‘The Old Man’ Season 1 Ending Explained: Does Jeff Bridges’s Character Make It Out Alive?

Caught your breath yet? FX’s hit thriller The Old Man just wrapped up its first season in spectacular style, with a surprise ending only an intelligence expert—or a very astute viewer—could see coming.

Adapted by Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine from the book by Thomas Perry, The Old Man stars Jeff Bridges as “Dan Chase,” an ex-CIA operative who’s been living off the grid after crossing a warlord in Afghanistan back in the 1980s. After the warlord comes back for revenge, Chase’s old colleague Harold Harper (John Lithgow) has been tasked with bringing Chase in or taking him down, though in his own way he’s just as desperate to keep the rogue out of pocket in order to keep his own involvement in Chase’s escape a secret. And mixed up in it all is Chase’s daughter Emily, who’s been working in Harper’s office under an alias for years.

Add it all up and you have both a pulse-pounding espionage thriller and a thought-provoking examination of family—a whole lot like FX’s previous spy classic The Americans, but with Bridges’s lion-in-winter performance holding it down.

But in the show’s Season 1 finale, Chase reaches the end of the road. What happens next, and what does it mean for the future of the show?

Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of The Old Man—warning: major spoilers ahead!

What happens in the ending of The Old Man?

The show’s season one finale focuses on a deal made between the U.S. intelligence community and its Afghan-warlord ally Faraz Hamzad (Navid Neegahban). By all appearances, Hamzad is out to extract revenge against rogue operative Dan Chase for running away with Hamzad’s wife and advisor Belour (Leem Lubany) years ago.

Since Chase has proven damned difficult to capture or kill, CIA Agent Raymond Waters (E.J. Bonilla) and his erstwhile allies Carson (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and Mike (Echo Kellum)—freelance special operatives in the service of the mysterious spymaster Morgan Bote (Joel Grey)—execute another plan. They’ve captured and drugged Chase’s daughter, Emily, aka Angela Adams, an FBI agent working under Chase’s frenemy Harold Harper under a false identity. If Chase gives himself up for a transfer into Hamzad’s clutches, Emily/Angela will be set free. If he doesn’t, she’ll be sent to Afghanistan in his place.

Out of options and desperate to save his daughter, Chase agrees to the deal and surrenders to Harper and his Moroccan secret-police escort. In the process he says goodbye to Zoe McDonald (Amy Brenneman), the civilian woman he slept with and then used as a hostage-slash-partner for the bulk of the season.

But when Carson and company notice that their position is being quietly surrounded by unknown forces, he calls Harper, who realizes Hamzad has reneged on the deal and plans to capture Angela regardless. Chase and Harper escape from their escort and race back to Carson’s last known location, where they find Waters and Mike dead and Angela kidnapped. (Carson’s present whereabouts are unknown.)

That’s when Chase drops a truth bomb on Harper. Hamzad’s grudge against Chase isn’t just because Belour chose Chase over him—it’s because when Belour and Chase left, they took Belour and Hamzad’s daughter with them.

That’s right: Emily Chase/Angela Adams’s real name Parwana Hamzad, and she’s Faraz Hamzad’s kid. The episode ends with her catching a glimpse of her real father for the first time in decades, and with Chase and Harper staggering off together, now both wanted men.

What does the ending of The Old Man mean? The Old Man ending explained:

When Dan Chase reveals the big secret about “his” daughter, a lot of the show’s mysteries are resolved. The risk Hamzad takes by killing one American intelligence agent (Waters) and burning another (Harper) so he could kidnap a third (Angela) suddenly makes sense. The much ballyhooed mine full of precious metals over which Belour and Hamzad argued turns out to be something of a red herring. And Chase’s secretiveness, which went above and beyond preserving his family’s cover, is now revealed to be a drive to protect Angela from the most powerful man in Afghanistan, a man with a ton of leverage over the U.S. government. (Until now, at least.)

But there are loose ends galore. What happened to Carson when Mike and Waters were killed? What will become of Zoe? How will Angela and Hamzad get along, if at all? Can Chase continue his life on the run, and is Harper at all cut out for joining him?

And at bottom, what truly makes someone a father? Is it biological, as Hamzad would argue? Is it an issue of who raised you, even if he raised you in a lie, as Chase did? Or is it a matter of mentorship, the kind Harper provided? 

Like any truly great spy story, the answers matter less than the questions, and the general air of moral murkiness established by centering the story on characters who lie for a living—and, in the case of Chase and his family, who lie to stay alive at all. For example, you could see the whole story as a microcosm of the lethal blowback that ensued from America’s zeal to arm and train Afghan militias in our proxy war against the Soviet Union—it turned Afghanistan into the USSR’s Vietnam, yes, but after 9/11 it became a second Vietnam for us as well.

Was it worth it in general? Were Chase’s actions at all noble, worthwhile, or justified specifically? What else will come back to haunt him and the other characters in Season 2?

Will there be a Season 2 of The Old Man?

Now here’s a question we can definitively answer: Yes, The Old Man will be back for a second round. FX renewed the show just days after its debut. Maybe some more of those questions will be answered.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.