'Red Eye' Season 1 Recap And Ending Explained

ITV’s Red Eye is an intriguing thriller series that contains everything from high-level espionage to personal betrayals to intense action sequences. The plot is centered around a British doctor, Matthew Nolan, who is being flown back to China after having allegedly killed a Chinese citizen on a recent work trip, while Detective Inspector Hana Li is given the responsibility of accompanying him and overseeing his handover to the Chinese authorities. But Dr. Nolan repeatedly keeps stating that he is innocent and is being framed for a murder he did not commit, and Red Eye ultimately turns into a fascinating thriller with the governments of three major nations involved.

Spoiler Alert

What is season 1 about?

Red Eye season 1 begins on a rainy night in Beijing, where a British man frantically runs out of a nightclub and into his car, narrowly avoiding the bouncers and other men who want to get hold of him. As he drives away, the man notices that he has a bleeding wound on the side of his abdomen, with the heavy blood loss quickly making him lose consciousness. The car soon crashes into the bollards on the highway, but the man is able to get away relatively unscathed. 15 hours later, the very same man, Dr. Matthew Nolan, is seen arriving at Heathrow Airport aboard a North China Air flight. But before he can get even close to the immigration desk, the doctor is stopped by two Border Force officers, who escort him to an interrogation room. Here, Matthew reveals that he had been in Beijing attending a medical conference where he had read his research paper, and so he has no idea why he is being mistreated by the authorities in his own country.

Finally, the Border Force officers reveal the reason for Matthew’s detainment—he is the prime (and only) suspect in the murder of a Chinese woman in Beijing named Shen Zhao. Although he admits to having met Shen Zhao during the conference, Matthew states that he had nothing to do with her murder and even claims to have not known about her being dead either. But diplomatic considerations kick in by this time, with the British and Chinese administrations on the brink of a landmark deal that will see the Chinese government invest heavily in British nuclear plants in exchange for being allowed to build and operate their own nuclear plant on British soil. The British government does not want this deal to fall apart at any cost, and so the MI5 Director-General, Madeline Delaney, is informed about the situation and told to arrange for Matthew Nolan’s immediate extradition to China. 

London Met Police’s Detective Inspector Hana Li is soon selected to be the officer who will escort Matthew back to China and hand him over to the Chinese authorities so that they take whatever action is necessary against him. Although of Chinese origin, DI Hana is not very keen on returning to the country from which her family had once emigrated, but she does not have much say in the matter, as her superior states that she has been chosen particularly because of her Chinese roots. But as Hana boards the North China Air flight headed back to Beijing, she realizes that she has stepped into a far more sinister mess and that Dr. Matthew Nolan might be telling the truth after all.

What is Operation Broadside?

In the Red Eye universe, Operation Broadside is a top-secret program run by MI6, which also serves as one of the reasons behind the whole fiasco involving the doctors. Dr. Matthew Nolan and his British colleagues, whom we see in the series, all work for a private medical research company called General Pacific Medicine. This company, quite reputed as an organizer of medical conferences around the globe, is owned by a British man named Sir George Chapman, who is actually a spy appointed to work for MI6. George’s main intention behind organizing overseas conferences is to get hold of highly confidential documents and other objects from contacts in the respective countries. In this case too, he had arranged for the conference to be held in China to get hold of confidential documents from the country.

Operation Broadside is essentially the operation that sees to the retrieval of these documents, involving the participation of men and women who have no idea what they are actually doing. The doctors working under General Pacific Medicine are essentially used as mules to carry the documents on their bodies, without even realizing that they are doing so. The documents are usually planted on the doctors’ bodies by the agents in the overseas country in a manner that ensures they won’t be found or flagged during normal airport checks. But once the individuals reach London, someone from MI6 gets hold of whatever they had been carrying and takes it back to the headquarters. 

