“I hope it was worth it.”
That last line spoken by Khalil reverberates throughout a frequently messy, occasionally powerful finale. After all of Kurtz’s work—welcoming Charlie into the fold, convincing Becker to return to the field, the deep infiltration of a terrorist cell, all the surveillance and time and effort and danger—what was it for exactly? In the end, all Kurtz has are a bunch of dead bodies and destroyed camps that will be quickly replaced by new, angrier ideologues. Revenge begets revenge. The violent cycle will continue unabated. What did we learn, Palmer? To do it again and again and again.
“Episode 6” has an odd structure insofar as the middle section largely depends on a character who’s been previously defined by his mystery and absence. To compensate for this, writer Michael Lesslie devotes much of the episode’s first section to Khalil and Charlie. Luckily, Charif Ghattas does a good job of bringing a quiet, devoted energy to his character, forgoing labored theatrics for determination. Charlie plays coy and continues to either parrot Becker-as-Michel’s words directly or take his advice, but Pugh also adds a buried sense of attraction for the man. Being a rookie double agent, Charlie understandably has trouble keeping her affinities in check. Up until the moment she delivers the bomb briefcase back to Becker, it’s not 100% clear that she won’t just go through with the attack anyway, especially after seeing Khalil’s family ravaged by Israeli fighter jets.
The scene at the Polytechnic is brief by necessity—after all, there’s not much to convey after it’s clear that Kurtz and Picton will collaborate on the fiction that the bomb killed the professor—but it leads to the second phase of the plan: Capture Khalil and turn him. Naturally, that means that Charlie will be sexual bait, which pleases neither her nor Becker, who’s forced to convey Kurtz’s maniacal demands yet again. Charlie returns to Khalil’s stronghold with specific instructions: Whenever he’s vulnerable, she’s to remove the batteries from her radio, and then Kurtz’s team will take him.
Lesslie’s script demands Pugh convey a variety of conflicted emotions in Charlie’s tryst with Khalil. On one hand, she’s nervous to place her body in such an exposed context for Kurtz’s operation yet again, but she’s also channeling her feelings for Becker/Michel through Khalil’s body. On top of that, she’s also getting back at Becker for putting her in this compromised position in the first place. All of that fraught energy results in a tensely erotic scene that’s all but designed to be contrasted with Becker and Charlie’s sexual encounter. In that scene, Park privileges romance over lust, conveying the heat between them through suggestive imagery that implies a deep emotional connection. Here, it’s more about the body than the heart. Charlie and Khalil fuck, only for emotion to get in the way much later.
The key moment comes when Charlie initially decides not to remove the batteries from her radio. She has the opportunity but declines, instead postponing the moment in order to remain with Khalil a little bit longer, bonding over his scars just like she did with Becker. It might not be love between them, but it’s something more than just pure espionage. One thing’s for sure: Charlie has lost the thread regarding who she is and what she’s doing.