Last night on Designated Survivor, President Kirkman and the FBI team focus on rescuing astronauts stuck in space. Apparently, there’s a major hack that affects both the American and Russian programs. But they get help from an unlikely ally, Damian.
Full Recap

To start, we pick up right where we left off in last week’s episode. Damian holds a gun to her head and claims he has useful time-sensitive information. But before he’s able to tell her anything, she turns him in. Then, she and Aaron interrogate him to find out the why of it all. Damian tells them that he interfered with the Icarus investigation because the Russians had a stake in the company when it was first created. So they framed the first lady to avoid another Cold War.
Then he tells them information directly related to a rescue rocket. It supposedly went off to rescue astronauts stuck in space due to some kind of hack. However, President Kirkman doubts his information is credible. And understandably so because he hasn’t done anything yet to prove he’s trustworthy. So Kirkman launches the rocket and it ends up crashing. After that, they all realize Damian’s telling the truth and continue to extract more information from him.

Then, they find out hacking is one of Russia’s biggest problems at the moment. To make matters worse, someone’s been hacking both Russia’s space program as well as NASA. And Damian has the contacts needed to find the culprit. So Hannah goes with Damian to figure out who the hacker is. They track down a potential suspect who doesn’t end up being the hacker. But not all is lost because they at least get some helpful information that leads them to the guilty party. They find out the hacker’s actually a plumber that hacked both space programs. However, the plumber just did the job; he’s not the mastermind behind the plot. So this could be the start of something much bigger.
Meanwhile, Kirkman reaches out to the Russian ambassador. But he’s reluctant to help because of the current space race. So he enlists the help of former president Moss to try to launch another rocket. If they can successfully launch another rocket (without getting hacked), they can rescue the astronauts stuck in space. But Kirkman and Moss end up butting heads after Tom finds out he cut a deal with the Russian ambassador. Russia agrees to help in exchange for the Americans overlooking their involvement with the Icarus investigation. The same investigation that framed the now-deceased first lady. After this, Kirkman realizes Moss has been undermining him so he fires him.
Final Thoughts

Overall, the whole hacking plot with Russian involvement hits very close to home. Obviously, there’s a lot going on in today’s politics and recently, there has been a lot of chatter around Russian hacking. Regardless, it was interesting to see that whoever’s behind this conspiracy isn’t just targeting Americans. Whatever their endgame is, it must be big. But I’m left wondering if it’ll involve more countries or if they’re just targeting America and Russia. However, we do know that Damian definitely knows a lot more about the whole situation. The real question is, whose side is he on?
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