Ep 62 – X Company Season 3 – Closing Up Camp X

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we break down the final season of X Company, the gripping Canadian WWII spy series set at Camp X. We discuss what worked, what felt rushed, and what made us yell "girl, no, don't kiss that Nazi!"

Season 3 brings heavy losses, moral complexity, and a too early farewell to our favourite Canadian covert operatives. From Krystina's subterfuge, Faber’s redemption arc, to how the show handles antisemitism, resistance, and trauma without easy answers.

Bye, X Company. Gone too soon.

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💬 Join the conversation and leave a review — we’d love to hear your thoughts!

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm married you.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosie the reviewer at This week we are
talking about the third and final season of the CBC show X
Company that began airing in 2015.

(00:23):
And to briefly recap, we left our characters carrying out
dangerous missions during the disastrous The Upgrade.
Tom has died. Alfred and Aurora have
officially hooked up. And is Faber on their side now?
What did you think of this season?
Is he? That's probably the question
that has been on my mind for theentirety of Season 3.

(00:44):
I think season 2 is my favorite,so I thought season 3 was good,
but you could tell they were wrapping it up a bit, which I
never like. I know why they need to do it
because obviously there's not another season, but it felt a
little bit rushed to me at the end for some reason.
And they left behind some of thetrauma in Season 2, which I

(01:09):
really liked in Season 2 that they were so aware of it for the
entire season. And then this season they didn't
really take it home. So I don't know.
I'm on the fence about this season and I don't know if it's
because it's ending or ended. Yeah, it's an enjoyable series
as a whole, but it's not my favorite season.

(01:32):
How about you? Oh yeah.
I mean, I think I watched them all too close together to really
differentiate the different seasons in my mind.
But if they had gone through Operation Husky and D-Day and if
they had wanted to do a couple more seasons, I definitely would
have been on board for that for sure.
I agree, I think that would havebeen good and I also think it
would have changed. Has happened in season 3 and and

(01:55):
I think maybe the things that I didn't like as much wouldn't
have happened the way did it. Overall, it's good.
I did feel like it became a little bit soapy in season 3
more than in season 1 and 2 and I don't know if that's just me.
It could be. I don't think I noticed it being
soapy in season 3, but like I said I did watch them all pretty

(02:17):
close to one another so could bethat they're all just drifting
together in my mind. Yeah, I am sad though that it's
finished. Am I going to do?
I'm going to miss my spies. Exactly, I'm going to miss my
found family but might still murder each other if the mission
calls for it. Spies.
All right, let's get into the episodes.

(02:47):
In episode 1 we get our favoritecharacter Christina Breeland who
goes on the cover to ferry that a German agent who recruited
Klaus. If you remember he was the
doctor in season 2 or he worked in the POW camp in Canada.
The first scene is really good guys.

(03:08):
Christina, she made me scratch my head for a second because I
got onto it fairly quickly, but she said some anti-Semitic and I
was like, what's happened? What's she saying?
But she's really just playing a part, guys.
She's doing a very good job. Yeah, she's in a bar and she's
trying to infiltrate this anti-Semitic Nazi ring I guess.

(03:32):
And she references the Kristy Pitts riot of 1933, which
probably a lot of people haven'theard of.
So I'll give you some details. On August 16th, 1933, there were
a lot of Canadians who were emboldened by the rise of
fascism in Europe, which, you know, might mirror some things
that are happening in the world today.
And they were becoming more loudly anti-Semitic.

(03:53):
So in Toronto, some Christians formed swastika clubs to deter
Jews from visiting local beaches.
They would basically bring theirswastika flags and make it very
unfriendly for Jewish people to go there.
And then during a baseball game between a Jewish team and a non
Jewish team, several spectators flew swastika flag.
And afterward they defaced the Jewish players clubhouse.

