"You all want guarantees. There are no guarantees! So if you want to back out, now’s your chance. But I am going to kill Cormac and take his precious fucking hotel with or without you."
— Winston Scott
Winston's assault on the Continental begins.
Tropes:
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Winston tells Mazie the story of the time a bank screwed over his mother and she broke, fell to her knees, and begged for money, and how she had to remind the man that she worked there cleaning the floors.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Lou finally joins the fight in the Continental and she and Miles take on the Twins together.
- Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: KD comes along in the tunnels, gun raised, just as Cormac is admitting to Winston that he knew about her family being there when he sent Winston and Frankie to torch the place.Cormac: Stand down. The bounty's off.
KD: No. This is my kill.
Cormac: Chill out, chica. Run along home now-
[KD fires her gun. Winston reflexively grabs his chest as if he's been hit. After a moment, he realizes he's not the one she just shot.]
Cormac: What, you missed him from there?
[Cormac suddenly feels light-headed, clutches his chest, and notices his hand and suit are stained with blood from a fresh gunshot wound.]
Cormac: (Looks up at KD) I did something to you, didn't I?
KD: Yeah. (Shoots Cormac in the head, putting him down for good) - Bavarian Fire Drill: Gene gets a woman out of her apartment, securing a view of the Continental, by putting on a jumpsuit and pretending to be an exterminator hired by the landlord and "finding" a dead rat.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Charon agreed to help because Frankie was one of the only people in the Continental kind to him for his own sake and even gave him money and guns so that one day he could escape back to Nigeria to be with his family.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Cormac bashes Orson's head on a desk then drags him over to the biometric scanner to activate the Defensionem protocol. Karma catches up to Cormac when Winston severs his hand to deactivate it.
- Broken Pedestal: Don Li informs Lou that her father worked for the Continental, that he killed the family that actually built their dojo and was allowed to keep it because he was an obedient assassin, that he was happy to use guns on the job.
- Bullying a Dragon: Because he doesn't initially identify himself as a cop, Mayhew simply gets his ass kicked for bothering Lou.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: As Cormac realizes that KD shot him instead of Winston, he simply asks her, with understanding, "I did something to you, didn't I?"
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The one armed orphan picks up a remote in the armory under the dojo. Lou later shows him what it does, by using it to blow up the dojo with Don Li and all his men inside, trashing the place.
- A literal case as the Orphan Master shows Lou her father's gun (which she didn't know he had), noting that it is loaded. When Lou is being choked out by the male Twin, the orphan drops the gun to her so she can shoot him in the head.
- Chekhov's Skill: The female Twin's flexibility serves her well in her fight with Yen, including letting her No-Sell what should have been a broken neck/back.
- *Click* Hello:
- As Winston and Charon are trying to get information from the dying Edwin on where Cormac is going, there's a click as KD turns up and puts her gun to Winston's head, and then proceeds to march him to her room with the intent of killing him.
- As Winston and Cormac are facing off in the tunnels under the hotel, and Cormac is admitting he knew that there was an innocent family in the apartment he sent Winston and Frankie to torch years ago, KD emerges from the shadows and cocks her gun as she points it at Cormac, having now decided to redirect her revenge at him.
- Connected All Along: Detective KD is the child from the fire Cormac sent Frankie and Winston to start all those years ago. She's been after Frankie for years not because she gives a damn about gun running, but because she wants revenge.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: When Miles tries to go up against the male twin on his own, he can't even touch the man. If not for Lou showing up, he would have died.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: Lou is badly outclassed by assassins from the Continental, especially surprised and injured, but she still manages to get a few licks in.
- Deceptive Legacy: Lou stands up to Orphan Master to defend the shop that "my father built." Orphan Master wrecks her world by revealing her dad killed the family that really built it as he was a gun for hire and then kept working for the mob. He shows her her dad's gun (which he claimed he never used) and how Lou's brother knew and kept it secret from her. Lou can only stand in shock at realizing what a monster her dad was, letting Orphan Master trash the shop with impunity (though she does blow him up with the leftover C4 later).
- Dramatic Irony:
- "I think we can both agree that it's not the suit, but what's inside the suit that counts." Fans of the franchise know that Winston's talking about the special armored suits produced by the Continental for its assassins.
- Lou accused her brother of racing into this gang life as a sign of rebellion against their dad. "You wanted to be the opposite of everything he stood for." Lou is naturally rocked to later discover their dad was an even worse killer than her brother could ever be.
- Dressing as the Enemy: Winston has the Bowery soldiers dress in nice suits and pose as patrons of the Continental. Cormac ignorantly leads them to the armory without realizing they're not on his side.
- Dying Declaration of Love: As he dies, Lemmy admits to Winston that he actually loves an ascot.
