Created by Jake Coburn and Nicholas Wootton, “The Endgame” is a spy television series airing on NBC. It follows disgraced federal agent Valerie AKA Val Turner as she races against time to arrest international arms dealer Elena Federova who orchestrated seven bank robberies across New York. The two women share a past connection, and Val must decode Elena’s mind games and motives before she can wreak further destruction.
However, along the way, Val realizes that what the criminal mastermind desires is not power but revenge against an ancient injustice. Val and Elena are on opposite sides of the law, but their fates are intertwined for a much greater cause. The series explores the extremes a person can go to to protect their loved ones and seek the truth. Here’s everything that happens in the first episode of “The Endgame,” plus what the shocking ending means. FRONT SPOILERS.
Endgame episode 1 recap
Episode 1 of “The Endgame” opens with international arms dealer Elena Federova being brought to an FBI facility in Queens, New York. When Homeland Security and agents attempt to question her about the names of her contacts, she refuses to divulge any information and instead smugly indicates that her detention will have consequences. Meanwhile, a group of masked assailants suddenly break into a major New York bank and take hostages, and Elena states that it was orchestrated by her.
The heist causes an uproar among senior security officials and Elena further divulges that there is more to come if they don’t release her. Elsewhere, federal agent Val Turner meets her imprisoned husband Owen, who faces a 10-year sentence for accepting drug money from a criminal organization. Honest to her work, she reported him a year ago after discovering his involvement and is currently working to get him released. However, Owen asks her for a divorce to get her out of trouble.
Val Owen refuses and arrives at the site of the first heist, where she is snubbed by a superior and fired. After having her husband arrested, she has lost the respect of her colleagues and struggles to prove her courage. However, when a second bank is attacked, Val uses her instincts to contact Solomon Santillana, a former cartel boss who owns many assets in the same bank. Solomon talks to her from the bank and denies his involvement but alludes to Elena.
An alarmed Val tries to tell her senior that Elena’s group of mercenaries named “Snow White” are behind the heists, but he sends her away. A third bank robbery causes him to take her seriously and he sends her to question Elena directly. Val divulges to Attorney General Doblin that she and Elena had crossed paths in The Gambia five years ago. She also talks about Elena’s deceased husband, Sergei, and the possibility that she was deliberately captured by the FBI.
Elena recognizes Val and states that she is aware of her impending divorce. Also, Owen’s divorce lawyer turns out to be Elena’s lawyer’s partner. He tries to blackmail Val into helping him in exchange for proof of Owen’s innocence. Val refuses and tries to warn Doblin and asks for SWAT intervention but he laughs at her. Three more bank robberies occur despite high security measures, and the FBI concludes that Elena may then target the Federal Bank.
Val reaches the bank but sees a member of the board held hostage by Necati Acar, who the FBI thought was their mole. Suddenly, Elena’s mercenaries arrive and pretend to be a SWAT team, thus tricking Val and breaking into the bank. After seven consecutive bank robberies, the FBI realizes that Elena has a much bigger plan behind it all and races to decipher her next step. To add to everyone’s worries, she specifically targets Val, who must now try to outsmart her in her own game.
End of episode 1 of Endgame: Is Sergei alive?
Val tells Doblin that Elena’s husband, Sergei, died eighteen months ago after apparently being poisoned by her. Elena denies these allegations and lovingly declares that she truly loved him and has a hidden child with him. Val further reveals that Elena had negotiated to retrieve Sergei’s corpse from Crimea in exchange for six cruise missiles. Eventually, Elena hints that the motives of her plan might not be money or power, but love and truth.
At the end of the episode, Sergei is revealed to be alive and in the same prison as Owen. He anticipates Elena’s arrival and Owen also seems to be aware of their plans. Thus, Elena’s motives are most likely fueled by her love for Sergei and her desire for revenge against a previous injustice against them.
When did Elena and Val meet?
Val has an elaborate research dossier on Elena that helps prove her credibility to Doblin. When asked how she knew so much, Val explains that she went to The Gambia to investigate a coup five years ago. A warlord named Galeo was terrorizing a fishing village, but suddenly Elena and five mercenaries arrived and quickly liberated the village by poisoning it with heroin cigarettes.
The mercenaries then blew up the Galeo Diamond Mine but refused to take any of the extracted treasure. Elena then attempted to shoot Val but she narrowly escaped and returned to New York. Presently, Elena reveals that she deliberately aimed at Val to arouse her curiosity and make her search. However, Val is puzzled as to why she and Snow White didn’t take any of the million dollar diamonds from the Galeo mine. This leads him to realize that Elena’s goal behind the bank robberies isn’t money, but something much more sinister.
What is the story that Elena tells Val?
Elena tells Val a fairy tale about a young girl who loves her father very much but a tragic incident causes his death and changes her life forever. It turns out to be a true story that happened six months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In it, a girl and her father fire a missile at a car but realize that one of the two passengers has escaped. While searching, they find the young girl hiding in the woods and the other girl stabs her in the abdomen.
Initially, Val thinks the father and daughter in the story were Elena and her father. However, Val is shocked when Elena reveals that the girl who was stabbed was her and that her father died after their car caught fire from the missile. Despite the attack, Elena managed to outrun them and kill them. She eventually recovered from her injury, but still bears the scar on her stomach that she shows Val.
With this incident she calls a “fairy tale gone wrong”, Elena begins to toy with Val’s mind and drops mysterious clues as to the true reason for her plans. Additionally, she indicates her penchant for fairy tales since her mercenary group is also called Snow White.
Read more: Who is Elena Federova in Endgame? Who plays it?