(04:14):
They wrote Heil Hitler on the roof and all kinds of stuff.
And then everything came to a head.
When the teams met up for another game two days later,
violence began in the stands andspilled out into the streets.
And gradually people from neighboring areas started coming
in and ultimately over 10,000 people were drawn into the riot.
The mayor of Toronto had to forbid the flying of the
swastika flag, which was one of Canada's first laws against hate

(04:37):
speech. And there's a little quote here
from the Canadian Encyclopedia that I'm just going to read
because it gives you some idea of the state of anti-Semitism in
Canada before and during the warof countries that took in
refugees. During the Second World War,
Canada accepted one of the fewest number of Jews fleeing
Nazism. Yeah, that's why I also watched

(04:58):
a little video on the Christie Pitts riot, because like you
said, I had never heard of it either.
And for people probably don't realize, Hitler came to power in
1933, and even though the war starts in 1939, anti-Semitism
was hot and happening all acrossthe world as early as 1933

(05:21):
already, didn't just come from nowhere, which sometimes it
seems like that to me in media, but it's been around for a
while. Yeah, for people who are not
super into reading up about history and they just know most
of what they know from the Second World War, from movies
and TV shows, I think there's a sense that the Allied powers

(05:43):
were the great heroes who freed the world from anti-Semitism.
But really it's a lot more nuanced than that.
There was of course the German Bund and the USA.
There was huge Nazi friendly gatherings in Madison Square
Garden. There was Oswald Mosley in the
UK who was a fascist. The king of England actually

(06:04):
abdicated his throne because he was a card carrying Nazi and
because he Mary Wallace Simpson.But you know, there was also the
card carrying Nazi thing. And so there really was this
thing where Nazism was not as unpopular in the Allied
countries as you might think. I think it's good to remember
that, especially into this world.
So thanks for this. Sure.

(06:25):
Yeah, Bobber and Sinclair meet face to face, the big dogs on
either side finally meeting faceto face and getting the measure
of each other, and they're trying to hammer out a deal.
But Sabina's disappearance is a wrench in the works.
She's fucked off for a few days because she's really not
enjoying this whole thing where her and Faber are going to get

(06:46):
away and then they're not going to get away.
And then she doesn't really knowif he's working for the Allies
or not. And it's like it's a whole
thing, as you can imagine a stressful situation.
To be honest, neither do we. I don't know.
Did you trust him in Episode 1 of Season 3?
I was like, I don't know if I trust this guy.
Yeah, his motivations for working with the Allies are

(07:08):
understandable, but also he murdered his own child in order
to continue to further his career as a Nazi, so who can
say, right? I mean, he really could go
either way still. And he always does just the bare
minimum of being on a good side.I didn't quite trust him yet at
this point. And throughout the season I was

(07:28):
like, I don't know, I trust him and then I didn't.
And then I do. And then he's kind of in it only
for himself and Sabina. He's doing what's best for his
family, which I think you said in a previous episode, he's a
real family man and that's kind of what he's got going for him.
So that's the one positive thingabout him in the show.

(07:51):
But he only does it if it's convenient for him and his wife.
Yeah, I feel like we've been talking about moral relativism
quite a lot lately, and there's a lot of stuff that in this
show, too. Yes.
Meanwhile, Neil, I think, disobeying Sinclair's orders,
goes with Harry to look for Mary.
Or I should say, Harry goes withhim to look for Mary because

(08:12):
she's been captured by the Germans, because at the end of
Season 2, she was scooped up in a bell tower shooting at Nazis
like a real pro. But then it ends with her being
held at gunpoint. And we don't really know what
has happened to her, but we now know that she's been taken by
the Germans and Neil has been desperately trying to figure out

(08:33):
where she is. Sinclair's like she's no longer
used before we have to move on and then you would just fuck
something guys to look for her anyway and Harry decides to join
him. Yeah, it's not looking good for
Miri, unfortunately, based on what we know about this show.
It stopped looking good the second she became Neil's Love
and trust You just now? Oh no.

(08:54):
Yeah, no doubt. In episode 2, Sabina tells her
father, a high-ranking Nazi and Himmler's inner circle, that she
wants to leave France, but she doesn't tell him why.
She's definitely honest with himon an emotional level of like,

(09:17):
yeah, Franz is not being a greathusband and our son has died and
it's been really hard on me. But even on the level of that,
she knows better than to sell him out and tell her father that
he's working with the Allies because that would be a death
sentence. So she says she wants to leave
him, but she doesn't explain really in detail.
I guess it would also pull into question, is she also working

(09:41):
with the allies or is she not? So I have some feelings about
this father future, this very high-ranking Nazi who is more
evil I think in this show than France as far as evil goes.
But he pretends to be OK with atfirst, to be OK with their son
only, but then later he got his riches and it was like, well, he

