The Assassin is a gripping new crime thriller on Prime Video, that sees Bodyguard and The Durrells star Keeley Hawes play Julie, a retired assassin who is now living a quiet life on a secluded Greek island.
However, Julie's world is turned upside down when her estranged son Edward (The Good Doctor's Freddie Highmore) visits from England with some difficult questions. Soon, Julie finds her past catching up with her, and they are forced to flee the island and go on the run.
As mother and son battle for survival, the pair are confronted by a dark conspiracy and a threat that will destroy their relationship forever.
Here is everything that happened in The Assassin episode 1...
The episode opens in Bulgaria in 1994 as someone wearing all black and a balaclava comes out of a bathroom, flushing the toilet behind them. They set a timer on their watch, and as they come face to face with some guards protecting what looks like an abandoned building site, the figure shoots them dead. As the shooter then makes their way up into the building, they shoot and fight everyone in their path, killing guards and security men left, right and centre.
When the assassin finally comes to the top floor, they kill two more men before finally coming face to face with their leader, who they have all been protecting. The leader jokes that if they wanted a meeting so badly, then they should have called or text, but the assassin remains silent. The leader offers the shooter a bag full of cash, trying to tempt them into working for him, but the shooter just kills him, too, walking out and leaving the bag of cash behind.
Once everyone is dead, the shooter takes off their balaclava, and we can see it is a young woman called Julie. She calls someone called Damian on the phone and tells him the job is done, before the alarm she set on her watch goes off. Julie tells Damian she will call him back as she pulls a pregnancy test out of her pocket and swears under her breath as she sees it is positive.
The episode then flashes forward to 31 years later (the present day) in Greece, and Julie wakes up on a beach having drunk a bottle of whiskey. As she packs up her chair and walks off, a teenager hits her in the head with a football. She is cross, hot, and hungover, and challenges the kids to tell her who is responsible for hitting her, but when they don't reply, Julie kicks their ball into the sea.
Meanwhile, a man, Edward, is running through an airport and gets to his gate just as it is closing. He is reluctant to get on the plane, but eventually boards at the last moment.
Back in Greece, Julie gets steaks from the local butchers and is rude to the locals as she jumps the queue, before heading to the port to pick up Edward. They greet one another awkwardly and she struggles to be sympathetic when he tells her that the boat ride over from the mainland has made him feel queasy. As they head off on Julie's motorbike, Edward puts his arms around her so he doesn't fall off, but she tells him to hold the back, because 'he's not 10'.
As they arrive at Julie's house, hidden in the middle of nowhere, Edward goes to his room while she puts the steaks in the fridge. Julie tells him she bought them especially for him as he mentioned wanting to try them last time he was here... but he points out that was four years ago now, and he is now a vegan.
Julie's phone rings and she is shocked to hear Damian's voice on the phone for the first time in 10 years. She questions how he got her number, but he says it doesn't matter, and he has a job for her. She turns it down without even hearing what the job is, pointing out that she is retired now and hangs up.
The episode then moves to a prison in Libya, where a nervous Dutch man is thrown into a jail with gangs of other men who all sense he is an easy target. A man, who seems to have been waiting for him, warns off the other prisoners circling the newcomer and tells the Dutch man to follow him. He takes him to meet a gang leader who says he will look after him in prison, but in return, he needs to help him work his computer.
At Julie's house, she is having lunch with Edward in awkward silence. She tells him that they should go to the wedding on the island tomorrow, as everyone will be there, but Edward is put out that she would rather go to a stranger's wedding than spend time with her own son.
Julie is distracted after her phone call with Damian, but tells Edward she's there now if he wants to talk. He says there is something he has been meaning to ask her, tells her he has been looking into the story about how she met his father, and it doesn't add up because the pub she claims they met in didn't open until after he was born. Edward reminds his mum that he is a journalist, so if she is going to continue lying to him, she might want to be a bit more convincing.
Edward asks Julia what Anvil Assets is, and she says she has never heard of it. He tells her that on his 30th birthday, he got a letter making him a trustee in Anvil Assets and leaving him a significant amount of money, but no clue who might have left it to him. Edward points out that it must be his dad, but Julie tells him to drop it, as his father wasn't a good man. Edward tells her he knows she is still lying.
Julie is saved by her phone ringing, and it is Damian again, asking her to consider the job and that he will double her fees if she agrees to take it on. She reminds him that she is retired and asks if he has forgotten what happened last time. He is adamant that she is the woman for the job and triples her fee, and eventually she gives in and agrees.
As Damian sends the details of the target to Julie, she tells Edward she has to go as she is having trouble with her 'boyfriend' before heading in to locate her guns, which she has locked away under the floorboards.
