Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Netflix’s ‘FUBAR’ brings back the Brunners, who face yet another challenging task, failing which might mean the end of the world as we know it. The season picks up some time after the events of Season 1, where Boro Polonia crashed Tally and Donnie’s wedding and was killed by Luke and Emma. Before dying, he also leaked their identities, due to which the CIA had to send them into hiding until all their enemies who bought the information about them from Boro were neutralised. But then, a new crisis appears on the horizon, and Luke and his team are forced to jump in. SPOILERS AHEAD.
FUBAR Season 2 Plot Synopsis
The season begins with Luke getting a call for a meeting with Dot, where she reveals that a man named Dante Cress is hell bent on destroying the world. His plan is to wipe out the majority of humanity, which means he is planning for something of catastrophic levels. Dot gives Luke a code that can be broken using “the Greta Key.” It turns out that he plans to permanently shut down America’s power grid, which would collapse not only the country but the entire world. But he is not doing it by himself. He has delegated the task to Greta Nelso, who will receive a lot of money to blow up four key locations which are necessary to keep the grid running.
The problem is that Greta is Luke’s ex-flame, who he thought had died in 1989. Not only is she extremely motivated to get the job done, but she also taps into Luke’s feelings for her to compromise his judgment, or so it seems to Emma. Greta is assisted in her task by Theodore Chips, a former MI6 agent, who went rogue a while back. He takes a shine to Emma, even though the circumstances under which they meet almost always have them trying to stop or kill one another. While Luke and his team try to stop Greta, the question about the identity of Dante Cress looms over the team.
Was Theodore Chips Dante Cress? What Happens to Him?
When Theodore Chips is introduced at the beginning of Season 2, he appears to be just another pawn in a larger game being controlled by the mysterious Dante Cress. In the end, however, it turns out that he and Cress are the same person. Theodore Chips is his real name; he worked for MI6, and he had a father who also worked in the secret services and made a name for himself. However, somewhere along the way, Chips realised that his father valued the work so much above him that he was ready to kill his own son if it meant seeing the mission through.
At the same time, he also realised that the people they were trying to protect and the mission they were giving their lives for were often for trivial stuff, like preventing some politician’s affair from coming out. All these things led Chips to the conclusion that spies and secret agents like him and his father were giving their lives for nothing. He convinced himself that humans are generally bad, especially the ones in power. Because there was no right way to rectify the system, he decided to take the wrong route, which meant killing off as many people as possible. Whatever remains of humanity would have a chance to start over from scratch.
The easiest way to accomplish this task would be to start a war between two nuclear superpowers, which led him to the US. His plan was to sow the seeds of the conflict and then watch the world burn itself down. However, the plan to shut down the country’s power grid was a distraction. Through his father, Chips knew that Luke was the only person left alive who knew the codes to America’s nuclear arsenal and could manually enter the code to launch them. However, he knew that he couldn’t coerce the man into doing his bidding, so he laid a trap for him in the form of Greta, completely aware of their history.
He knew that Greta’s involvement would draw Luke into trying to stop her, and through a careful manipulation of events, he could have Luke exactly where he wanted him, which is what happens eventually. When Luke enters the code, the nuclear device is activated and is ready for launch. Chips’ plan was to leave the site or confine himself in a safe space while the missile launched. However, his plan turns to dust when Emma bars his only way out, and he is burned alive in the flames of the missile he was so desperate to launch.
Does Greta Die? Why does Emma Lie About Her Death?
When we are introduced to Greta, she is highly motivated to see her plan through. One of the primary reasons behind her motivation is the money she is promised. Since faking her death in 1989, she had been living a lonely life, always looking over her shoulder, and taking whatever job that came her way. But with the promise of millions in her account, she figured out that she would never have to work again. Even if the world blew up into pieces, the money would allow her to watch it all go down from a safe space. So, she decided to go for it.
However, reuniting with Luke brought her back in touch with her good side, a part she was forced to smother in order to survive. When he assures her that she can still stop and save the world so that they can finally have their happily ever after, she decides to switch sides and helps Luke and his team stop the missile. Unfortunately, it turns out that once the missile has been launched, there is no way to stop it from launching into the sky. However, there is still a way to stop it from blowing up and starting World War III. To do that, someone has to be inside the missile to disable the second phase of its launch, but that would mean that the person wouldn’t survive.
Taking responsibility for her actions, as she helped Chips aka Cress all this time, Greta doesn’t blink twice before offering herself as the sacrifice. This is partly because she knows she has no future with Luke because he is in love with Tally, and while he may have a soft spot for Greta, he doesn’t actually love her. She wants to save the world so that he can have his happy ending, even if it’s not with her. As expected, the missile goes up in the sky, and Greta successfully disables it from launching into the second phase to explode. The missile goes down with Greta in it.
When Luke and Emma seek out the fallen missile, they don’t expect Greta to survive, because it is something no one could have survived. However, Greta is not like most people. When she entered the missile, she had the tech she’d previously used to blow up a dam. This tech formed such a strong cushion around her that she survived the impact, even if with a few broken ribs. Interestingly, while Emma finds her still alive, she declares Greta dead when she reports to her boss. Emma does it because she knows that while Greta has done her part in saving the world, it doesn’t change the fact that she worked with the bad guys and did some very bad things.
So, if the CIA caught her, she would be thrown into prison, and despite all her flaws, she didn’t deserve that. Moreover, she had been running away from people who wanted her dead for most of her life, and Emma didn’t want to put her through this again. Her decision is also influenced by her father’s belief that deep down, Greta is a good person, and the latter’s sacrifice proves his point. So, Emma gives her an out by helping her fake her death the second time. With about a quarter of a billion in her bank account and no one chasing after her, Greta is finally free to live her life exactly how she wants it.