- Face Death with Dignity:
- Lemmy having a grenade sent to him through the pneumatic tubes only causes him to sigh dejectedly in the moments before it detonates. Even though that doesn't kill him right away, he still meets his end with grace.
- The female Twin has a couple of precious moments to understand exactly what's about to happen to her, and her response is to maintain her stoic expression, right to the end.
- Recognizing that the building is coming down and she's trapped on the roof, Yen just takes a seat and looks at the pool.
- Facial Horror: The Adjudicator's mask falls from her face after Winston guns her down, revealing that she has no lips. How she is able to speak perfectly despite not having lips is a whole other question.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing:
- Just before Cormac walks into the antechamber to the armory, where Winston and Charon are being held at gunpoint, Winston compliments the men on their suits.
- A small detail, but a very important one to anyone familiar with the High Table's rules. Just before he guns down the Adjudicator, Winston purposefully steps down to street level from the bottom part of the stoop that ascends up to the Continental's doors. As a quick refresher, the protection, and therefore rules, of the Continental only extend to the property itself, not the surrounding street. By leaving the Continental grounds, however slightly, he is simultaneously no longer no longer under its protection, but also not beholden to its rules, so he can kill the Adjudicator without consequence. This is further added onto when the Adjudicator accuses Winston moments before she is shot of not knowing the rules, and he answers back that he does, indeed, know the rules. Therefore an added layer of his message is that, by showing he is willing to leave the Continental's protection to kill, he will get his hands dirty to defend his position, but not violate the sanctity of the property he is sworn to protect and maintain.
- Foreshadowing: KD tries to connect with Lou by saying she understands what she's going through with Miles, that "I had a brother". Note the past tense.
- Friendly Sniper: Gene gives the woman whose apartment he's hijacked friendly advice about taking care of her plants, then offers to come back and let her take advantage of his horticultural expertise.Gene: I apologize. How presumptuous.
- A Handful for an Eye: The male Twin uses a handful of broken glass to disorient Lou while fighting her and Miles.
- Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: It appears Lou was practically the only person who had no idea her father was a ruthless gun for hire.
- Irony: Invoked by Winston when he invites Mazie to an abandoned bank to talk about why she didn't want his money.
- Impaled Palm: Yen stops the female Twin from stabbing her with a punch dagger, then uses that dagger to go after her.
- It's Personal: The reason KD has been going after Winston and Frankie so hard is because she is the Sole Survivor of the family they killed when they were kids. When Cormac tells Winston that he knew the family would be home when he sent them to torch the building, KD kills him and spares Winston.
- Karmic Death: KD intends to burn Winston alive so he'll know how her family felt, but a timely shot from Gene prevents her from going through with it.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Cormac dies at the hands of the sole survivor of a family he arranged to have burned alive, twenty years before, mere moments after they learn he was responsible.
- Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Yen has a suicide vest primed to go, the female Twin has her dead to rights with an assault rifle... but when Yen tosses the detonator, the Twin gladly drops her rifle so they can kill each other like civilized people.
- Lock-and-Load Montage: When the red light is activated, we are given a montage of assassins throughout the Continental arming themselves with various weapons and leaving their rooms to seek out Winston and his crew.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Winston is entirely confused as to why the cops are snooping around the dojo, not knowing that they were already investigating Miles and Frankie for gun running.
- Ludicrous Gibs: The female Twin wrestles Yen into the rooftop pool and stabs her a few times, then stumbles out carrying Yen's bomb vest. Unfortunately for her, Yen finds the remote, splattering her all over the rooftop.
- Made of Iron: The male Twin is ridiculously tough. He gets up almost immediately from a block of C4 going off a few feet from him, shielded only by the body of a mook he puts in front of him. Miles was hiding behind the bar and can barely drag himself out. Miles punches him in the stomach twice and he doesn't even budge. Lou has to shoot him through the back of the head and out the eye to stop him.
- Moe Greene Special: Lou shoots the male twin through the back of the head, with the bullet exiting out his right eye.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Cormac taunts Winston about deliberately tricking him and Frankie into killing a family, not knowing that the daughter of said family is right behind him. KD's rage immediately switches to him and spares Winston.
- Nice to the Waiter: Turns out Frankie, well aware of what it can be like working for Cormac, made it a point to befriend Charon and help provide him with a means of escape. As a result, Charon was more than glad to join up with Winston's team.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: KD inflicts one upon two assassins who recognize her as a cop and try to kill her, disabling one with a chop to the throat that crushes his windpipe, while proceeding to use her brass knuckles to cave in the other assassin's face.
- No MacGuffin, No Winner: When Cormac is cornered at the armory, he inserts the key into the lock, then snaps the key in half so no one can access it. He then kills the lights as a distraction and escapes in the confusion.
