Yahoo Lifestyle Prime Target: Grade the Premiere of Apple TV+’s Conspiracy Thriller
Who knew that numbers like 11, 23 and 37 could be so alarming to the United States government?
Edward Brooks, the mathematics genius at the center of Apple TV+’s new thriller Prime Target, isn’t yet aware that his research on prime numbers will lead him down dangerous paths that eventually collide with the National Security Agency. But in the two episodes that premiered on Wednesday, he starts to get an idea of the surprising peril to which 29, 53, 71 and other innocent-looking numerals might lead him. Let’s recap what went down in the show’s debut:
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Leo Woodall (One Day, The White Lotus) plays protagonist Ed, a postgraduate research candidate at Cambridge. He’s brilliant and obsessed with all things patterns and numbers; he’s also, unsurprisingly, a bit of an ass, who casts aside any opportunity for real human connection because The Work is too important, of course. When one of Ed’s favorite professors becomes too ill from Alzheimer’s to continue teaching, Ed begrudgingly becomes a student of Robert Mallinder (The Walking Dead‘s David Morrissey), a fellow mathematician who is interested in Ed’s research despite Ed’s obvious skepticism of his new mentor.
Mallinder, meanwhile, is married to a Cambridge professor named Andrea (Borgen‘s Sidse Babett Knudsen), who has spent years researching the possible existence of the Bayt al-Hikmah — also known as the House of Wisdom — a massive library said to have existed in Baghdad until its destruction in the 1200s. (All true, by the way!) After a gas explosion in Iraq uncovers an ornate underground chamber that might actually be the House of Wisdom, Andrea is thrilled and eager to travel to Iraq to see the structure for herself.
These three characters’ interests collide one evening when Mallinder and Andrea host Ed at their house for dinner. Ed explains the central conceit of his research: “What if the rules were different? What if numbers didn’t behave in the ways we assumed?” Andrea shows Ed some photos she’s received from a colleague of the potential House of Wisdom. Ed takes one look at them and announces that there are numerical patterns in the symbols inscribed on the chamber wall. He won’t explain what any of it means, but he frantically jots down a bunch of complicated-looking math on his hosts’ tablecloth, then leaves in a hurry.
The next day, Ed tells Mallinder a little more about his potential research, waxing poetic about prime numbers and their significance in the world. “What if the structure we need is the one hidden within the fabric of the universe?” he says. “What if God’s cipher, here on Earth, the DNA of existence, is actually prime numbers?” (Well… sure!) Ed also believes that the symbols on the walls of that underground chamber in Baghdad contain a “prime formula,” and he wants to investigate more. Mallinder, though, tells Ed he can’t take this research pitch to the board at Cambridge — and he’s noticeably not skeptical of Ed’s idea, but rather quite unnerved by the whole thing, as though this isn’t the first time prime number-related ideas have been suggested to him. He urges Ed to drop it, and quickly.
From there, things get weird for all involved. Ed goes to the Cambridge library to find past studies on prime numbers, but all of them have been suspiciously scrubbed from the campus’ database. Meanwhile, Mallinder goes home one night to find an email from someone called The Keeper. “Why are you working on prime numbers again?” it reads. “We had an agreement.” Plus, at various points in the premiere, we’ve learned that someone — not sure who yet, but someone — is watching Mallinder via a series of hidden cameras, and they’re taking screenshots anytime he starts furiously scribbling math in a notebook.
At the end of Episode 1 — after Mallinder has received that ominous message from The Keeper — Andrea comes home to find her husband has burned their math-covered tablecloth in a trash-can fire outside. Mallinder isn’t home, but he’s left his wife an upsetting voicemail: “This has to end. I’m trying to say goodbye, but it’s not easy. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t give you more. Just try to be happy. It wasn’t ever anything that you did.”
And not long after Andrea receives that message — and Ed discovers that Mallinder came into his room at Cambridge and stole all of his research — we learn that Mallinder has died (!), with the cops discovering his body in his vehicle at a parking garage, seemingly dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.
It isn’t until Episode 2, though, that we learn who’s been surveilling Mallinder all this time: It’s a France-based NSA surveillance officer named Taylah (Trinkets‘ Quintessa Swindell), whose main job is to keep tabs on 15 mathematicians in Europe, watching for any signs that their work could lead to the creation of new digital weapons. If she spots any of these mathematicians doing meaningful-looking algebra, she takes a screenshot of the work, then sends it up the chain to an analyst.
Taylah quickly notices, though, how squirrelly Mallinder starts to act the night that Ed scribbled math all over his and Andrea’s tablecloth. She keeps a close eye on Mallinder after that, watching as he burns Ed’s prime number research, drives to a nearby parking garage and ultimately closes the door to the parking spot he’s in, where exhaust eventually seeps out from underneath.
Following Mallinder’s apparent suicide, Taylah becomes slightly obsessed with the man’s demise, attempting to find a reason he’d take his own life. Despite some urging from her supervisor, Olson, to take some time off, Taylah only digs deeper: In a matter of days, she realizes that 1) Ed is the author of this potentially worrisome mathematical research, not Mallinder, and Ed should be the one tracked as a result; 2) some of the CCTV footage from the parking garage where Mallinder died has been erased; and 3) the voicemail that Mallinder left Andrea before he died seems to have been AI-generated. In short? She suspects Mallinder’s death was a homicide, not a suicide, and a cover-up is in progress. But by whom?
Olson initially supports Taylah’s theory, and he runs it up the NSA flagpole for further investigation. But the response from the higher-ups is that this is all crazy, and Olson now looks crazy, too, for having believed it. During a riverside conversation, Olson tells Taylah she must not look into Mallinder’s death anymore — and right as she’s about to protest, Olson is fatally shot by a sniper.
Taylah tries to run to safety, but she quickly encounters another gunman, this one chasing her on a motorcycle. Seeing no other escape, Taylah jumps into the river, managing to dodge the next few bullets that the biker fires off. But up in a nearby building, there’s the sniper that just killed Olson — and he looks ready to pull his trigger again, as soon as Taylah swims to the surface.
OK, your turn! What did you think of Prime Target‘s debut? Grade the first two episodes in our poll below, then drop a comment with your full reviews!
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