Strike Back finale is an emphatic punch to end Season 6

The Strike Back Season 6 finale delivers an action-packed conclusion, but also has a lot to say about what its characters go through to reach the end.

The Strike Back season finale might be the most insightful way to blow things up on TV.

The Cinemax series finished its penultimate season on Friday, and it provided everything that viewers were expecting from the closer. There were chemical weapons, fistfights, gunfights and one heck of a huge explosion to cap it all off.

Plus, audiences finally learned Pavel Kuragin’s (Alec Newman) real name and the dysfunctional backstory that turned him into a world war-attempting “blunt instrument,” which of course only brings up comparisons to James Bond in Casino Royale.

Bodies dropped, property was destroyed, and one character managed to get promoted and then demoted in the same hour. All in all, it was an incredibly productive affair.

SPOILER ALERT: The remainder of this article contains spoilers for the Strike Back season finale.

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But let’s step back for a second. Strike Back is more than just an action show; it’s also got a very complex band of characters, and it’s those characters who make the action worthwhile. After all, if you don’t care about the characters, then there’s just a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing.

There’s always something underneath, and in this finale, it was awfully darned depressing.

The message of “Episode 60,” and perhaps Strike Back season 6 as a whole, was how much it sucks to be a member of Section 20. As showrunner Jack Lothian said in our interview, this isn’t the Section 20 from a couple of years ago. The sharply dressed officers in the impressive headquarters from the series premiere are a world away. These are the people who are missing a few pieces—and in this finale more than ever, it shows.

There’s Samuel Wyatt (Daniel MacPherson), who loses his chance at happiness when his wife Madison is almost killed by a hitman and promptly tells him off. MacPherson’s brilliant as Wyatt talks her through the terrifying situation, powerless to do anything but react, and also knowing it’s going to cost him everything. He also ditches the Hawaiian shirts here—as if to say he’s aware the only place he can really survive is in the Section.

Gracie Novin (Alin Sumarwata) freely admits in a conversation with Alexander Coltrane (Jamie Bamber) that she has no interest in being anything other than a soldier. As for Coltrane, he’s hurt by having to order Novin to abandon Katrina Zarkova (Yasemin Kay Allen), prioritizing the mission over the woman he’s come to care at least a little about.

The Russians don’t get out of this unscathed, though. Katrina has an emotional standoff with Pavel, where she admits she misses the man she knew, even though she’s aware now that he wasn’t real. And even Pavel winds up being sympathetic by Strike Back standards, because the episode shows fans where his affection for Katrina came from and that he’s still hurt by Katrina betraying him.

Everyone in this episode has something that will scar them, except for maybe Thomas McAllister (Warren Brown), who proves why he’s the team leader since he’s the one who remains a rock for everybody else as the wheels come off. Everyone suffers, and everyone understands that they’re suffering.

At the same time, if these people didn’t put themselves through all this, then there would have been a global disaster that killed millions of people. So the audience needs them, regardless of how difficult their lives are. We want them to be okay, but we know that for us to be okay, they can’t be.

This episode, in a way, justified the Strike Back reboot. This isn’t a story that could have been told with the previous cast. Damien Scott and Michael Stonebridge went through an awful lot, but they were genuinely committed to Section 20, and being part of Section 20 meant something.

Wyatt, Novin, Mac, Coltrane and even Chetri (Varada Sethu) are here because they can’t be anywhere else, and their Section 20 is a hastily assembled machine brought back to do the dirty work. They’ve already been suspended once and technically disbanded. They’re on their own, literally and metaphorically, and there’s a sense of inevitability.

Strike Back Season 7 will be the last, and it’s going to explore what being part of this team means anymore. That’s perfect timing and a perfect theme because the Season 6 finale makes audiences question what it takes to save the world, and how long these heroes can keep doing it.

As much as this show is fantastic and we wish it could last forever, “Episode 60” proves that the people who save the day, deserve to be saved too. And if the series doesn’t end with Samuel Wyatt on a beach in a Hawaiian shirt holding a pina colada, well, that’d be a missed opportunity.

Strike Back will return for Season 7 at a later date. For more on Strike Back and other Cinemax shows, follow the Cinemax category at Hidden Remote.