No One Is Safe in the Explosive Opener of Jensen Ackles' New Prime Video Series

Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Countdown Episodes 1-3.

If you love action, drama, suspense, and mystery, then Prime Video’s latest thriller, Countdown, should be your next binge. Following Jensen Ackles‘ LAPD detective Mark Meachum, DEA agent Amber Oliveras (Jessica Camacho), Special Agent in Charge Nathan Blythe (Eric Dane), and a task force full of trained professionals, this group heads up an investigation that may just stop the next 9/11. Here’s hoping they can get to the bottom of this before Los Angeles crumbles.

‘Countdown’ Episode 1 Establishes LA’s Latest Task Force

The cast of 'Countdown' walk off towards another mission — Image via Prime Video

The first episode of Countdown, “Teeth in the Bone,” begins with Homeland Security customs agent Robert “Bob” Darden (Milo Ventimiglia), who is gunned down in broad daylight by cartel agents. It’s brutal, tragic, and a killer opening that sets the stage for the intensity of the series. From here, Nathan Blyth (Dane) establishes his federal task force with Damon Drew (Jonathan Togo), which includes our leads, Meachum and Oliveras. Meachum has been in the Palmdale prison for nine months, working undercover for the LAPD, while we first meet Oliveras as she escapes a drug den before calling in the DEA. Alongside them are FBI Special Agents Keytone Bell (Elliot Knight) and Evan Shepherd (Violett Beane), and LAPD Detective Luke Finau (Uli Latukefu).

From what the team can tell, Darden’s death may be the work of the Los Reyes Nuevo (aka the New Kings) cartel. Because they don’t know how widespread this is (and who may be in on the take), the task force is entirely underground. They need to find who killed Darden and why fast. From the get-go, Oliveras isn’t a fan of Meachum due to being friends with Melinda Bates, a woman he was engaged to until they broke it off two weeks before the wedding. Apparently, Meachum slept with Melinda’s sister, Rachel, and the bridges were burned. There’s obviously more to the story — likely involving the secret, glioblastoma multiforme (brain tumor) diagnosis that Meachum is keeping under wraps — as Finau encourages Oliveras to look more into Meachum’s last nine months before coming to any rash conclusions. Interesting, Oliveras may have some secrets of her own, as Blythe is told that there’s a rumor that she’s a drug addict herself.

But “Teeth in the Bone” doesn’t have time to dwell on this for long. After Blythe and Shepherd interview Darden’s widow, Meredith (Emily Bridges), the rest of the team do the same with the fallen agent’s coworkers. At first, Jim Talbott (Chet Grissom) seems a bit shady, but after Shepherd gets a positive ID on Darden’s killer — a cartel hitman named Cesar Murrillo — the team quickly realizes that Darden’s co-worker, Maurice Spelman (Leith Burke), lied to them about Talbott. In the Hills, Spelman drives off before the task force can get to him, and a car chase ensues. Eventually, they bring him in, and Meachum and Oliveras team up to get the information out of him. Elsewhere, we learn that Drew’s son, Noah, was tragically killed in a fatal car crash, though he honors his commitment to coach his son’s Little League team.

Back at HQ, Bell gets into Spelman’s phone, and the team discovers that something is going down on Pier 31 that night. When the task force arrives, a firefight erupts. Blythe sees a lone federal vehicle drive off mysteriously, and Meachum saves Oliveras’ life, killing Murrillo. But things go from bad to much, much worse when Bell realizes that the reason Spelman ordered Pier 31 to be cleared was that the cartel was transporting enough fissile material to incite a Chernobyl-level event in LA. With a nuclear weapon of mass destruction on the loose in the City of Angels, only the task force stands between millions of lives and those who would lose no sleep ending them.

‘Countdown’ Episode 2 Pushes Our Heroes To Their Moral Limits

Mark Meachum (Jensen Ackles) recovers from a bombing on 'Countdown' — Image via Prime Video

The second episode, “Dead Lots of Times,” switches between the past and the present. Back in 2008, a man named Borys (Bogdan Yasinski) from Minsk, Belarus, opens the door for his brother, Anton (Dima Savyan), who is running from some “American” who may try to kill him. When Borys and Anton meet this man, Dennis (Bret Sexton), he reveals that he wants Borys to get him all electronic communication between the Kremlin and political leader Kostenko (Péter Végh), or else Anton dies. Borys does so, but Anton kills himself anyway, overcome with grief at being responsible for his brother’s treason. So, when Borys gives Dennis the information, a bomb is included that explodes the moment the emails are downloaded to his computer.

Back in the present, Blythe recognizes the vehicle that left the scene, and the task force begins to hunt the drivers down. Olivera wants to look into an old cartel contact from her undercover days, and Blythe assigns Meachum to help. But things begin to get more complicated for Blythe when DA Grayson Valwell (Merrick McCartha) meets with him, wanting to be involved in the case. Blythe tells him to take a hike, but Valwell isn’t so easily dismissed. Meanwhile, Meachum and Oliveras arrive in Huntington Park to meet with the latter’s old undercover contact, Javi Lopez (J.J. Soria). Javi doesn’t trust Meachum, but runs his prints, discovering his time in Palmdale. Deciding to trust the pair, he gives them a job: go to Mexico and bring up a shipment of heroin. After picking up the “goods” from a pig farm south of the border, things get a bit hairy at the border checkpoint.