Does Tina Die? What is the Military Term Farkas Mentions?
While the team is busy tackling the threat of Dante Cress, they have another enemy in the midst. At the end of Season 1, it was revealed that Tina is the mole inside the team and has been feeding information to the Russians all along. She continues this task in this season as well, and to save her tracks, she even tries to frame Farkas. Eventually, however, the truth comes to light, and it shocks the entire team. She is still in custody when the Dane is kidnapped by the Russians, and in exchange for him, they demand the return of their secret agent. It seems like a fair trade because the Dane has been very helpful to the team so far. But after the trade is done, Dane reveals that while Tina was a Russian agent, she hadn’t been a very good one in recent times.
It turns out that the info that she had been feeding them wasn’t exactly useful. Moreover, when she was working with the team, she would actively give them the wrong info to make sure that everyone on the team, especially Barry, was safe. However, when she is arrested, she does not divulge this part and maintains a hardened exterior to make it seem that she never cared about any of them in the first place. The revelation of her actions, where she sabotaged and misinformed her Russian bosses, shows that she did care for the team and saved them on several occasions, even though she was working for the enemy.
But now, the problem is that the Russians know about it. This means that the trade wasn’t exactly to get their prized agent back, but to get their hands on the one who betrayed them. Discovering that they have left her to be tortured and possibly killed by the Russians, Barry and Aldon, who were sent to oversee the exchange, immediately contact the team, informing them of the urgency of the matter. Considering how things pan out, it is clear that the team is now going to try to save Tina. With Roo becoming the new regional director, it falls on her to green light the mission.
Had it been someone else, they probably would have preferred to leave Tina to her own devices. However, Roo is not only more empathetic, but she also has a very enthusiastic duo in Barry and Aldon, who are already on their way to get to Tina. Even if she doesn’t care about Tina, Roo cares about Barry and Aldon, which is why it is confirmed that she will give the mission a go. However, it will require the team to go into Russian territory and carry out a mission that might not end well for any of them. Roo knows it, and so does Farkas, which is why he is reminded of “the military term for when everything goes totally to shit,” aka FUBAR.
What Happens to Carter and Donnie? Where do They Go?
While Luke and his team have the weight of the world on their shoulders as they try to stop the nefarious plans of Dante Cress, Carter and Donnie go on their own journey. Being civilians and having recently found out about Luke and Emma’s line of work, there isn’t much they can do. They are already considered the good-for-nothing weak links, which is why, when they are entrusted with the task of taking care of Aldon’s pig, Hamster, Carter takes it very seriously. When lose track of the animal, they decide to go out and find it, which lands them in a very precarious situation with a biker gang. Things get worse when Donnie identifies himself as a CIA agent, which makes the gang thirsty for their blood.
Somehow, Carter and Donnie manage to save themselves, but in the process they unintentionally end up killing one of the gang members. Having gotten out of the ordeal unscathed, they are ready to put it behind them, but then, it turns out that it was no ordirnay gang they crossed paths with. Moreover, the man they killed was someone higher up the food chain and a very significant person. While he died by accident, when an AC unit fell on top of his head and crushed him, everyone believes that Carter and Donnie killed him. The gang, too, believes this, which is why, they want revenge on the duo.
Considering that the gang is spread throughout the country and they would leave no stone unturned to kill Carter and Donnie, the CIA is forced to place the duo in protection once again. By this time, everyone else is off the hook because Greta used her millions of dollars to eliminate everyone who bought the information about the Brunners from Boro. With them gone, the threat on Luke and Emma and their loved ones is also gone. They are all free to live their lives as they want it, but with Carter and Donnie falling into a new debacle, there is no choice but to ship them off somewhere else.
To escape the gang’s reach, they are sent to Greenland, where they will have to live for the next couple of years until the gang, and hence the danger, is completely eradicated. The last we see of them is on board a ship where they will have to work hard to earn their keep. Both men express their disdain towards Tally and Emma, whom they blame for their current predicament. But there is nothing anyone can do about it, so they have no option but to resign to their fate and wait for CIA to do their job, which might take much longer than what they are told.
Why Doesn’t Emma Join Unit 9? Does Luke Retire?
One thing we quickly learn about Emma Brunner is that she is a highly ambitious person. She always has her eye on being the best and to achieve the next best thing. At the beginning of the second season, she reveals her desire to join Unit 9 of the CIA. This is an extremely elite unit, which her father used to be a part of. He warns her that being accepted for the unit is extremely difficult, but he also believes that if someone can do it, it is Emma. Over the course of the season, she proves herself increasingly capable of breaking into the unit, and sure enough, when the Dante Cress case has been wrapped up, she is told that she has been accepted into the unit.
Considering how much she wanted it, it would make sense for her to readily accept the position. However, she reveals that she has turned it down. A major reason for this is her team. While she thought she was ready to move on from them and start the next chapter of her life, the confinement and the mission brought them closer together to the point that they are all now her family. Moreover, with Luke declaring his retirement, again, someone will need to lead the team, and Emma believes that leading the team would be the best use of her talents. Moreover, it seems that she might have feelings for Aldon.
While she previously said that she doesn’t have time for any romance, the pull that she feels towards Aldon is pretty evident, especially after she asks him out to dinner. He already has feelings for her, so there is a good chance that they might want to explore it, and it cannot be done if Emma leaves for Unit 9. All of this combined leads her to change her mind. And perhaps, the same could hold true for her father.
While Luke is ready to retire and even proposes Tally for a second wedding, we know that his heart will remain with the team. Even though he is ready to give up the leadership to Emma, the team might still need him, especially with his daughter out in the field. This means that there is a very good chance that we will see him back in action, even if in a different capacity than his current role. The spy life is not ready to let go of him so soon.
Read More: FUBAR Season 3: What to Expect?
