The Day of the Jackal EPs Break Down That Killer Finale, Drop Season 2 Hints

Dave Nemetz

20 December 2024 at 7:00 pm·7-min read

Warning: This post contains spoilers for all 10 Season 1 episodes of Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal.

Well, we kind of suspected that not everyone would survive The Day of the Jackal’s season finale — but we were still on the edge of our seats watching it.

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Last week’s finale saw Eddie Redmayne’s assassin Charles (aka the Jackal) and Lashana Lynch’s MI6 agent Bianca finally collide in a nighttime gun battle, and Charles came out on top, shooting Bianca dead. But his wife Nuria ran out on him, taking their child with her, and Winthorp refused to pay him for killing UDC… and tried to kill Charles, too. (For all the details, read our full finale recap here.) Luckily, Peacock has renewed Jackal for a second season, so we know we’ll get to see if Charles gets Nuria back — and gets Winthorp to pay up.

We still had plenty of questions after that finale, so we reached out to The Day of the Jackal executive producers Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant (both hailing from UK studio Carnival Films) to shed some light on why Season 1 played out the way it did… and what we can expect from Season 2. Read on to get their take on Bianca’s ultimate fate, the state of Charles and Nuria’s marriage and why Charles and Bianca could never have teamed up on the same side.

TVLINE | So first, to take a step back, when you started working on the series, was there always a possibility that it could continue for multiple seasons? Because I think a lot of people assumed it was just a limited series.
NEAME | Yes, we did always think about it as a returning series. But we obviously wanted to keep that very under the radar because of the ending of the novel and the original movie [where the Jackal dies]. We didn’t want to basically give away the entire ending, so we just kept it quiet.

TVLINE | The season finale ends with Charles killing Bianca in a final standoff. Did you ever consider a version where Bianca lives? They were so similar in many ways, it almost seemed like they could form an alliance.
MARCHANT | I think that goes back to talking about it as a long-form series. We made the decision we wanted it to continue, and then how do you subvert it from the original where, obviously, the Jackal dies? So it felt like they are so similar that, you know, one can’t live while the other survives. They’re so interlaced, so who is going to survive that final showdown? And really keeping the audience guessing until the very end who would [survive]. The hope was that anyone who knew the source material would think it would be the Jackal, and it would be a surprise.

TVLINE | So maybe Bianca was so determined to get the Jackal that it wouldn’t be possible for them to actually work together.
NEAME | Yeah, I don’t think we ever talked about that as an option. They’re the same type, but they’re on the opposite side, so I don’t see how they could ever have accommodated that. But I think, as Nigel said, it was just simply subverting the original one. You know, the Jackal is killed in the original. We just flipped on his head and did it in just a more original way.

MARCHANT | They both like winning. Ultimately, they both couldn’t win. Someone had to lose.

TVLINE | Bianca was kind of a polarizing character for fans. She was definitely flawed, in many of the same ways that Charles was flawed, but some viewers were also sorry to see her go at the end. So how did you see her as a character… and can we say that she’s definitively dead?
NEAME | [Laughs] Yeah, that sounds like a conspiracy theory… I mean, of course we could do anything, but she did look pretty dead to me. And look, we’re really, really glad that that character resonated so strongly as well, for all those reasons. Just as in the original, you do root for the Jackal in the [Fred] Zinnemann movie, but also the cop as well. I mean, he’s a bit of an outsider, and [series writer] Ronan Bennett wanted to take that idea of the outsider and just render it in a slightly different way and a more contemporary way, perhaps. But it’s great that, although the Jackal is the eponymous character, she as the co-lead with him has resonated so strongly. I think that’s a real tribute to her as a force of nature and an actress and, you know, I think just a really fascinating piece of casting, actually, to have created that partnership.

TVLINE | Nuria left Charles and took their child without telling him, now that she knows the full extent of his line of work. Is this marriage over, or is there a chance for reconciliation? He’s not going to give up on her that easily, is he?
MARCHANT | Well, certainly not. I think that Nuria uncovered more and more secrets, and it wasn’t until the point where she really feels that there is danger to the child that her decision is made, and that’s always going to be at the forefront. The Jackal, Charles, brought that danger home, and that’s why she had to flee. So, apart from discovering her husband has this complete, separate life that he’s managed to keep [from her] and discovering all those secrets, the final betrayal was that fear factor and running for her own child’s safety. And, you know, her brother is also dead. So that’s a cross to bear when it comes to next season.

TVLINE | That’s right, we haven’t seen her find that out yet. So it did seem like in the scenes with Charles and Nuria and their child, it may have been the closest we got to seeing who the real Charles is. How genuine are his feelings for Nuria, or is that just another mask he puts on?
NEAME | Well, we wanted the audience to be querying that all the way through. First of all, it’s only at the end of the pilot that you find out that there is a personal life, and that’s completely original. That doesn’t exist in any of the other iterations. And I think you’re left with a pretty strong impression that this is a very attractive couple, very drawn to each other. So I think, to begin with, you think the interest is: How does he juggle these two things? This beautiful wife and child he’s clearly devoted to, but he has this job he can’t help himself from doing. But then, as it goes on, you start to think, ‘Well, is it just a marriage of convenience, and does the work come first? And is he actually gay?’ You know, the episodes with Rasmus: Is that just the kind of the length of the decoy that he is able to go to in terms of hiding himself as a ghost, or is that genuine? And therefore, I think we see him as somebody who clearly can compartmentalize his life entirely, like certain people can do, but he does it in an almost pathological way. So I think, yeah, we wanted audiences to really be fascinated, perplexed by that all the way through, and then I suspect, probably by the end, pretty certain that he does need her and does want her. But as Nigel said, that will be revealed, I’m sure, in the following episodes.

TVLINE | The finale ends with Charles chasing after Nuria and his family before getting vengeance on Winthorp. Is that pretty much the framework we can expect from Season 2? And what kind of timeline are we looking at, in terms of production and release?
NEAME | Well, we can’t quite yet tell you about, certainly, release, because that path isn’t clear yet. You know, these shows take quite a long time to turn around, but we will bring it back as soon as we can. And yeah, I mean, I think any viewer is going to think that there are two pretty massive hooks at the end. One is Nuria, and one is Winthorp and the double-crossers. So there’s definitely two hooks that we’ve got to look forward to, but there’ll be many other elements as well.

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