In this case, Matthew Nolan had been made a mule under Operation Broadside, and he had been planted with a Nano SIM containing confidential information without his knowledge. MI5 DG Madeline Delaney, who is presented as a righteous character in the series, immediately admits how Operation Broadside is an immoral program, which puts the lives of British citizens at risk. Therefore, she lets Hana’s journalist sister, Jess, write a story on it, exposing Operation Broadside and ensuring that MI6 can no longer use it or any such dangerous programs.

What does the Nano SIM contain?

The contents of the Nano SIM are revealed at the very end of Red Eye season 1, when Madeline gets to finally decrypt it with the help of her MI5 hackers. The SIM that had been sent to England by Shen Zhao, through the unsuspecting Matthew, contains two versions of the same code. This code is for a special program that, once placed into a system, will allow an external third party to take over and operate the system. It is also evident from the code that it was meant to be placed inside the British nuclear power plant, and the suggestion is that the Chinese were intending to take control of the British nuclear plant to use it to their advantage. 

However, this is where the crucial difference between the two versions of the code comes into play, as one of them clearly shows that an MIT graduate had written it, while the other has only been made to look like the doing of the Chinese authorities. In reality, it is the Americans, led by CIA agent Mike Maxwell, who are the real perpetrators in Red Eye, as they wanted to ensure that the deal between the British and the Chinese over nuclear power would fall apart. As a result, the CIA had had some code written and then disguised it to look like the Chinese’s doing, with the agency hoping that the code would be found by British authorities and the deal with the Chinese cancelled. 

Who was Shen Zhao, and why was she killed?

Although it initially seemed like Shen Zhao was a whistleblower against the Chinese government, as she was clearly colluding with British spies, the reality was that she was a nationalist who only wanted to protect the image and reputation of her government. In Beijing, she had managed to get hold of both sets of code, the one faked to look like a Chinese copy and the original one written by the MIT graduate. She immediately wanted to alert the British about this attempt to sabotage the nuclear energy deal and had attempted to send both the codes, embedded onto the Nano SIM, to London through Matthew Nolan. Since Shen seemingly had experience with Operation Broadside, she knew exactly where to place the SIM and had literally pushed it into the wound on Matthew’s body after sedating him and stabbing him with a broken glass bottle.

But the CIA were already onto the possible transfer of information, after they had seemingly figured out that there had been a data leak to China. Therefore, Mike Maxwell and his team of assassins were already in Beijing on the night, closely tracking the movements of Shen and trying to figure out whom she was dumping the information onto. Despite their best efforts, though, Mike and his team were not able to keep up with Shen’s intelligent method to deal with the situation at hand, and so they did not even realize that it was Matthew whom she had targeted and how exactly she had handed over the data to him. 

By the time Matthew ran out of the nightclub and drove away, Mike and his enforcer, Jones, cornered Shen Zhou and then killed her after realizing that she had already transferred the data. Since it was now clear that the SIM had been planted on Matthew’s body, Mike needed to ensure that he or his teammates would get enough time with the doctor alone to retrieve the SIM and destroy it. Therefore, he placed Shen Zhou’s dead body inside Matthew’s crashed car, making it look like the doctor was responsible for her death. Since Shen was the daughter of a high-ranking Chinese politician, this move would ensure that Matthew would be brought back to China, and Mike and his team would get a chance to retrieve the SIM from him.

Who is responsible for the murders of Sir George and the doctors?

Mike Maxwell and his team of operatives are the ones responsible for all the deaths in Red Eye season 1, although Madeline once mentions that the CIA bosses must be totally ignorant about his brash actions, suggesting that he does all of this for his own benefit or that of some private player. Either way, Mike appoints his trusted enforcer, Jones, to pay Sir George a visit and kill him. It is suggested that MI6, and especially John Tennant, were aware of the possibility of this assassination but had turned a blind eye to it since they too wanted to keep Operation Blindside under the covers. Mike had also hired two private contractors, through a CIA-backed private security firm, to be on the plane and interrogate and assassinate the doctors one after another. An ex-Chinese soldier had been specifically chosen for the job to once again make it look like the Chinese were up to some evil plan. Although Mike was certain that the SIM was with Matthew, he did not want to take any chances and had each of the other British doctors on the plane killed. Even the doctor who had refused to comply with the requests of the Chinese government at the beginning of the series was abducted, interrogated, and killed upon Mike’s orders. On the night of the handover in Beijing, Shen Zhao had intentionally touched all five of the British doctors to ensure that whoever was tailing her would be confused. Therefore, Mike Maxwell ruthlessly gets everyone in his way killed, simply to get hold of the SIM first and destroy it so that his and the CIA’s involvement in the sabotage can never be traced.