(10:02):
was an abomination. It's kind of grass.
He's like, yeah, it's so sad that your son died, but, I mean,
he was a little freak show, so you can't be that sad.
It's like, thanks, Dad. And he goes on to do some more
questionable things as we progress into this season that I
did enjoy watching from, like, an entertainment point of view,

(10:23):
but not when I realized that these things actually do happen
or did happen. So yeah, it's a real doozy.
They needed to bring in another big fish Nazi to be a bad guy.
Now that Faber is maybe potentially not a bad guy.
And I think that they made a good storytelling choice by
having him be Sabina's father because he does have these

(10:46):
emotional ties to her. But at the same time, he does
these truly heinous things that you're just like, oh, OK.
And I don't know if they said inthe season or the last season.
Didn't France say that he joinedthe party to abuse her father?
Or something. Her dad never wanted her in
France to get married. Like he didn't approve of him so

(11:06):
France joined the Nazi party to basically get in with her dad.
Which bro? Their choices, man.
Yeah. Alfred and Aurora attend
France's promotion party undercover, which seemed to me
like a really risky plan, but I'll test.
They just did it. Alfred discovered Operation

(11:26):
Marigold, an access plan to increase all production and
improve their fortunes in Aurora.
So this is our big plot for Season 3.
So it'll keep resurfacing. Operation Marigold is not a real
operation, but it did reflect the growing importance of oil
accessibility during the war. So access to oil was part of the

(11:47):
reason why Hitler went to war with the Soviet Union in 1941 in
the 1st place and also drove Rommel's actions in North
Africa. And later in the war, Germany
started to rely more and more heavily on synthetic gasoline
from hydrogenating coal at high temperatures.
It actually represented over half of Germany's total wartime
oil use and 90% of the aviation gasoline for the Luftwaffe.

(12:07):
So the synthetic gas will come up later this season as well.
Germany synthetic oil factories were obviously a high priority
target for the Allies in terms of bombing, and in the final
weeks of the war there was so little fuel remaining that
German army trucks were being dragged by oxen.
I could why they would use an operation like this, but I also
thought it felt a little boring for the show.

(12:30):
I don't know why but it almost didn't feel like high stacks
enough for me. Yeah, I guess last season,
because they tied it in to the DF raid and it really
interwelled with history so wonderfully.
I was kind of thinking that would happen again this season
and it didn't really. But I also think that if they
had made a couple more seasons, we wouldn't notice it as much.

(12:52):
I think if there was another season after this one that was
like the big finale with, I don't know, D-Day in it or
whatever, I don't think we wouldnotice as much that this season
doesn't feel as high stakes. I think it's just a natural ebb
and flow throughout the making of a show kind of thing, you
know? Yeah, that does make sense.
And also when you realize there's only five of them, how
big a mission do you want to give this?

(13:14):
Right, for sure, yeah. I don't know why, but this
mission also kind of reminded meof the catcher was a spy a
little. It felt a little bit like that,
the kind of mission that it is. But yeah, so that's our mission
for this season. And Sabinas father, it's his
personal mission. It's his thing.

(13:34):
Yeah, so he's obviously gonna betrying to stop them the whole
season. Meanwhile, on the other side of
the Atlantic, Christina torturesthe German operative that she
managed to figure out through undercover work.
But her plan is obviously to plant information that the
Allies are coming for Norway. And it's fake information, of
course. And so he manages to, quote UN

(13:56):
quote, get free, AKA she let himget free.
And then after he radios the information back to his
superiors in Germany and tells them that the Allies are coming
for Norway. Christina kills him.
So it's a big subterfuge moment.And I actually hadn't realized
until I read the Unauthorized Action book that invading Norway
was a big pet project of Churchill's, and he really

(14:17):
wanted that to happen. But Norway was super well
fortified by the Nazis, partly because there was a lot of
mineral mines there that they heavily relied on, and it had a
really long coastline. So they knew that it was
obviously a place that was superadvantageous to have control
over. And also the Allies were running
combo boys around sort of the North End to get supplies to the

(14:39):
Russians. And so really, there was not
really a great place or option for invading Norway.
But Churchill kept bringing it up.
You know, that was his whole little pet project that he
wanted to happen. Norway was one of the places
where the Allies had to retreat and give it up to the Germans.
And for all the reasons that I said, it would have been a great
strategic importance to have control over it.

