Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Countdown Episode 9.
AsCountdownenters its endgame, Volchek (Bogdan Yasinski) dials it all up to eleven as he puts his nuclear bombs in place, ready to annihilate all of Los Angeles. After the stabbing of their leader, Nathan Blythe (Eric Dane), task force staples Mark Meachum (Jensen Ackles) and Amber Oliveras (Jessica Camacho) jump head-first into finding the man responsible. With Episode 9, “10-33” arrives just short of the finish line, and it’s time for heads to roll.
‘Countdown’ Episode 9 Picks Up Immediately After Blythe’s Stabbing
After being stabbed by Volchekin the last episode, “10-33” begins with Blythe struggling to stay alive. Bleeding out, he crawls to his car, leaving a trail in his wake. Barely holding on, he makes it to his vehicle. Turning the sirens on, he attempts to call for help before passing out. His fate is left up in the air. Meanwhile, Meachum’s head is killing him much quicker now. He can barely hold it together as he wrestles with the pain. Butall of that is put on hold the moment he gets a call about Blythe’s condition, leaving immediately to join the rest of the team at Dignity Medical. There, Oliveras speaks with the surgeon, Dr. Julio Belchrsin (Eddie Aguirre), whom she knows from her past in Chicago. Julio soon returns to tell the task force that Blythe is in surgery. Thankfully, the knife missed all the major arteries.
Afterward, Meachum, Oliveras, and Lucas Finau (Uli Latukefu) go to investigate the crime scene while Keyonte Bell (Elliot Knight) and Evan Shepherd (Violette Beane) attempt to find the cause for why Blythe was in the alley that night.Meachum believes he knows what happenedand comes up with his theory on the spot, distracting the local detectives while Oliveras searches Belarusian diplomat Iosif Adtapov’s (Pasha Lychnikoff) car. While combing it over, she finds something and pockets it before the detectives see. Meanwhile, at headquarters, Shepherd ignores calls from her sister Molly (Michelle DeShon) while Oliveras hands over Blythe’s info. With everything coming to a head and Volchek’s threat imminent, Finau tells his wife, Amina (Nicole Lyn), to meet him with their daughters in Palm Springs, ordering her to get out of town.
While digging more into Volchek’s allies, Shepherd finds info about Sergei (Rod McLachlan) in Reseda, the man forging the terrorist’s passport and fake IDs. With only one lead to go on, Meachum, Oliveras, Bell, and Finau chase Sergei down. The man evades them for quite a while before they end up on the roof. But although Meachum has Sergei in a pinch,he struggles to keep his composure when a massive migraine strikes, nearly sending him off the roof. If not for Finau’s quick thinking, Meachum would’ve been dead here, and we can see that his demise is imminent.
‘Countdown’ Episode 9 Pushes the Task Force to Their Limit
Back at HQ, Bell and Oliveras interrogate Sergei, who offers all of Volchek’s identities if they give him a lighter sentence at a minimum security prison. The task force decides to play ball, anddiscovers that the next of Volchek’s aliases they need to investigate is “Carl Novak.“Right after, Molly calls Shepherd again with something important to tell her in person, but Shepherd hangs up. As this is going on, Meachum has a freak-out in the bathroom, unable to barely stand as he struggles with the pressure building in his head. It’s only with Oliveras' help that he’s able to stand it. But it’s not all bad news. It’s not long before Heather (Rachel Armstrong) reports that Blythe is out of surgery, and the team heads back to the hospital.
By the time the task force makes it to Dignity Medical, they find their team leader arguing with the nurse about leaving the hospital. While he won’t stay in bed for long, Meachum and Shepherd manage to convince him to at least stay for observation. While there,Oliveras speaks with Julio again and explains her concerns about Meachum’s condition. Without examining the detective personally, he cannot offer an actual diagnosis, so instead, he tells Oliveras that he would be willing to meet with Meachum — an offer he’s not sure about at first. Elsewhere, at Northfield Elementary, Amina Finau is convinced by their teacher to let her daughters go to their poetry event downtown, ignoring her husband’s desire to see them leave the city as soon as possible. Unable to get a hold of his wife, Finau grows worried about his family, and rightfully so.
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Before the action starts, Bell tells Shepherd that he’s been impressed with what she can do, reminding her that she should be proud of her work here. With the sparks between these two, we’d be surprised if a romance doesn’t blossom between them. Soon after,Shepherd calls the team into a meeting and explains the connections to Volchek’s Carl Novak alias, whom Meachum connects to a film production company(Kestrel Entertainment Productions) in Hollywood. Although the task force investigates and finds nothing, Oliveras believes they may have laundered money there, but Bell is unconvinced, believing it to be nothing more than another dead end.
‘Countdown’ Episode 9 Ends With the Fate of Los Angeles Up in the Air
After some additional prompting, Oliveras convinces Meachum to call Julio about his condition, but is interrupted by Blythe’s return. “I’ll rest when I’m dead,” he explains, getting right back to work. At first, the team struggled to understand why Volchek would want to own a production company at all, butMeachum recalls one morning when a production company moving trucks shut down an entire block and blocked off all road access. This would give Volchek the ability to move anywhere with the fissile material completely undetected. Looking into it further, Shepherd discovers that Kestrel has filed a permit to film that day in The Vine, the same spot where Finau’s family is for his daughters’ poetry reading.
At The Vine, Volchek arrives with his trucks and preps them for action, arming the bomb, and leaves. Saying their last goodbyes, Volchek and Andrej (Jonathan Von Mering) get ready to blow up Los Angeles, with the former noting that their names will be remembered forever. He wants to hear the cries of those around him, and they head inside. Meanwhile, at the poetry reading,one of Finau’s daughters gets on the podium as the task force races to get there in time. They arrive and spot the trucks, discovering that the weapons are already armed. Shepherd and Bell work to disarm the bombs from the trucks as Blythe and the rest of the team run in to take out the terrorists responsible.
As Meachum, Oliveras, and Finau wander around looking for Volchek, Finau sees his family and fires into the air, startling the crowd and ordering them to disperse immediately. It’s a shocking twist that leaves everybody scattered. But as Finau gets to his family, Meachum spots Volchek. As the two exchange glares across the square,he hits the detonator, and everything goes black. Talk about a killer cliffhanger to end on.