Why is Hana being framed?

DI Hana Li is also being framed in the process, simply because it is very easy to frame her. As the daughter of a Chinese immigrant whose wife had even had significant trouble with the law, Hana would already seem suspicious to the Chinese authorities. Mike had seemingly already guessed that someone of Chinese origin would be selected for the job in order to make the handover trouble-free and without the worry of messages having to be translated. When he found out that DI Hana had been chosen for the task, he quickly used his resources to dig up her real name, Wing Yee Li, and arranged for her to be framed. A small suitcase was prepared and tagged with Hana’s Chinese name, and it was filled with thousands of pounds and numerous fake passports to make it seem like she was a British spy. Mike then took advantage of one of the cabin crew, who was desperate to pay off her debts, and so she readily carried the suitcase onto the flight, pretending it to be hers. The plan was to have Hana land in China with the suitcase and get caught by the authorities there so that nobody would believe her, even if she did figure out the mystery surrounding Matthew by that time.

Can Mike be punished for his crimes in the end?

Ultimately, Hana hijacks the plane, and extremely displeased with MI5’s inability to deal with the situation, the Prime Minister removes Madeline from the job. This gives the two women an opportunity to set up a private communications channel and plan their way forward. The plane is returned to London, but Madeline crucially gets hold of Hana and Matthew before MI6 does. Knowing well that she can no longer trust the British authorities, Madeline seeks help from the only other source that she has—her American boyfriend, Mike Maxwell—for she has no clue that the CIA agent is the main perpetrator behind the whole fiasco. However, the truth does become clear to Madeline, as Mike starts talking to her about the Nano SIM, despite her never having mentioned it to him. 

At the same time, Matthew recognizes one of the CIA officers to have been present at the hotel in Beijing on the night of his accident and immediately warns Hana and Jess against drinking the sedated coffee they have been served. The four manage to get out of the CIA station after Jess throws a fake SIM at Mike, but they are left irked by the fact that possibly nothing serious will be done against Mike. Despite having caused the deaths of so many innocent people, he will probably just lose his job and be picked up by some private security or consultancy firm. Therefore, Madeline comes up with a final plan to bait Mike into the Chinese embassy grounds and have him admit his crimes. Mike Maxwell does exactly so in his desperation to get hold of the real SIM and destroy it, and in the process is arrested by the Chinese authorities, who had been very keen on getting hold of the murderer of Chen Zhao.

What had really happened to Hana’s mother?

Throughout the duration of Red Eye season 1, we learn that Hana had lost her mother when she was just five years old, around the same time that she and her father had immigrated to the United Kingdom. It is later revealed that her mother was a professor who had been arrested by the Chinese government for seemingly spreading anti-Communist propaganda in her class. As there was no way to save her, Hana’s father decided to move to England with his daughter, and he only received news that his wife had been executed while in prison. This traumatic experience had affected the man so much that he completely shut out all memories of his first wife and never spoke of her ever again. This had caused much grief to Hana, as she genuinely wanted to know more about her mother, and yet her father’s coldness also made her grow distant from him. Ultimately, at the very end of Red Eye season 1, Hana manages to get hold of confidential files about her mother from the Chinese authorities through the British government. She is seen handing over this file to her father at the end, although we do not learn about its contents. The man is only seen breaking down before he finally opens up about his beloved first wife, telling Hana that he has lots to share about her. 

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