(15:01):
And in the book that I read, they also talked about how
Churchill and Hitler were almoston the same brain wavelength
with that, because in his mind, Hitler thought that the Allies
would invade Norway and that waspart of the reason why he
fortified it so heavily. The way Christina kills this
guy, just shoots him in the stomach from close range.

(15:21):
We also meet with her, by the way, her little her partner in
crime is one of the two new agents.
And we get to meet very briefly this season.
I thought, oh look, they've got to replace Tom for the entire
season, but spoiler alert, he won't last that long.
No, he will not. Yeah, actually the whole season

(15:43):
where Christina is torturing this guy, I was like, damn.
Like she's pretty hardcore. Doesn't this season start with
him? He gets to do the test where he
has to shoot his friend and doesn't and then the lady's like
you failed because even your friends could be German
surprise. Yeah, I have the characters,
names and actors in the notes later whenever they turn up

(16:05):
later in the season. But yeah, definitely that's a
moment in this season for sure. It's one of those moments at the
very beginning that you think isn't a big deal on it so quick
you kind of forget about it. But it comes back later because
it's important that these guys failed their tests and all that.
So there's something really sad about them coming up later.

(16:29):
Yeah. On Neil and Harry's Crest to
find Mary, it's nothing but sadness because they have to
watch her be executed, be hangedby the Germans, and they fail to
save her. But they do meet and begin to
work with a French Resistance fighter named Zachary Go, played

(16:49):
by Milo Troy. And I wanted this guy to exist
in real life. I thought this was an actual
guy, but he's not real, I don't think.
No, I think like many of the secondary characters they are
like amalgams of real people or loosely based on real people.
But yeah, not necessarily actually real people.
He's meant to be this really inspiring guy.

(17:12):
You can unite all the friends and all that.
And I thought the way they've written him, he's a bit almost
not spicy enough for me. Well I feel like he's only in
the show for like a grand total of 8 minutes so maybe it wasn't
long enough for us to get a goodimpression.
It's true. Maybe that's part of my issue

(17:32):
with Season 3 is that they set up all these fun things and then
they destroy them on purpose. Also, Mary's death scene, I was
very sad but also kind of expected it to be a little bit
more than it was. She does a single little song of
resistance. Her people are Roma, and I

(17:53):
looked up a little statistic because obviously when you think
about the Holocaust, you think about Jewish people first.
But there are also at least 250,000 European Roma people
that were killed during World War 2.
And that's a low number in the sense that it's probably a lot
more, but there's no proof of that.

(18:14):
So add that to the tally of about 6,000,000 Jews that were
also killed and it's just the amount of people about us is
just wild. Absolutely.
It's so crazy to me how so many people just lost their lives a
little more and. It was nice, I think, for them
to add a Roma character who was such an important part of this

(18:36):
little resistance cell and who was fighting back against the
Nazis. And they didn't exaggerate it or
hit the note too hard. But you know, you knew that she
was of Roma descent and was resisting the Nazis.
So I did like that aspect. I did, too, and I was kind of
sad to see her die. I mean, she's not the only one
who's going to die this season, but.

(18:58):
No, definitely not. It's really just the bodies are
piling up. So episode 3, working with the
Resistance X company tried to rally the French as the Germans
take over the remainder of France.

(19:18):
If you recall, we discussed thisbriefly, I think last episode
where when the Allies invaded North Africa and took it over
effectively from the Vichy French, the Germans decided that
they were just going to take over the rest of France and they
were no longer going to pretend that France was independent and
that the Pei Tang government wasindependent.

(19:38):
And so the team are trying to kind of rally the French to
stand up and fight back. And Faber captures and kills our
French resistance fighter. He go, but he's written this
sort of call to arms rally and cry, and they broadcast his
message regardless after his death.
Yeah. So the way they do this is in a
van, and Harry's got his radio, obviously, and I think Neil is

(20:03):
doing the speech and they're driving around the village.
And it's so fucking tense also because I, for some reason,
Harry's been trying to kind of better himself after the
tenseness of Season 2, where he was kind of on the rocks with
the team a little bit. And I was just convinced that
this was going to be the end of him.
I just thought, oh, he's just going to die in this man.

