Last week's "24" ended with a missile being fired directly at the president. Or did it? In the first few minutes of this week's episode, we learn that President Heller's death was just an elaborate hoax concocted by Chloe and Jack to trick Margot into destroying the drones she still had control over. This move initially felt like a letdown, like the showrunners had gotten cold feet and decided to keep one of their few ties to the original series alive a bit longer. Not to mention the fact that the closing minutes to last week's 200th episode now pack a whole lot less punch.
As always, 24 has been about cyber-security, the surveillance state, and the contrast with a world of mistrust and extreme reciprocity that is both terror and counter-terror resulting ultimately in life and death international decision making. This week's episode as always, makes some of the narrative elements clearer and muddies others, still building on the problems of US policy operating in other countries, allies or not.
In the last episode, it appeared that President Heller got cratered by a drone-launched missile but as some may have expected Chloe put a loop in the digital video feed to the drone that is only picked up at the last moment by Margot and her son saving one drone and its missiles. Heller therefore escapes yet the remaining drone missile remains to be diverted from hitting Waterloo Station. The override box is saved only to be hijacked by Navarro who has promised to trade it to Adrian Cross for escape documents as his use of a cutout to kill Jordan is discovered by Jack. Chloe decides to remain with Cross and remain an outlaw as the episode closes. More CQB/gunfight-fu (h/t Joe-Bob Briggs) in this episode with a final assault on Margot's location and extralegal defenestration ends the threats. Remaining narrative divergence may occur as the override device, much like other magic devices in the series is able to hack all types of digital security. The Russians may make an appearance as well as other sinister players given the three remaining episodes, since other extralegal plot devices are unresolved.
Next episode
With only three episodes remaining, Jack Bauer's harrowing day crescendos as he pursues final leads at all costs. The emotional toll of the day's events escalates when Kate Morgan learns the truth about her husband and Audrey confronts Boudreau about his duplicity. Making matters incredibly worse, the scope of the terror threat widens and the potential devastation reaches new heights.
Stochastic terror update, since Jack has been doing more "lone-wolf" killing in recent seasons.
This is a list of kills made by Jack Bauer that were shown on-screen.
There are a few requirements for a death to be a confirmed kill:
Jack must be the one who causes the death.
The death must be confirmed with video evidence.
Jack must cause death, not just serious injury.
The death must have occurred on the TV show; kills from 24 fiction books, comics and games are not included.
There are 279 kills in total. In a few cases, death is not intended; however, unintended and unwanted kills are also included for the sake of completeness.
The longest run of consecutive episodes where Jack killed no people is the 10 episodes starting with "Day 1: 1:00pm-2:00pm."
The longest run of consecutive episodes where Jack killed at least one person in each is the 5 episodes starting with "Day 6: 6:00pm-7:00pm."