The Equalizer Season 4 Episode 10, “Shattered,” brings the season to an end by starting with Robyn (Queen Latifah) and Dante (Tory Kittles) on a date at a training session where they have to fight an entire crew and try to get the record.
After the training, Robyn heads home to change clothes for breakfast and tells Aunt Vi (Lorraine Toussaint) about the date and how much she likes Dante. Before she heads out the door again, Delilah (Laya DeLeon Hayes) reminds them of the tour at the military school later that day.
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Mel Gets Taken
Harry (Adam Goldberg) walks into the bar with Fisk (Donal Logue), but they can’t find Mel (Liza Lapira) anywhere. He mentions she hasn’t returned any of his calls since he left for the weekend, so Fisk says that’s the perfect time to decrypt the software they found.
We see Mel driving and rejecting Harry’s call. Instead, she answers the call from a man in her veterans’ support group who tells her he is standing on the roof of his apartment. She says she will be right over to talk to him.
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Dante and Robyn are having breakfast and picturing what going on a weekend getaway together would be like. Before they can agree on a plan, Dante’s captain immediately asks him to meet her at the precinct. He apologizes to Robyn for leaving early, but she says she gets it.
At the same time, Mel arrives at the rooftop and asks the man to stay calm. He begins to talk about the horrible things he has done and mentions a particular man he killed in front of his family. Mel tries to reason with him by saying she understands, but he says she never shares anything with them.
Mel briefly opens up about her feelings, which gets the man to step off the edge of the building. He goes to hug her and takes the opportunity to tase her.
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Is Dante Moving to LA?
Dante’s captain starts the meeting by mentioning that Grayle is fighting his arrest because it involves the equalizer. That leads to her telling him how he behaves, which interferes with how she likes to run the precinct. She will recommend him for a federal task force in Los Angeles.
The meeting with the task force leader is set for later that day. Dante seems to be on the fence about it because his entire life is in New York. However, the captain makes it very clear that she can’t fire him, but she will keep him on desk duty as long as she works at that precinct.
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Dante meets with Robyn to tell her about his promotion and asks her what she thinks. She immediately tells him she believes he has to take the job because it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When he asks what would happen to them, she mentions that this task force could affect policy and help fix the system they fight daily.
He hesitates because he doesn’t want to throw away what they might become, but she says they will somehow work it out if they’re meant to be.
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Meanwhile, Harry is asking M.E.L. to track Mel’s phone. He doesn’t know if he should do it because he had promised her he wouldn’t, but he is worried. M.E.L. gives him different scenarios of what would happen if Mel finds out he tracked her to help Harry decide.
Ultimately, he tracks her and discovers the phone has been thrown away. Harry is now sure Mel is in trouble.
Robyn arrives at the military school and talks to Aunt Vi about Dante’s promotion. Her aunt makes her see that instead of opening up about her feelings, she pushed him away and told him to leave. Robyn confesses she wants Dante to stay but doesn’t want to make him miss a big opportunity. Before they can talk any further, Harry texts Robyn to let her know Mel is in trouble.
In the meantime, Dante meets with the task force leader, who jokes about how desperate his captain is to get rid of him. He explains Dante’s salary will triple, and they will put his kids through college, but the job is 24/7, and he won’t have a personal life.
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Mel’s Sentence
The man from the veterans’ group takes Mel into an empty factory. She fights him and is about to break free when another man shows up and holds a gun to his head.
Robyn shows up at Harry’s while reviewing the security footage around the area where Mel was taken. He sees a driver who catches his attention and asks M.E.L. to find out if his image matches anyone who attended Mel’s group. M.E.L. finds a match, but there is no identification. However, the man is related to the death of a woman who served with Mel.
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Dante meets up with Robyn and Harry at the place where they believe the man from the group lives. At that moment, Delilah calls Robyn to find out what’s happening with Mel. When Robyn mentions the guy from the group, Delilah says that Mel had told her about Eric. He is dealing with PTSD and usually covers his windows with tinfoil. That lead helps them identify Eric’s building.
After they find the apartment empty, Fisk calls Robyn to tell her Eric’s real name and the fact that his brother is on a CIA watchlist for planning acts of terrorism in the US. Given what they know, Fisk believes the kidnap is related to Mel’s station in Bangladesh.
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Mel is tied to a chair as the brothers tell her she killed their father in cold blood. She then tells them she remembers their father but that things didn’t happen as they recall. There is a flashback as Mel tells the story. She was following orders, and when they walked into the house, the father had his gun pointed at her. She didn’t want to shoot him, but she had no other choice. The brothers mention now they don’t have another choice but to kill her.
