The Equalizer Season 5 Episode 16, “Sins of the Father,” starts with an old man walking down the street with a cane and being followed by three other men. When the older man realizes he is being followed, he ducks into an old warehouse. The three younger men follow him inside and split up to look for him.
The seemingly old man turns out not to be an old man and is able to fight the other three. He manages to kill them all but is shot with a tranquilizer by a fourth man. He tells the shooter to kill him, but the shooter says that won’t happen until he gets what he needs from him.
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The Equalizer, “Sins of the Father”
That same morning, Robyn (Queen Latifah) talks to Aunt Vi (Lorraine Toussaint) on the phone and thanks her for taking Delilah (Laya DeLeon Hayes) on the artist retreat with her. Before they can continue the conversation, Robyn receives a call on her secret CIA phone. When she picks up, a voice distorted by AI gives her a code, a set of coordinates.
Robyn asks for Harry’s (Adam Goldberg) and Mel’s (Liza Lapira) help to get to the coordinates and tells them she is surprised anyone would call her on that phone because only Bishop had that number. By the time she arrives at the coordinates, there is a group of moms talking about their kids. One of them is paying close attention to Robyn, and we can see she is holding a photo of her.
Before the woman can do anything, Robyn disappears, so she starts looking for her. Robyn appears behind her, pointing a gun at her. The other woman can defend herself and fight against Robyn, but eventually, McCall wins and asks her who she is. The woman introduces herself as Samantha Reed (Juani Feliz) and says she got the number from her father, who got it from Bishop. She explains she has been running from the CIA with her father, and he is now missing.
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A Dominican Republic Past
Samantha explains to Robyn that she believes the CIA took her father after what happened in the Dominican Republic. Her father witnessed a CIA bombing that killed a lot of people, including her parents, so he had to disappear.
Harry tells them someone called the police about an elderly man being chased into a warehouse, so they decide to go check it out. When they look around the warehouse, they find signs of a fight and bodies being dragged out. Samantha finds a symbol and says it is a message from her father. We then see a flashback of her father teaching her how to fight and showing her the symbol. He explains it is a defense symbol, and if he leaves it for her, it means he can no longer protect her, and she must run away.
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After they find the symbol, Robyn tells Samantha that her contact in the CIA told her they don’t have Elijah Reed (Titus Welliver). We see Elijah tied to a chair and being beaten up by a younger man.
Robyn brings Sam to Harry and Mel’s bar, where they promise they will help her. Harry shows Robyn a video that went viral in Atlanta of Samantha and Elijah stopping a robbery, which explains why they were on the run again. He also shows her a video outside the warehouse where two men dragged Elijah into a van.
A CIA Contact
Samantha opens up to Mel about her childhood, and we see flashbacks of what her life was like with her father. Mel reassures her that they will find him because that is what they do.
Robyn and Harry notice there was another car parked outside the warehouse, and they discover the owner is also a former CIA agent. It looked as if Elijah was about to get in the car with him, but he changed his mind when he realized he was being followed.
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Elijah talks to the man who was beating him up, reading everything about his persona to try and get under his skin. When he irritates him enough, the younger man comes close to him, and Elijah is able to knock him out. He gets out of his restraints, but before he can escape, an army of men walks in and catches him again.
Robyn and Sam drive to the location where the other CIA agent now owns a pizza restaurant. They discuss why she had to leave Atlanta, and a flashback shows her arguing with her father because she doesn’t want to leave. She also mentions a necklace she grabbed from her mother before they left.
When they arrive at the restaurant, they see the police are on the scene because the man has been killed. An officer approaches them and tries to get them to leave the scene, but Samantha and Robyn pretend to be detectives working the case. Sam starts looking around the place and finds a USB inside a light switch before hearing a loud noise outside.
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A USB of Information
When Samantha walks outside to check out the noise, a man tries to grab her, and they start fighting. She chases him until he gets in a Jeep and drives away. Robyn arrives in her car, and the two of them chase after him. Sam grabs a gun and shoots the tire off. When the man gets out of the car, he is ready to shoot them, but Sam kills him first. He was holding a picture of her and her dad.
Robyn sends Harry a picture of the man who came after them. After Sam gives her the USB she found, they go back to Harry and Mel’s place, where they show her everything her dad did for the CIA. There is no information available about the Dominican Republic, so based on Samantha’s age, Robyn asks Harry to look back at what was happening there 25 years ago. That is how they find a photo of Elijah and the man who kidnapped him, Cardozo.
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Cardozo now works as a gun for hire, and Samantha realizes he is the reason she has been running her entire life. As she looks at another picture from him, she notices he is wearing the same necklace she has.
Harry unlocks the USB drive, and they discover surveillance photos of the other CIA agent. Robyn, Mel and Sam go to that place and discover another warehouse. They sneak in and find Elijah inside. Instead of being grateful that they are there to rescue him, he is angry at Samantha for showing up. He says Cardozo is after her because he is her biological father.
The Cardozo Truth
Cardozo’s army comes in to stop them from escaping, but they jump out a window. Robyn takes Elijah and Samantha to a secret location where Sam confronts her dad about his lies to her. He tells her he was sent to the D.R. to evaluate Cardozo as an asset, but was instructed to plant a bomb against him because he was too unpredictable. When Sam asks if he killed her mother, he tells her he had fallen in love with her. Sam’s mother was ready to leave Cardozo, but she got shot when they were running away. He promised her dying mother to keep her safe and away from Cardozo.
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Robyn talks to Sam about her father and explains that sometimes they need to lie to protect the ones they love. She has had to lie to her family in the past. Elijah says he will finish what he started with Cardozo, but Sam demands to go with him because she wants to talk to her biological father. Thanks to a tracker Elijah planted, they are able to find Cardozo’s newest location.
A man working for Cardozo finds footage of Samantha and her father in a car, which is fake footage Harry planted. When the army goes after them, Sam, Elijah, Robyn and Mel realize Cardozo stayed behind, so they have to go inside to find him. Cardozo runs into Elijah and fights him, but Sam stops him from killing Elijah. Cardozo reveals that her real name is Delfina.
An Alliance on The Equalizer
Cardozo tries to trick Samantha by claiming her mother is still alive. Sam asks him to put his gun down, and he does so before asking her to do the same. When she asks him to FaceTime her mother to prove she is alive, Cardozo ends up confessing he killed her. At that moment, he kneels down to grab his gun, but Samantha shoots him before he can do the same to her.
After everything is done, Robyn talks to Samantha about what happened, and then tells Elijah to talk to his daughter from the heart. Elijah and Samantha discuss her mother and why he lied before giving her a photo of her and her mother. He then tells her she is now free to go wherever she wants and do whatever she wants.
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Robyn and Sam return to Mel’s bar, where she thanks the team for their help. Robyn shows her the platform she uses for people who can’t call 911 to reach her. She mentions she needs help saving them all, and based on what she saw, she wants Sam to be on her team. Samantha thanks her but says she is going back to Atlanta to do what Robyn is doing in New York.
The Equalizer airs on Sundays on CBS.
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