In From the Cold Season 1 Episode 1 Recap – What Is Burning?

17:30 — Hotel Centro Solon. There’s a man greeting everyone from the venue – the change in his eyes from dark to white and then white to dark is noticeable. He pushes one guy off the railings upon greeting the last person. After that, he gets shot by the guards. 17:40 — another incident happens on a bus at the University Complutense, Madrid. Another character is shown changing eyes. After his eyes adjust, his behavior also changes. He becomes aggressive, telling the other guy to leave his country. He even tells the other passenger to shut up after being told to take it easy. After that, the passengers chase him. 17:34 — Plaza Mayor, Central District, when a woman changes her eyes and suddenly holds the knife and goes to stab the mother with her baby.

One morning, Rebecca Mary Leah Franklin and her mom ride a taxi in Madrid while leaving a voicemail for her dad. After that, they leave the cab and go to an apartment. Becca suddenly gets her period, so her mom buys her a tampon. While her mom is in the elevator, someone throws a smoke-grenade-like weapon that puts her to sleep. They bring Becca’s mom into a house full of people wearing black suits. She meets the CIA, showing her some photos of influential dead people with even more powerful enemies attacked by a girl named “The Whisper.” The man says that before the CIA put it all together, the bottom fell out of Russia’s economy. Its intelligence services nearly collapsed, and like that, The Whisper was gone. Some said she joined the Mossad, while others said a revolution in Bolivia. But the man thinks that The Whisper saw a chance to have her freedom once Russia wasn’t watching anymore, and she got a new identity. The name of The Whisper is Anya Petrova. Rebecca’s mom asks if they think she‘s the Russian spy, so the man tells her to come clean – giving her one chance. But then, Rebecca’s mom tells him that her name is Jenny Franklin from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She tells him that her last fight was with Susie Heyser in eighth grade, and she was kicked in the ass. After that, the guy tells the other guards to kill her because she‘s not telling the truth. When she‘s on the verge of getting killed and attacked, she fights everyone who tries to get close to her. After that, she gets caught by the CIA — everything is recorded through cameras.

Moscow, Winter 1994 — Anya the Whisper was in a bar, smoking and partying. She roamed around the venue. She went to a table looking for a guy named Woo Lao-Tzu, but he met a guy named Su-Yin. She invited Su-Yin and the girl at the table, Faina, to dance. Suddenly, Anya wakes up when her daughter calls her “mom.” Rebecca asks if she‘s okay and tells her daughter she got lost. After that, Rebecca leaves her mom to go out with Maddie and the team. Once Rebecca left, Anya cries in pain because she got beaten up. While Anya’s checking her bruises in the bathroom, the guy who got her kidnapped appears behind her. She asks what the guy wants, and the guy tells her he wants her to do what she does best. She tells him she’s no longer that person, but the guy says he suggests finding “her” because she‘s about to get busy. If she refuses, based on Title 18, Chapter 37 of the Espionage Act, she’d be spending the rest of her life in a maximum-security prison without an address or running water. Her daughter will carry all the burden that she, a secret Russian spy, bears, starting with all those college admission offices pulling her acceptance letters.

After that, they go to a room where the guy introduces himself as Special Unit Agent Chauncey Lew. He also introduces Christopher Clarke. Chris shows her the people exhibiting outrageously uncharacteristic behaviors. They know she isn’t the one who did it, but somebody is copying her old Whisper MO of seek, meet, and delete. The CIA wants to know who that somebody is and why they are doing it. The victims are connected to an Austrian gunrunner — Yannick Mair. Unfortunately, Mair is hard to interrogate because he’s being held at a Spanish military hospital. Fortunately, Chris found the weak link of the hospital security — a maintenance guy named Tiago Vento. Tiago likes to get his swerve on at a biker bar called El Pirata Loco nearly every night before his graveyard shift. Chauncey tells Anya it‘s time for her to say hi to Tiago. She doesn’t know if she can do it, but Chauncey tells her he doesn’t care about what she must do to get back on the bike; she must get back to work before he locks her up.

Rebecca’s walking with Maddie, talking about some random things that happened in the past, and goes straight to an ice-skating rink. Maddie asks if she‘s still clueless about the divorce of her mom and dad. Maddie thinks her dad, with all his traveling, screwed around. 

Back at the hotel, Jenny lies on her bed, breathing heavily. She cries as she tells herself to think. She’s motivating herself that she can do it. She also had some alcoholic drinks to feel more confident about herself. She also cuts her hair shorter.

Another flashback happens. Anya was walking with Faina, and she told her that Su-Yin’s dad is the Ambassador from China, so they got money, but her dad is a paper pusher. Anya asked her what she wanted to do with her life. She replied she had no idea, but she wouldn‘t stay in Moscow. While walking, Anya was asked where she learned Mandarin. She said she grew up above Fu’s Laundry. Mrs. Fu took her under her wing to work: washing, drying, ironing, and folding. While talking, they met three perverted boys. Faina tricked them, so they got away.

Anya heads to a bar to meet Tiago because Chauncey ordered her to put a device up to his left eye. Once she sees his motorbike, she kicks it and calls for Tiago inside the bar, telling him that two guys did it. He gets frustrated and goes upstairs to beat them. While he‘s hitting one guy, she uses an electric shock on Tiago to position the device to his eyes. Chris does the rest, and the eye scan is already complete.

Back in the past, Anya’s talking to Faina outside the Chinese Embassy in Moscow. Faina told Anya that no one would mess with her while she‘s around. Faina told Anya she liked her, but Anya said she didn’t even know her, so she asked to meet Anya the next day same time and place.

Chris is putting a contact lens to Anya’s eyes. He asks her what it feels, and she says it‘s like someone is sticking a hot poker into her eye, which means the lenses are working. After that, Chauncey shows her a map of the military hospital and tells her that she will start below. Ingress is via the maintenance entrance, compliments of Tiago’s eye scan. She has to work her way along the shown corridors until she reaches the utility door leading to the main access point. She asks how she can get there, so Chris tells her he will show her the hospital’s mainframe computer so she can access it to find where Yannick is. She must do the task before her daughter comes home within an hour. Anya is given an attire she can wear with state-of-the-art technology built into it, made of Kevlar.

Flashback — Anya was walking alone when a lady pushed her off the wall and asked if she recognized the girl whose hand she was holding. She was told it‘s in the file she was given, supposed to be read by her. She said she read it and confirmed it by saying it‘s the daughter of Artur Orlov, the biophysicist trying to ferret the secret Yaroslav Program out of Mother Russia. The lady asked her why she did not kidnap Faina, and she answered that there‘s no reason to scare her or her father.

Anya’s on her way now to the hospital to do the task. She goes to the door with an eye scanner and scans her eyes. After scanning, it shows the face of Tiago. She finally gets to enter the place with the help of Chris. She sees a bunch of guys, and they start following her. She enters a room to avoid them, enters the toilet, and morphs to become a man.

Our Thoughts

The introduction part of the series is amusing when the man changes his eye color. It makes us wonder a lot of things after watching episode one. Were the victims at the beginning of the series controlled since they did something terrible as their eyes changed? What was the real goal of the eye-changing situation? In what ways does that person control them because there are many ways to control a person. Why are flashbacks happening? What happened between Anya and her husband? Why did they divorce? Why did Anya’s physical body change at the end of the first episode? The way her body changed is surprising. It’s only the beginning, so we have more questions than answers here.