As Robyn and Dante search the building for possible hostiles, Harry is going through the documents in the apartment. That is when another man walks in with a gun, but Harry fights him off and asks him where they are holding Mel. He is holding the guy out the window when Dante walks in to interrupt him and arrest the guy.
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Robyn asks this mysterious man what he knows. He mentions that the brothers hired him to find an apartment and that he checks on them every few days.
At the same time, Dante finds a speech written by the brother. We then see and hear both Robyn and Mel reading the speech. Mel is talking to a camera as she is tied to the chair, taking full responsibility for the father’s death and claiming she will now receive the appropriate sentence.
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AI Is Problematic
Harry is terrified, thinking Mel is probably dead, but Robyn calms him down by reminding him Mel is the toughest person they know and she will survive. They all agree the speech isn’t declaring an act of terrorism. It is all about Mel and getting her to apologize to their mother for their father’s death.
The brothers tell Mel she has confessed, so it’s time for her sentence. However, Mel tells them she can do more than confess; she can help recover the father’s body for a proper burial. Eric wants to let her try, but her brother simply wants to shoot her. They argue about what their mother would say if she found out they had a chance to recover their father’s body, so they decide to give Mel an hour to try.
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Fisk tells Harry, Robyn and Dante that the mother is terminally ill, which explains why the brothers are acting now. At the same time, he gets a call from Mel, so he merges both calls. However, Harry realizes the voice is actually M.E.L., meaning Mel has accessed the AI remotely. M.E.L. is asking for access to the agency’s database, but Fisk cannot give it to her.
Harry tells Fisk to give the AI access to help Mel, and he will wipe out the system later. That is when M.E.L. turns against Harry because he threatens to delete her. He claims its primary function is to protect Mel, and the machine claims to be doing that by saying she is Mel and she is the most important person in Harry’s life.
Because they can’t waste time, Robyn interrogates the other guy about what else he knows. When he refuses to help, Dante puts his gun against his knee and tells him to give them more information. He then tells them about a building the brothers visited outside the city and gives them the exact route to get to it.
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Saving Mel
The trio arrives at the factory, and one of the brothers pulls out a grenade and tells them to stand down. Mel asks them to leave because she doesn’t want to die with her. Robyn tries to reason with the brothers by talking to them about their mother and the legacy they will leave behind.
While one of the brothers says that this is what their mother wants because she had to carry the household alone, Fisk shows up with their father. He tells them what happened to him after he was shot and was airlifted to the doctors in America. Since he had cooperated, he couldn’t return home and apologizes for abandoning them.
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Mel tells Eric that she knows from the group that he was suffering the loss and the trauma and tells him that killing her will only make things worse. He puts the gun down and apologizes to his brother because he isn’t able to go through with the plan. That is when his brother throws the grenade in Mel’s direction.
Harry jumps on top of Mel to push her away from the explosion while Eric jumps over the grenade to keep the explosion from expanding. The remaining brother grabs the gun, but Dante and Robyn shoot him first. Both brothers end up dead.
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Is Mel Leaving?
M.E.L. is trying to reason with Harry to stop him from deleting her, but he tells her he now sees how dangerous the AI has become. He can’t trust the machine, so he deletes her.
He then meets Mel at the bar and asks why she never spoke about Bangladesh. Mel mentions she buried it deep so it wouldn’t haunt her, so talking about it wasn’t an option. They both apologize for the incident with Fisk and everything between them.
When Robyn and Dante show up, Mel talks to the three of them about the trauma she has been carrying with her. She blames herself for what happened, so she knows she needs to take time to heal her trauma and not hesitate next time she has to pull the trigger. That is when she announces she will no longer be equalizing.
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Saying Goodbye to Dante
That night, Delilah tells Robyn and Aunt Vi that she has decided not to attend military school. With everything that’s happened in the last months, she realizes she can do more to help people by staying home. She thanks both women for allowing her to figure things out independently.
Robyn talks to Aunt Vi about the day and how it reminded her to always hold on to the people she loves. She also mentions how well she and Dante work together, so she can’t let that slip away from her.
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Later that night, Robyn and Dante meet again. Robyn tells her she knows he would be great at the new job, but she wants him to stay because she needs him in her life. However, Dante surprises her by telling her he is going to the airport. After finding out the task force is chasing a ring of child predators, he can’t reject the promotion.
Robyn understands because she would do the same thing. They both believe it will work out regardless of distance if it’s meant to be. The two kiss goodbye.
The Equalizer Seasons 1 through 4 are now streaming on Paramount+.
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