Pine had essentially swayed Roper’s illegitimate son, Teddy (Diego Calva), towards his side, but their plan fell apart in the eleventh hour when it was revealed that Roper was just a few steps ahead of their scheme to make him look bad in front of his next buyers, rendering him fundless to pay back his debts abroad.

Tipped off about Pine and Teddy’s potential collaboration by Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone), Roper makes his own arrangements for the future and confronts his son. After Pine and Teddy were led to believe arms would be delivered to a specific spot, Pine directed his associate, Sally Price-Jones (Hayley Squires), to meet the cargo with reporters, only to find a single rose in the container they received.

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The trick left Pine powerless as he looked to Teddy to do what he believed was right regarding Roper. Unfortunately, for Teddy, that decision-making wasn’t quick enough, and Roper shot his son, leaving Pine horrified. Ultimately, the last viewers see of Pine for the season is him being rushed away in a car, and then traipsing through the jungle of Colombia while bleeding out. But there is more drama to be had as Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) confronted Mayra Cavendish (Indira Varma) about her association with Roper and their crooked operation within the security service.

The confrontation ultimately took a deadly turn as the episode concludes with Angela back home in France, where she hears a noise outside and goes to investigate, only to end up shot for her young daughter to discover. But the most shocking part of the finale has to be Roper’s return to England, where he greets his son Danny (Noah Jupe) for the first time in years.

In a season full of twists and turns, we cannot wait to see what’s next for Pine (if he survives) and Roper. Thankfully, we caught up with Georgi Banks-Davies, executive producer and director of the series, who is answering all of our burning questions below.

Season 2 concludes with Roper’s essential triumph over Pine, which is the opposite of how Season 1 ended. What went into constructing that finale, which sets up Season 3? 

Georgi Banks-Davies: The third season is the battle of the giants, we’re at one all, and we knew where the story was going, but I think throughout we tried to keep within Pine and the mission and the emotions of him within his perspective entirely. So in a way, we didn’t think about [the ending] until we got there, and we were very lucky in that we scheduled and structured in a way that the finale was shot almost right at the end of our shoot. So it meant the standoff and particularly the last scenes, emotionally for Tom Hiddleston playing Pine, and also for Hugh Laurie, and Diego Calva, they don’t have to even think about the ends.

They’re only striving within the moment towards the mission that each of them has. They’re not playing it with any idea of what’s to come. And then of course, it feels like a big surprise, and I think it feels like a big surprise because it’s a big surprise for the characters. It’s the ultimate double cross on Roper’s terms, and then creates the demise of so many characters that we’ve fallen in love with throughout the series. It’s like a house of cards. It’s so tragic. It’s not an enjoyable thing to kind of direct in a way; it’s such a tragedy.

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Angela’s loss is devastating, and Pine doesn’t even know that’s happened yet. How might that impact him moving forward into Season 3?

Yeah, Pine has no idea yet where we leave him, and we also don’t know how we leave him… He looks like a man who’s very much on the edge of his own life, so it’s hard to know what his future’s going to hold as well. But he is a character so far removed from what he would potentially find out from Basil in Episode 5, all the way through to Burr, and all the consequences of the things that are happening beyond him and back in London. Particularly with Burr, he articulates it’s a very personal relationship, and Tom and I would often talk about how Burr is essentially the surrogate mother in a show which is about fathers and sons, it’s also about mothers and sons and fathers and daughters. It’s about those hereditary lines, and she represents a maternal figure to him. It’s somebody that he could entirely trust. So I think it’s going to be very interesting to see what the consequences of that are if he survives. I mean, I don’t know if he’s going to survive in Season 3.

I think that death will hit so hard, and it will be so inciting for whatever ultimately is revenge, because now, it’s personal. It’s about taking, and in a sense, both of our main protagonists have; there’s some family that’s gone. So for Roper, he’s taken the life of one of his sons. For him, that is a sacrifice. He is the character who will see it as a necessary sacrifice. I think he feels like it’s a tragedy to him. He doesn’t want to do it, but that’s the way he deals with that situation, betrayal, and that is exactly the same thing, really, [between] Pine and Burr in that you’ve got this sense of betrayal that started there. I think the audience wants to really believe that there’ll be a route to forgiveness there because they really need each other, and the tragedy is that they never get that proper resolve, which makes it feel so heavy.

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'The Night Manager's Tom Hiddleston on Angela's Betrayal Over Roper's Survival

When Season 2 picked up, Angela had retired and was not working with the security service any longer. Did her absence and decision to confront Mayra play a role in her demise?

I think so. Yes, you could argue, as a member of the security service, a member of MI6, there are some really bold moves made there that might not be the best. But the thing about Angela, even all the way through the first season, and it continues through the second, is that she will never turn her back or hide in the shadows when she’s looking at what she believes is the face of evil. And she will always, always face the bull. She’s the bullfighter who has nothing to protect them and no life left in a minute, but she will never run away. I feel like she’s a real hero. She’s somebody who would much rather live by her own truth and her own morals and say what she believes than be cowardly in any way.

What I loved about the character and Olivia’s rendition of her so much was how anti-establishment she is, and how much she says what she thinks. She just goes fully in with what she entirely believes, and we talk often about Pine’s fire in him that he can’t put out. I think it’s similar to Burr.

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Roper is reunited with the son he claims as his own, Danny. What excited you about that reteam, and how would you like to see it unfold in Season 3?

So, Danny, it’s interesting because, of course, he’s serving a sort of expositional beat in the first episode, but what he’s doing actually is laying the foundations for the whole thematic of the show, which is about fathers and sons, which is about family, status, and all these things. He is the bookmark of that. It’s like one son has gone, one son has died, and here he comes. You can look at Roper, and I think Hugh Laurie is just a masterful actor, and he can play a character who looks like a very gentle, almost vulnerable, apologetic, absent father. There’s this tense, it could easily be in a very different sort of TV show, that scene.

It’s so tender in this way, but you’re also looking at a man who’s just killed his [other] son. And how do you react to somebody you thought was dead for a long time? You have to also remember, Danny’s only just processing the death of his father. He’s spent years in limbo, not being able to mourn or put anything to rest. He’s finally able to emotionally deal with that, with the loss of his father. In a few seconds, you see the fear, and you see the anxiety, but you also see the anger and resentment. Then you see the little boy who’s happy that his father’s returned.

By now, fans know how bad Roper really is, but did his killing of Teddy cross a line that even Pine wasn’t sure he’d be able to cross? How does this shift their dynamic as adversaries? 

[In Season 2], they very much had a relationship where they needed each other. Who is the dragon slayer without the dragon? What is the fight if there’s no one to fight, but there’s an adrenaline that shoots through them. There’s sort of a love affair between them. There’s a father-son relationship there. There’s also almost like a love relationship. There’s so much going on between them that they need the adversary.

He has witnessed one of the greatest losses by the end, as Teddy’s friend. [Pine] e loves him. He’s like a brother. He’s almost like a lover. They have such a strong connection that it transcends into love. And to watch somebody you love be massacred in front of you by their own father, who is the dragon that you somewhat have enjoyed slaying, it’s going to put it on a whole new level. There’s only one singular journey. And that singular journey is that this has to end one way or another.

The Night Manager, Seasons 1-2, Streaming Now, Prime Video