Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager Season 2Image via Prime Video
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Kelcie Mattson
Published 48 minutes ago
Kelcie Mattson is a Senior Features author at Collider. Based in the Midwest, she also contributes Lists, reviews, and television recaps. A lifelong fan of niche sci-fi, epic fantasy, Final Girl horror, elaborate action, and witty detective fiction, becoming a pop culture devotee was inevitable once the Disney Renaissance, Turner Classic Movies, BBC period dramas, and her local library piqued her imagination.
Rarely seen without a book in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Kelcie explores media history (especially older, foreign, and independent films) as much as possible. In her spare time, she enjoys RPG video games, amateur photography, nerding out over music, and attending fan conventions with her Trekkie family.
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Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for The Night Manager Season 2 Episode 2.
The Night Manager's first season had a singular villain. Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), fueled by righteous morality and grieving fury, targets Richard Onslow Roper (Hugh Laurie), an international arms dealer who shamelessly reaps the benefits of selling his illicit cargo to the highest bidder. In a world filled with rampant corruption, Roper is reprehensible enough — even by weapons smuggling standards — to earn the epithet of "the worst man in the world." That reputation isn't a small one for Season 2's Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva) to live up to, both in-universe and off-screen (Laurie's performance, deceptively sinister and playing somewhat against type, scored him an Emmy nomination).
Teddy doesn't seem to mind. In fact, the main antagonistic force driving Season 2's three-part premiere describes himself as "Richard Roper's true disciple," and Teddy's reasons for such emulation are more intimate than turning an ambitious profit. As Pine investigates his new adversary, he unearths Teddy's parentage is the result of his married mother's affair with none other than Richard Roper himself. The insidious revelation magnifies the severe threat Teddy poses — and where motivations are concerned, Pine's crusade instantly becomes even more personal than before. Roper's shadow forever hangs over The Night Manager's returning antihero, and Teddy's lineage hooks straight into Pine's traumatized heart.
Teddy's Parentage Hints at Deeper Motivations in ‘The Night Manager’ Season 2
Teddy Dos Santos walking down a street in The Night Manager Season 2Image via Prime Video
After a decade, it makes sense that a slew of Roper imitators and acolytes would aspire to fill the power vacuum his defunct empire left behind. His absence is an opportunity not dissimilar to a succession battle, or when subservient pack animals scramble to kill and supplant their weakened leader. Teddy's case runs inevitably deeper. It's no great leap to assume a motherless child raised in a monastery, who only saw his father once a year and raced to Roper's side for each of those annual visits, was starved for affection. He sought the foreign-born Roper's approval, hoping to impress him by essentially conforming to his standards — i.e., diligently studying the English language.
Fast-forward several decades, and a now-adult Teddy has essentially inherited the family business with the competent, deadly efficiency said venture requires. Although Calva's superb performance never feels like he's copying Laurie, Teddy has learned from the best, and, in his quest to carry on Roper's legacy, styled himself after the role model he adores. Like Roper, Teddy hides his true dealings by posing as a conscientious philanthropist who helps displaced children who were affected by local violence — a situation in which Teddy could have found himself if Roper, with all his resources and arrogance, hadn't deigned to intervene.
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Season 2 arrived after a 10 year hiatus.
Posts By Lade OmotadeTo that end, Teddy hits all the correct public-facing notes: charismatic, sociable, generously benign, and a gracious host whose sensual qualities entice without offending. When he strides beside tennis courts and through opulent rooms, he doesn't flaunt his wealth, but between his tailored designer suits and the way he carries himself, he radiates affluence, authority, and self-assurance — and why wouldn't he? With one sudden twist of the narrative knife, Pine is facing far more than a conventional copycat. As far as Pine and viewers know, the defining influence on Teddy's identity as the illegitimate son of an infamous criminal has always been proving himself worthy of his rightful claim to the throne.
Teddy's Backstory Turns Pine’s Mission Upside Down in ‘The Night Manager’ Season 2
In private, Teddy's charm doesn't vanish like an empty facade so much as it morphs back into its ruthless, oddly truthful menace. In London, he effortlessly murders the majority of Pine's MI6 team, never once contemplating mercy or regret. Despite his five-year business-and-pleasure partnership with shipping tycoon Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone), she lives like a pampered hostage — in her home country, no less — whose survival flits across a shifting knife's edge. Unless Roxana is playing Pine like a fiddle, there's a reason she keeps insisting Teddy will execute her if he discovers her betrayal.
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Unlock deeper TV insights—subscribe to our newsletter for expert analysis of character motivations, villain legacies, and storytelling craft. Gain sharper context, scene-by-scene meaning, and tools for spotting narrative patterns in dramas. Subscribe By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.Teddy's keenly perceptive instincts amplify this nonstop risk. Whether it's a natural gift, a gift he learned at Roper's knee, or both, Teddy believes certain aspects of the false story that Pine has spoon-fed him, but detects some unclear essence of falsehood. Teddy tests his new potential asset as pitilessly as his father might, but through more grueling circumstances: he strings Pine along, weakens his physical and mental defenses by pouring copious alcohol and secret drugs down his throat, and doesn't drag him from the pool until Pine has nearly drowned. He seems to believe that he's extracted the truth — those niggling specifics he noticed but couldn't place — through false tenderness and promises of safety, like interrogating Pine while cradling his prone form in his arms and stroking his hair is a priestly confession.
The trick's on him, since Pine hands Teddy the leverage his opponent wants to hear while maintaining his cover. Yet the very real and profoundly more complicated threat affects Pine enough to nearly throw him off his game; half-distracted and fully unmoored, his determination briefly wavers. "I feel like I'm chasing ghosts," he tells Sally Price-Jones (Hayley Squires), and he moves with a freshly haunted quality. The fact that Teddy might have collaborators within the British government, leaving the renegade good guys even more isolated and hunted, doesn't help matters. Pine infiltrating a Roper-inspired criminal ring for a second time is ironic in and of itself. Performing this life-or-death tango with the child of the man he outsmarted 10 years ago is eerily poetic and infinitely terrifying.
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The Night Manager
15
Drama
Mystery
Crime
Thriller
Release Date
2016 - 2025-00-00
Network
BBC One
Directors
Susanne Bier, Georgi Banks-Davies
Writers
David Farr
Cast
See All-
Tom Hiddleston
Jonathan Pine
-
Douglas Hodge
Rex Mayhew
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Tom Hiddleston
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