Home > Reviews > Person of Interest Ep. 5.13 – ‘Return 0’ (Series Finale) reviewed…

Person of Interest Ep. 5.13 – ‘Return 0’ (Series Finale) reviewed…

Person of Interest Series Finale

Their ‘Numbers’ are up. Person of Interest computes a season and series finale, ‘Return 0’… one last mission to give its heroes an ending to remember…


“I was built to predict people. But to predict them you have to truly understand them. So I began by breaking down their lives into moments. Trying to find their connections. The things that explained why they did what they did. What I found was… the moment that mattered the most, the moment when you truly found out who they were… was often their last one…”

The end is nigh.

Harold has unleashed the ‘Ice-9’ virus and it is already having massive implications on a global scale with America and the rest of the world causing chaos in millions of computer systems big and small. He knows it’s the lesser of two evils, his last gambit in stopping Samaritan from achieving a level of control to match its growing sentience, but he’s aware of the implications. However Samaritan is fighting back with every effort in its arsenal – trying to spread segments of itself to various sanctuaries where it can grow again. A back-up program ready to be activated lies in a cage within the Federal Reserve, so Harold and Reese must get in to the heavily-guarded facility to wipe that out. With the aid of a Fit-Bit and a potential nuclear device, they reach the vaults below.

But their efforts are not without grave, perhaps mortal, injury.

One thread of Samaritan escapes the wipe-out, attempting to initiate a transfer to a satellite system, someone must leave the vault and get up to a central nexus on a NYC skyscraper to upload a copy of the Machine’s program to the same satellite before destroying the radar-dish and anything in the vicinity. But it’s a suicide mission for anyone trying to stop it and both Harold and Reese know it.

Elsewhere Shaw and Fusco guard the underground rail-car that hosts the main processor of the Machine, aware that they too are about to face possibly overwhelming forces… which turn out to be led by someone we’ve met before.

If Samaritan cannot win the day it is determined to wreak massive casualties and losses on its enemies…

Person of Interest finaleHere we are then. Person of Interest was a ground-breaking series, ahead of its time and a chance-taker but it did suffer – as we’ve said before – from its truncated final season of only thirteen episodes.While many story elements were deftly handled, there were times when it felt abridged and somewhat hurried, some plots placed alongside other elements and competing for space. However it’s something of a minor quibble as it’s hard to fault the main cast’s efforts and the determination of the people behind the scenes to pay off several long-existing story-threads outside the main trunk of the mythology. With knowledge that this was likely to be their swansong, Person of Interest‘s team got the rare opportunity to end things with some closure rather than go out on a cliffhanger devoid of resolution.On the whole, it worked.

All our valiant heroes were never going to make it out of the story alive and the surprise might actually be that the series didn’t go for a much bleaker ending and even higher body-count. A key scene takes place, with Harold imprisoning Reese, believing he is protecting his colleague from a worse fate. The bespectacled reluctant warrior, losing blood and time, notes that he always thought Reese was a good man but had been surprised that he’d also become such a good friend. It’s a Kirk-Spock moment played with genuine emotion and it caps off several years of their partnership. Emerson is great here (and throughout), a man tired of the sacrifices he sees others make and determined to do the right thing, or the least worst. He sells every moment and the scenes with Carrie Preston’s Grace are poignant (especially so, as she’s his real-life wife).

In the end everyone is hurt to some degree – either shot or stabbed or killed in moments of brutality. We jump abckwards and forwards through events with hints and glimpses of what is to come. But it’s Reese (Jim Caviezel – easily the biggest name when the show began) who ultimately goes out in a blaze of glory – tricking Finch and taking his sacrificial place atop another New York skyscraper, a one-way mission to protect his friend and the Machine’s upload… as Samaritan agents (and a great big honkin’ missile) converge to deadly effect. We even get a rare Caviezel smile as the end draws near.

Amy Acker’s Root may have already perished, but the actress is present through the episode – both as the disembodied voice of the dying Machine and in a ‘visible’ form for the audience to see and Harold to imagine. A vastly under-rated actress, Acker is the emotional, beating heart of this finale, dealing with raw emotion, despair and basic exposition as needed. But everyone brings their A-Game and the moment that the Machine talks of Root’s love for Shaw (‘If you were a shape she thought you would be a straight line – an arrow‘) brings the hint of a tear to Shaw’s usually sociopathic demeanour. Even Fusco gets some great one-liners and a hero moment.

The downside: that compact schedule means we don’t get to see more of the ‘creepy kid’ who channels Samaritan (who I’d definitely expected to turn up again before we were done and some of the epilogues work better than others) and there were others who were AWOL from this last batch of outings, such as Paige Turco’s flirty fixer who had been a fan favourite.

In the end… well, it’s never quite the end. A back-up plan comes into play and leaves the door open just a crack should someone ever want to bring the concept back into play. Just enough hope in a world that has sometimes come to reflect the show rather than the other way around.

Person of Interest was about a lot of things: Life. Death. Artificial Intelligence. All well-executed (sic) and never just by the Numbers. That’s quite an epitaph.

“Everyone dies alone. But maybe if you mean something to someone… if you helped someone or loved someone… if even a single person remembers you… then maybe you never really died at all..”

9 / 10

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