The second installment of Splinter Cell: Deathwatch gives us more questions than answers, which is a good thing. The episode uses everything that it does right in the pilot and puts it into second gear.
Be warned: spoilers ahead.
This episode opens with Sam Fisher’s barn burning, and the main antagonist of the pilot —the bearded man —watching it all crumble. After the credits roll, we are introduced to a new environment, somewhat teased in the pilot. Diana Shetland, the new CEO of her infamous father’s company, fires her whole board of advisors. While the show has not given us much information about Diana Shetland, we know from the lore of the video games that Douglas Shetland was the main antagonist in Chaos Theory. Douglas has the sympathies of video game fans, despite being a major antagonist, because he was Sam Fisher’s old friend. Diana Shetland and her half-brother seem to be moving to revitalize the Shetland name by firing the advisors who once advised her father. However, behind closed doors, Diana Shetland seems to hint that she and her stepbrother might not see eye to eye on every issue.
The rest of the episode consists of a cat-and-mouse game between the mysterious, bearded Eastern European man and Sam Fisher. Sam has been tasked with hiding the wounded agent-in-black, revealed to be named McKenna, by camping out in a secret base in Gdansk, Poland. The two women in Denmark, who had been watching over McKenna during the first episode, tell us that McKenna has critical information and must be kept alive. Time after time, Sam Fisher outwits the European team by hiding tracking devices in scarecrows and barstools, making his trackers angrier and angrier. This climaxes in a massive fight in the town square. Sam Fisher, in an excellent display of hand-to-hand combat, fends off the Eastern European fighters and ultimately faces off against the bearded man, who has been tracking him since the beginning of the series. The bearded man dives at Sam Fisher and, climactically, throws them both out of a building’s window. The fight continues on the glass-ridden ground of the town square, but Sam Fisher gets the upper hand and ends up killing the bearded man.
The episode ends with Sam Fisher and McKenna speaking for the first time. Now, out of her coma, McKenna has questions for her captor. She doesn’t know where she is or who took her there. Sam responds with a simple line and the episode title: “Dinner first, talk later.” After introductions, it becomes clear that McKenna has heard of the famous Sam Fisher and is disappointed by his old, worn-out appearance. Sam asks why everyone in Eastern Europe is after McKenna, and informs us that it’s not her they’re after, but a different man. The man she mourned in the first episode—the man from whom she took a tooth. Then, the credits roll.
This episode delves deeper into the mysteries presented in the first episode, such as: Who this mysterious bearded man is and his team of foot soldiers. Why did McKenna take that man’s tooth? What are Diana Shetland’s true intentions? And what is this agency that Sam Fisher works for? Despite the few answers we got, this episode did not disappoint. It kept us enthralled mainly through its action sequences. Though there are fewer of them in this episode, they are more entertaining than the ones in the pilot. This is primarily because the stakes are higher. Now that we know that McKenna is important and Sam Fisher has been out of the game for some time, there are greater stakes in the fight sequences because Sam Fisher must come out on top. The way the action sequences are shot also lends itself to the excitement and violence that you could expect in a Tom Clancy project. The 2D animation style lets the creators get away with epic sequences like the slow-motion fall from the top of a building onto the town square, or the overhead establishing shots of locations like Gdansk or Vilnius, which give the audience a sense of the scope of the tale.
Overall, this episode adds on to everything the first episode does well and makes us even more excited for the next episode.
Rating: 8/10