Later that evening, Julie heads to some dunes and sets up to wait for her target, while Edward is left at her house to wander around. Once she has her target in sight, Julie is about to shoot when she realises something is off with the request. She calls the number that Damian called her on, and she speaks to him again, but says while he sounds like Damian, she knows it isn't him because of the way he is talking. The person on the other end of the phone says they can be whoever she wants them to be, and changes their voice to sound like her before hanging up.
Julie gets home and calls her old colleagues to see if anyone has heard from the real Damian, but they haven't.
Kayla, the woman Julie had been hired to kill, and her brother, Ezra, are on their luxury yacht, where they are talking about how she works for a charitable giving organisation, while he gets paid the big bucks working for their dad, Aaron Cross. As they talk, Kayla asks her brother what Chantaine is, and he seems spooked that she knows the name and asks her where she heard it. She says she asked him first, but he fobs her off, saying there are some things they're not meant to know.
At the prison, the Dutch man, who we now know is called Jasper, is working hard for the gang boss. He is horrified when he hears that they're planning to kill someone in a rival gang as they're 'taking their business'. Jasper tells a guard that this man, Chi Chi is about to be killed and wants to move prisons in return for the information. The guard agrees and he is relieved, but there is a sense that not everything is as it seems.
At the village wedding, Julie tells Edward she knows he has something to tell her and to just come out with it. He reluctantly tells her he is getting married. She assumes it is to a man, but Edward points out it is a woman and she congratulates him, taking his hand awkwardly.
Suddenly, someone sitting behind them is shot in the head, and chaos erupts as wedding guests all around them start being killed. Julie knows the shooter is there for her, and she works out they have five shots before the shooter has to reload. Once five shots are made, she makes Edward run out of the line of sight and uses herself to distract the shooter away from him.
Julie uses dead bodies as shields as the shooter tries to kill her, but she knows how this all works and manages to get into a wedding car and start driving towards where the shooter is hiding in the mountains. She drives the car and crashes it near the shooter on purpose, making it look like she is dead, but when he comes closer to make sure the job is done, she isn't in the car, and instead comes up behind him and smashes him over the head with a boulder.
Back at the wedding, there is carnage with dead bodies sprawled everywhere. Edward is still in his hiding place when his phone rings and it is Julie to tell him the shooter is dead.
At the prison, Jasper is waiting to be moved after telling the guard about who the gang were planning to kill, but out in the yard, he is horrified to see the guard talking to the gang leader, clearly in cahoots with him, and now telling him that he has snitched on him. He runs back to his cell and uses a phone hidden under a bed to call Mr Cross and demand to speak with him. He tells the person on the other end of the phone to remember one word 'Chantaine' and that he needs to get him out of prison as soon as possible, as he is about to be killed by the Russians.
Edward finds Julie in the mountains with the dead man, who Julie seems to know from when she was an assassin, while back at the wedding, everyone is crying over the massacred wedding party, when Interpol arrives looking for Julie.
The doctor who is helping the injured tells the man, Afonso, he wants to see his ID again, as he hasn't even heard from the mainland police yet, so Afonso just shoots him in the head. Everyone starts screaming again as more men in black get out of the car and start killing those who had survived the first shooting. Only one elderly man remains alive and Afonso asks him about the English woman. The old man tells him that she lives in the cottage at the top of the hill, but when he begs for help, Afonso shoots him, too. As the men in black drive away, thinking everyone at the wedding is dead, we see that Luka, Julie's friend from the butchers, is still alive and has been hiding behind the bar.
Meanwhile, back on the yacht, Kayla is grilling Ezra about Chantaine again, and he says he got an email, and Kayla says she did too - but neither of them knows who it was from. Ezra says he knows nothing more than she does, but that he asked Michael about it and he got really weird when he said the word Chantaine. He tells her he knows nothing, and Kayla walks off. But once she has gone, Ezra makes a call and asks why 'it hasn't happened yet' and that 'she is walking around without a clue, and it is too much'.
As they get home, covered in blood, Julie is looking for her gun while Edward demands to know what she is running around like a 'premenopausal James Bond'. She eventually gives in and tells him that she was an assassin and did bad things for money. But while Edward wants more answers, Julie is trying to pack and warn him that someone is coming for them. As Afonso and his men arrive at their cottage, Julie and Edward use a home video to distract them into thinking they're in the lounge, when really they're out front, making their escape on the motorbike.
As they make their getaway through the narrow streets of the village, Julie is stunned when they come across the wedding massacre, and stops for a moment to take in what she has caused. As the streets get narrower, the men are forced to abandon their car and chase the pair on foot, while they go to the harbour and jump in the water, with Luka following.
Eventually, they get to Kayla's fancy boat and climb on board, but Kayla doesn't seem to be too shocked to see Edward, and it turns out she is his fiancée. As Edward introduces his wife-to-be to his mum, Julie hides the fact that less than 24 hours ago, she was hired to kill her son's future wife.
All six episodes of The Assassin are available in the UK and Ireland on Prime Video now.
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