‘The Old Man’ Recap: Season 1 Finale on FX — Jeff Bridges

Dan Chase had to delve into his past to ensure that his daughter would still have a future in The Old Man‘s season finale — but did he pull it off?

As Thursday’s finale opens, Emily is being held captive by FBI underling Waters and elite assassin Julian while Harper frantically tries to get her back. (Zoe tells Chase that she sensed a rift between Hamzad and his lawyer, but he brushes it off.) After talking with Waters, Harper reports back that they want Chase delivered to Hamzad, and then they’ll return Emily. If they refuse, Emily will go to Hamzad instead. Chase reluctantly agrees and sends Zoe home; when she protests that there must be more they can do, he tells her that when it comes to his daughter’s life, “that’s a bluff I’m not willing to call.”

We flash back to a young Chase and Abbey being confronted by Hamzad, who knows they helped the Russian prisoner Pavlovich escape. Abbey admits she’s been feeding intel to the Soviets, but he knows there’s more that she’s hiding. Chase steps up to take the blame, but she stops him, revealing the Russians were looking for a valuable ore deposit — and she knows where it is. He can’t believe she would hide this from him, but she thought it would give him too much power: “I love you too much to see you made a monster.” He demands to know where the deposit is, but she refuses to say. So he gives her the night to think it over, telling Chase when the sun rises, “don’t be here.” Chase calls Harper and insists Abbey be removed for her own safety, but Harper worries that if he does that and Hamzad remains in power, “we are going to have to answer for that with him.” He needs to know that Hamzad won’t be around to do that (hint hint)… and Chase says he’ll take care of it.

Back in the present, Waters and Julian get tipped off that men are closing off the streets and moving in, so they scramble to move Emily. Chase and Harper drive off in a line of SUVs, with Harper pressing Chase about what happened all those years ago. Why didn’t he take out Hamzad back then? Chase doesn’t want to spend his final moments on earth rehashing the past, though. Harper remembers first taking notice of “Angela” when she was just coming up in the FBI, and he wants to know what really happened so he can tell her when Chase is gone. Chase muses that maybe Abbey was just using him as an exit strategy, and he tells Harper to tell Emily “that her mother loved her… That may be all I know for certain.” Waters calls Harper and lets him know they’re surrounded and they’re moving Emily, and Chase thinks Hamzad might be trying to grab Emily first. Harper radios in that the deal is off and screeches into a sudden U-turn, speeding off in the other direction.

After a dream where Emily follows her mother down into a dark basement only to see her disappear, she wakes up to Waters hurrying her up to move. There’s a sniper waiting to take them out if they try to leave in their van, so they split up, with Julian using a handgun to take out a few assailants outside before switching to a rifle and making his way to the building housing the sniper. He throws a flash grenade inside the door and shoots a few more bad guys before slowly making his way upstairs, where he faces a closed door. He hears noises on the other side and shoots a few well-placed bullets into the closed door, killing the sniper stationed on the other side. He radios to Waters that the coast is clear, and Waters takes off in the van with Emily in the back. But their van is stopped when an old woman blocks the road — and she pulls out a pistol and shoots the driver dead.

Back in their SUV, Harper can’t understand why Hamzad would blow up the deal at the last minute and keeps needling Chase about why he would put Emily in danger like this. “She’s not your kid!” Chase yells at him, but Harper insists he was there for her during the tough times. Another driver radios in and says he’s been ordered to turn back to the airfield — and to “force compliance” if Harper doesn’t turn back, too. Chase asks him, “How far are you prepared to go here?” and Harper says he’ll do whatever it takes to protect Emily: “She’s my kid, too.” The other SUVs surround theirs, and Harper hands Chase a gun, maneuvering their car to the front of the line while Chase sets up in the back seat. He leans out and opens fire, sending the other SUVs all crashing into each other and off the road. “Wherever this leads,” he tells Harper, “we’re in this together now.”

Where it leads, though, is back to that van, where Harper finds Waters and the driver dead and Emily missing. Chase then admits on his flight with Abbey all those years ago, they thought about asking for three tickets instead of two. That’s because they took — a young Emily with them! Emily is Hamzad’s daughter! Chase couldn’t kill Hamzad in front of his daughter, he confesses, so he spared his life and took his wife and daughter with him back to America. And as we see Harper and Chase return to the airfield, a much older Hamzad wakes up and gets out of bed, narrating about how he wanted to build a kingdom for his little girl, but she was taken away from him to a far away land. Now, though, she is back. He watches Emily get out of a car wearing a head scarf as he is told: “Parwana is home.” (And don’t worry: The Old Man is coming back for Season 2.)

Give the Old Man finale — and the season as a whole — a grade in our polls, and then hit the comments to share your thoughts.