- No Ontological Inertia: Cormac triggers the Defensionem protocol, starting the process of destroying the Continental. Despite it very obviously causing the structure to decay simply by being activated, Winston deactivating it with seconds to spare arrests any further damage.
- Off the Rails: Between Charon and the cops, Winston's plan is doomed before it even starts... except that's the plan.
- Offscreen Teleportation:
- Oh, Crap!: Mayhew, who's in on the secret of the Continental, recognizes the gold coin for what it is and quietly begs KD not to cross that line.
- Once More, with Clarity: In the beginning of the episode, Winston looks in the trunk of a car where he and his brother used to sleep. Later on, he gifts a bank and suits to the Bowery Queen, telling her that what's behind the suits is important. At the end of the episode, as he's speaking with the Adjudicator, it's revealed that the coin press was in the trunk and later behind the suits, which is how the Bowery soldiers got into the Continental undetected.
- Pet the Dog: The Orphan Master tells Lou the truth about her father and then leaves her alone, and allows the orphan who betrayed him to stay with her. His charity gets him killed.
- Power Fist: KD carries a set of brass knuckles with her when she enters the Continental, and uses them to deadly effect against two assassins who hold her up at gunpoint when they recognize her as a cop.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: Cormac sent Winston and Frankie to torch a building knowing the family was still there. He wanted them to know what it was like to kill someone and make them into soldiers.
- Refuge in Audacity:
- Winston kills the Adjudicator in cold blood to get the High Table's attention and force them into a deal, and since he's running the Continental decades later, it absolutely worked.
- On a smaller scale, Gene managing to schmooze the lady he took hostage so he could use her apartment as a sniper perch so well that she asks him out for a date (sort of). And he'll probably take her up on that.
- The Reveal:
- KD is the daughter of the family that Winston and Frankie ignorantly burned to death in a flashback in the previous episode.
- Cormac sent Frankie and Winston to burn that building knowing there was a family there because he wanted to give them a horrific crime they could never walk away from, because "that's how you make a soldier".
- Saying Too Much: In an attempt to Break Them by Talking before killing Winston, Cormac admits he sent Frankie and Winston to the building knowing a family was in there... with the girl who survived the arson standing behind him holding a gun.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: The Defensionem protocol brings down the Continental by injecting some sort of fluid into the foundations, destabilizing the structure and causing it to collapse within ten minutes if not canceled.
- Slow-Motion Pass-By: As Winston is crossing the Rhodes Hotel lobby after leaving the shootout in his suite, KD is entering the lobby from the street. The camera slows down as the two pass each other and make eye contact, ramping back up to real time as she calls out to Winston and then draws her gun on him.
- Straw Misogynist: Cormac goes on a stoned rant against the Adjudicator, first calling her a "rat-chewed mutant", then switching to religious metaphor about how she "comes from the rib" while he comes "from the marrow of the Almighty".
- Taking You with Me: Yen initially plans to blow herself up with the Twins so she can be with Frankie in death, but Miles distracts her long enough for the Twins to fight back, thwarting that plan.
- Took a Level in Badass: Lou was already a competent fighter, albeit outclassed by the Twins, but when she acknowledges her father's legacy and embraces it as her own, she knocks it up a notch.
- Trojan Prisoner: Winston allows himself to be captured by Cormac's men at the Rhodes Hotel, knowing he'll be brought to Cormac's office. Then Gene snipes his bodyguards and Charon reveals he's been on Winston's side all along.
- Two-Keyed Lock: The Defensionem protocol requires a dual biometric scan to activate, one being the manager of the hotel and the other being the technician on duty in operations.
- Villainous Breakdown: Cormac gets high and starts ranting to Charon as his deadline draws closer. Once Winston has mounted his assault on the hotel, Cormac reaches out to the High Table as a desperate last measure, then decides to bring the entire hotel down to spite his enemies.
- Wicked Pretentious: Cormac beats Orson to death in Operations, calling him a "turgid lackey". ("turgid" - swollen, distended, congested. Orson's fat.)
- The Worf Effect:
- The male Twin easily dominates Lou and Miles individually, and the duo only briefly match him when fighting as a team. It takes the orphan giving Lou her father's gun to finally stop him.
- The female Twin gives Yen a serious fight, and the only reason Yen wins is through a Groin Attack and fortunate placement of her bomb vest.
- Worthy Opponent: The female Twin is willing to go one on one with Yen, throwing away her gun after Yen throws away her detonator and bomb vest.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: After killing the assassin shooting at Winston in the Rhodes Hotel lobby, KD steals a gold coin off the man's corpse and uses it to buy her way into the Continental. Despite the woman at the front desk most likely recognizing her from her past visit (where she definitely wasn't in the know), simply having the coin is sufficient reason to allow her in.
♫ I'm back, back in the New York groove! ♫
