Hate, like love, can lead to strange bedfellows.
After meeting their new leader, Remy Scott, the FBI: Most Wanted team had to handle an attack on some Army vets, hinting at a bigger threat. Meanwhile, Hana made a major personal discovery to shake up her life.
This made Reaper a thrilling episode for the team to deal with raising stakes.
The war comes home
At a motel, a man (Timothy Ware-Hill) answered a call from his wife, claiming to be at the office. He opened the door to greet a man, the pair using internet hashtags. It seemed this was a hookup, but it went badly with the visitor slitting the man’s throat and muscles.
Remy and Hana walked to the office as Hana was approached by Anthony Esposito (Fenton Lawless), a private investigator working for a lawyer who delivered Hana a letter from her birth mother in New Zealand.
Sadly, it turned out Hana’s mother had passed away, leaving her $50,000 with Hana affected by never being able to meet her. They were interrupted by a call on how a Senator from Virginia wanted them to look into the murder. Scott told Hana to take some time before joining them.
Arriving at the motel outside D.C., the team clashed with the local cops right away as the victim was Art Weller, a reporter doing a story on police corruption for Senator Lindell. He had died of blood loss, meaning the killer wanted him to suffer and evidence he’d been assaulted by a man.
The team realized his computer was gone and mused on the possibility some cops might be involved.
Weller’s widow, Ginger (Siovhan Christensen), refused to accept her husband was gay and didn’t understand why he was at the hotel. He had been a former Army Ranger and close to former Army friend Chris Ashtels although the pair had argued on something the other day.
Art’s editor was stunned at the news, relating he’d been working on a story about Covid relief fraud as well as police corruption. Hana saw Art hadn’t worked on either story for weeks.
In Maryland, Remy and Raines found Chris at the groundbreaking for a new youth center, musing on his wanting to keep a relationship with Art quiet. Suddenly, Chris was shot with the crowd panicking.
The agents headed to the nearby mansion, chasing a man outside as he carjacked a passerby to escape.
Hana found DNA on the sniper rifle left behind matching Art’s killer. Scott and Raines wondered if the sniper might have been in Art and Chris’s unit or a cop.
The terrified passenger begged the gunman to let him go, offering money with the man angry at the suggestion. He ranted on “high and mighty Americans,” saying one thing but doing another and “I’m sick of the lies.”
Hana found a photo of the gunman and how he was using a specific security company’s card system. He was Farzad Nuri (Artur Zai Benson), an interpreter for Chris and Art’s unit who had escaped Afghanistan after its fall but his family left behind.
Oritz mused the man wanted revenge for his family being abandoned. They then realized the keycard system Nuri was using was also used at local army bases.
The attacks get deadlier
Farzad had lived in a halfway house with Sharif Dawari (Joseph Kamal) in New Jersey. Sharif said he didn’t know where Farzad was but was worried he was taking a job at a club. He noted how Farzad was a traditionalist and he was still amazed how America gave women an education and opportunities denied in Afghanistan.
Dawari talked of the refugees trying to help each other and didn’t believe in violence. They used a local contact called “GI Joe” for help, including guns for a rough neighborhood.
Scott and Hana talked to a gun shop owner to get info on Joe Haas (Nick Mauldin), a former soldier. Raines and Ortiz found the car Farzad hijacked with the owner’s body in the trunk and an odd powder by his seat.
Joe’s wife, Sandra (Rachel Kenney) confessed she was about to leave him as she couldn’t take his constantly being on the road and Joe’s mood swings. He had spent five years training the Aghan police, losing a friend in the process only to watch everything “fought for 20 years gone in 11 days.”
Investigating Joe’s room, they discovered a printer for key cards. Hana found a search history for Raahul Azizi (Anton Obeid), an author who had praised the U.S. pullout of Afghanistan. They realized that the key cards could work for colleges too.
Azizi was already being held prisoner by Joe and Farzad, who didn’t like his take on the pullout being a good thing for Farzad’s country. The pair posted a video forcing Azizi to renounce his words.
Hearing a train in the background, Hana was trying to track the source down. It was a moot point as Farzad suddenly beheaded Azizi on camera.
Stopping a deadly attack
The team investigated the crime scene, confused why Farzad would kill someone who agreed with freedom from the Taliban. Hana related the substance from the car was a rare kind of tree sap that led to a farm owned by Joe’s family.
In Massachusetts, they found a small bunker that contained Art’s laptop and evidence they were putting something together. They worried the pair were ramping up to another attack.
Art’s computer revealed he was doing a story on the military covering up a drone strike that killed several civilians. But it also showed a photo of Farzad…who was not the same man everyone knew.
Remy realized “Farzad” was modeling every murder after the victim’s “crime,” such as a sniper attack on Chris. Working on a device, Joe was worried about the murders, but “Farzad” told him they were hurting the people who ruined soldiers’ lives.
It hit Joe that for a translator, “Farzad” sure had a lot of soldier skills. He simply replied that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” with Joe agreeing to their partnership.
A search revealed “Farzad” was Badi Wazeer, a Taliban operative who lost his family in that drone strike. He had scheduled an e-mail boasting of a terrorist attack, but it was sent out early, making the team realize they were on a clock.
The team mused on the irony of a Taliban operative and an American soldier united by their hate. They figured the target was a celebration of Afghanistan women at MIT.
As the team arrived, they saw a modified drone fly in to start firing a machine gun at the crowd. Raines found Joe controlling it to gun him down while Remy and Hana took out Wazeer. Scott managed to shoot down the drone before it could harm anyone else.
Scott congratulated Hana for her work with her admitting she was distracted because of her mother. Scott talked of his father being dead and his mother with Alzheimer’s and preferred remembering her the way she was. “Memories can be very powerful.”
They made a deal of Hana taking the money and Remy seeing his mother. At home, Hana had a visitor in the form of her half-brother, George Kouka (Matt Mercurio).
He asked Ortiz if he and Hana were dating and mused “too bad” when he heard they were just roommates.
Hana was overcome after finding photos of her mother as George began regaling her with family stories.
It was a rough manhunt for the team, but it did have a happier ending for Hana.
FBI: Most Wanted Season 3 airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS.