Day of the Jackal viewers left stunned by shocking twist in latest episode

New series sees actor transform into a villainous assassin

The Day of the Jackal viewers have been left stunned by the shock ending of the latest episode of the Eddie Redmayne thriller.

The series seesThe Danish Girl actor take a rare turn as a villainous assassin tasked with killing tech CEOs and influential people across Europe.

Redmayne’s Jackal utilises a wide variety of disguises and aliases using prosthetics to keep himself hidden from the authorities, but he soon finds out that MI6 agent Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch) is determined to catch him after one of his assassinations is traced to a British gunmaker.

The series is currently on its eighth episode, which has a jaw-dropping ending that pieces together the puzzle about how the Jackal faked his own death as an army sniper and was able to reinvent himself as a millionaire assassin.

*Warning: spoilers for the latest episode of Day of the Jackal are below*.

Throughout the series, Pullman and her team are trying to uncover the real identity of the Jackal. They get a tip-off from a veteran who revealed that the only known sniper recorded to shoot a target within the distance of 3,815 meters was Alexander Duggan, a former military sniper who died in Afghanistan (3,815 meters is the distance of the Jackal’s first shot in the series).

Pullman isn’t convinced Duggan is dead and gets permission from the foreign secretary to see his classified documents, which state that he died when his entire division was blown up years prior.

Eddie Redmayne in the ‘Day of the Jackal’ series (Marcell Piti/Sky)

In the middle of the episode, viewers see a flashback to when Duggan (AKA the Jackal) was serving in a special forces group in Afghanistan. While visiting Croatia on a holiday, Duggan and his spotter are approached by a henchman for a powerful politician, who offers them £20,000 to assassinate a powerful newspaper owner.

But when Duggan and his spotter complete the job for the sizable sum, they don’t accept another because they both have to serve the rest of their time in the army.

At the end of the episode, Duggan seems disillusioned with continuing to serve in the army when he could be making thousands as a private assassin and wants to find a way out.

While travelling with his division’s convoy in Afghanistan, he nominates himself to go and walk ahead to check for landmines. He asks his close friend and accomplice to spot him, and when they get far enough from the vehicles, Duggan pulls out a remote and sets off a bomb that he planted earlier, killing everyone in their division, apart from the two of them.

Lashana Lynch as Bianca Pullman in ‘The Day of the Jackal’ (© 2023 Carnival Film & Television Limited)

The episode ends after the explosion, with Duggan telling his accomplice that they need to get out of the region without being seen. It’s assumed that the British army then reported them as dead with the rest of their crew, revealing that Duggan used this event to fake his own death to become a millionaire assassin.

Viewers were left shocked by the twist, and the Jackal’s ruthless decision to kill a dozen of his fellow soldiers for his own benefit.

“That was a brutal episode of The Day Of The Jackal,” said one person on X/Twitter.

Another added: “That ending in the latest day of the jackal is some crazy s*** son. Another fantastic episode, probably the finest work British tele has done for a while.”

One person said the episode had made them “anxious” while another simply said: “damn.”

“So I am going to wait another Thursday for The Day of the Jackal episode eight? Arghhhh,” said another exasperated viewer who will have to wait until next Thursday to find out what happens next.

The series, which has new episodes streaming weekly on Sky and Now TV, is based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel of the same name, which has been turned into two films, The Day of the Jackal (1973) and The Jackal (1997).

In The Independent’s annual ranking of the best series released in 2024,The Day of the Jackal came in 10th place, out of 20 shows. TV critic Nick Hilton ranked Netflix’s Baby Reindeer as the best series of the year, with Shōgun and Mr and Mrs Smith following in second and third place.