Oliveras is eyed by Mexican authorities (as she is driving a police cruiser), but the truck — with Finau behind the wheel — gets through the first checkpoint. On the U.S. side, Finau gets stopped when the border patrol officer sees his cut hand, which he sliced when attaching the drug-filled trailer. On top of Meachum’s worsening headaches, the whole thing is a recipe for disaster. Nervous from afar, Blythe reports Meachum’s vehicle as suspicious to get eyes off Finau, and Oliveras (pretending to be an undercover Mexican cop) arrests Meachum as Bell gets Finau through the checkpoint. Eventually, the task force — using Bell’s FBI credentials — get Meachum out, and they discover that they just brought a substantial amount of heroin into the country.

Seeing Oliveras is struggling with this, Meachum offers to follow her lead. If she wants to get rid of it all, he’s willing to do whatever it takes. However, instead of ridding the streets of the product, she only takes one block for herself. At HQ, Valwell confronts Blythe about the ordeal at the border, wanting the agent in charge to bring him in now to help smooth things over in case there’s another confrontation in the future. Still, Blythe refuses, but it’s not the last we’ll see of Valwell. That night, Oliveras and Meachum deliver the shipment to Javi. Upon completion of their task, Oliveras asks the outlaw about any other high-end jobs, like what happened on Pier 31. Javi explains that the guys they used to work with were involved with some Russian jobs, and suddenly, there’s an explosion. Javi is killed, but not before Meachum demands a name: “Volchek,” who is very likely the man we know as Borys from the flashbacks.

Jensen Ackles and Eric Dane's characters look suspiciously off camera in 'Countdown'

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‘Countdown’ Episode 3 Teases the Death of a Task Force Member

Mark Meachum (Jensen Ackles) pretends to break out of prison with the help of Amber Oliveras (Jessica Camacho) and Luke Finau (Uli Latukefu) on 'Countdown' — Image via Prime Video

The third installment of the Countdown series premiere, “Happy Birthday Final,” begins by getting into the heads of the task force members. Meachum struggles with his continual headaches (and his time undercover), Oliveras battles drug addiction as she wrestles with what to do with the heroin she took from the previous episode, and Finau is awoken by his wife, Amina (Nicole Lyn), and daughters, who wish him a happy birthday with donuts. Then the day begins. Meachum and Oliveras arrive at the same time, and the task force is soon briefed about the death of Javi. Shepherd comes up with a Belarusian surname, Volchek, and Meachum notes that when he was undercover in Palmdale, he met a man from Minsk who may have a lead on the name. He suggests that Blythe put him back undercover. Unfortunately, Warden Gil Thompson (Tim Abell) has no desire to see Meachum back at Palmdale, so they come up with another plan: stage a prison break to get Meachum’s contact out, leading the task force to Volchek.

As the team works on the prison break plot, Shepherd discovers that it’s Finau’s birthday, and enlists Bell to help her plan a surprise. She ultimately settles on getting him a cake, but when it’s ordered, it’s spelled “Happy Birthday Final” instead of “Finau.” Thankfully, Bell fixes the lettering (could there be something between these two?). But more importantly, Meachum goes back undercover and — with Oliveras and Finau’s help — escapes the prison transfer vehicle with Novakov (Mark Puchinsky). The convict eventually leads Meachum to his uncle, a man who can seemingly help get them out of the country. The problem is, Meachum sticks his nose a bit too far and is taken outside at gunpoint after seeing documents and plans that connect directly to what the task force saw at Pier 31. As all this is happening, Finau promises to meet his wife and daughters at dinner at 7:30, and Valwell arrives and tries to push Blythe around. But before he can, Drew tells him off and escorts him off the floor, but not before the DA tells them that their days on the task force are numbered.

Before Meachum can be executed, Blythe, Oliveras, and the team arrive to take out the foreign players. As this is going on, Borys (who we’re left to assume is also Volchek) burns all the evidence that Meachum saw. Thankfully, Meachum still saw Borys face-to-face and will likely be able to identify him later on. But that will have to wait, because although there’s a firefight between the groups (Novikov is shot and killed), Finau falls. At first, we’re led to believe that he may be dead, but Meachum confirms that he wasn’t even shot. In reality, it was Drew who took the bullet, and “Happy Birthday Final” ends with the task force surrounding him as he bleeds out on the ground. We can’t help but think about his wife, who has already lost a son and now may lose her husband too. Here’s hoping he pulls through and that the task force can put an end to this soon. But, considering there are about ten more episodes left, that may be wishful thinking.

New episodes of Countdown drop every Wednesday on Prime Video.