(Spoilers from Netflix’s In From The Cold will be found below.)
Atomic Blonde and The Americans lovers will want to put In From The Cold on their list for a bang-up series full of action scenes and spy intrigue. The show stars Margarita Levieva (The Deuce, Revenge) in the perfect role to make her a household name, over a decade after she danced in Adventureland as every teenage boy’s dream, Lisa P.
It’s rad to finally see Margarita in a role that showcases not only her ability to nail action choreography but one that makes use of her fluent Russian, not to mention a show that looks poised for a second season. Before that happens, though, we need to talk about that wild twist ending that’s a perfect lay up for more Russian spy adventures.
Margarita portrays a single mom named Jenny, whose secret past as Anya Petrova (a Russian operative with a high kill count known as “The Whisper”) comes back to haunt her, big time. She’s pulled back into the life, unwittingly (or so it seems) by a former CIA operative, Chauncey, and she’s forced to go on new missions in order to keep her daughter alive. A ton of wild stuff happens (including her discovery of cameras in her eyes — eek), but the season winds down with Becca safe and Jenny/Anya now apparently in love with Chauncey before she heads outside and sledgehammers concrete to uncover a phone that still somehow has a charge. She dials in and declares, “Agent Anya Petrova. Everything is fine. It worked.”
What the hell, man? So, Anya has apparently still been an active Russian operative this whole time — and only acting like she was reluctant to come “In From The Cold,” as the title indicates — and we don’t know whether Chauncey really has her dossier or if it’s something she simply fabricated and sent to him all by herself. Over the course of this season, Anya ended up killing her own mother (to save Becca), and we saw her young-adult life where she also lived a double life as a college student. So, it’s unclear whether a Season 2 would plan on diving between timelines again, but as far as the twist goes, here’s what creator Adam Glass told Entertainment Weekly:
The only script I kept from [Levieva] was the final script because I didn’t want to change how she was playing Jenny. What I wanted to do by the end was take all the power back, which is she’s been in control the whole time and everything you’ve seen has been one giant act. She knew everything that happened and she put herself in this position. A season 2 would ask why she did this.
Glass also confirmed that he’s planned for future seasons (currently a hopeful total of three), so hopefully, we’ll get more answers in the future.
Netflix’s In From The Cold is currently streaming.