It’s been almost a decade since The Night Manager debuted on AMC and became a massive streaming hit. Based on John le Carré’s eponymous 1993 espionage novel, David Farr’s six-episode series followed former British soldier and nocturnal hotelier Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) as an undercover spy attempting to bring down infamous arms dealer and “worst person in the world” Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). Well before streaming’s obsession with spy thrillers, the show made an immediate splash with its star-studded cast (Hiddleston, Laurie, and Olivia Colman all won Golden Globes for their performances), numerous international locales, and a high-stakes plot that relied more on cunning and clandestine maneuvering than gunplay.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Now, Jonathan Pine—or should we say Alex Goodwin?—has returned. Nine years after foiling a lucrative weapons tradeoff and delivering Roper to Syrian captors, Pine has gone undercover again, eventually reuniting with foreign investigator Angela Burr (Colman) as an MI6 operative. When one of Roper’s former mercenaries shows up in London, Pine and Burr find themselves embroiled in a South American conspiracy involving a Colombian arms dealer and an internal leak that gives them both deja vu. Though LeCarré never wrote a sequel (hence the delay), Farr says he eventually received his blessing to make a second season before the author’s death in 2020. “I’d always hoped I might return to the role,” Hiddleston told The Guardian. “David’s vision made that possibility real.”
Over that long hiatus, it’s understandable if you might have forgotten the first season’s thrilling twists and turns. With the long overdue Season 2 starting Sunday (and Season 3 already confirmed), we’ve put together a handy catch-up dossier to debrief you on the key details and plot points you’ll need to remember before Pine’s next dangerous mission.
How did Pine become a spy?
When we first meet Jonathan Pine in 2011, he’s a…