(20:26):
He's going to get shot or arrested or I don't know.
That feeling goes on for me for a while.
For sure, He really seems determined to.
If it takes his own death, if ittakes him becoming a martyr,
then he's willing to do it sort of thing, but to the point of
recklessness and a lot of instances.
Yeah, I didn't like this feelingbecause, like Tom, I'd grown

(20:50):
used and kind of fond of Harry. Yeah, and of course Harry's the
baby of the team, so you know it's going to destroy everyone
else if he dies. It should, yeah.
Spring Roller. I don't think it did, but
anyway, we'll get there when we get there.
On the episode spoilers, A father's father-in-law submit.

(21:10):
His father gets him transferred to a new project in Poland,
Operation Marigold. Guess what?
It's the fancy project. But by this time, Sinclair's
blackmailing farmer into passingthem information about Marigold.
But it's not proving to be as useful as they think it is.

(21:31):
Faber is pretty determined to get disentangled from the
Allies. He keeps being like, oh, I can't
help you anymore, I have to go to Poland.
And then like, oh, well, I'll give you this one more thing and
then we're done. And it just keeps not working
out. I think it was Aurora that taped
Sabina saying she knew about them as spies and she hasn't

(21:53):
told anyone yet. And they use that record in his
lavage like they use his family constantly, because they know
that Fabric cares more about hisfamily than he does about
himself. Yeah, and if you're wondering if
that really pisses him off, it sure does.
Also, he was not meant to kill Rico, he just decided to do it.

(22:13):
He almost kind of had to, because in order to kind of save
face with his superiors, he had to kill Rico.
And there was like a whole plan in place where he wasn't going
to do it. And then he was like, well, I
had to. No, but.
Listen, it happens so often in the season that I don't think
it's an excuse anymore. Yeah.

(22:34):
I mean, I think it's really justthey don't want us to believe in
five or two early. You know, they want to be like,
well, he still really is doing his own shit behind their back.
Like he still does whatever he wants to.
He only is very reluctantly helping them out.
To be fair, it's not all his fault this season.
Some other stuff happens and that's not his fault.

(23:04):
Episode 4 Faber and Sabina are on their way to Poland to start
their new chapter of Franz's career.
Aurora travels with them as Sabina's friend, but also as you
know, someone there to keep an eye on them.
But the train ends up being stopped by Polish resistance and
everyone gets captured. And we are actually going to be

(23:24):
doing a little episode that heavily features the Polish
resistance soon. So definitely stay tuned for
that. But yeah, the Soviet Nazi non
aggression pact was signed in August of 1939, and then both
countries invaded Poland in September, which effectively
sparked World War 2. They tried to split the country
up between them. And there was, of course, quite
a lot of resistance in Poland. The main resistance group was

(23:47):
the Polish Home Army. It consisted of hundreds of
thousands of Poles, and it was loyal to the Polish government
in exile in London. It was one of the largest
underground resistance movementsof World War 2.
And it's perhaps best known for the Warsaw Uprising of August to
October of 1944, which we will talk more about when we do our
agent. So Polish resistance episode.
I assume if I remember correctlythe Home Army had 300,000 people

(24:12):
and which is quite a lot and I think 30,000 of those were women
which was quite a high number. I didn't know anything about
Poland until maybe 2-3 months ago and now I just realized what
a gold mined is in terms of storytelling and history.
And there's so much happened to the polls.

(24:33):
I feel like they aren't remembered enough because not
only did they have to fight the Germans, they also had to fight
the subjects so they had war on 2 fronts.
It's not a really fun time and when the war ended for most of
us in Europe, it did not end forthe polls.
Well, I mean, part of the reasonwhy we don't talk as much about

(24:54):
it is because their wartime history was suppressed by the
Soviets. So there was a communist
government in charge in Poland for decades after World War 2.
And they basically put out the story that the Polish Home Army
had been working with the Nazis.And everyone who was in the
Polish Home Army was therefore an enemy of the state, and they

(25:15):
would not allow the real historyto be propagated.
And so, yeah, World War 2 casts a long shadow.
My guess? I just don't understand how
countries like England, who obviously work with the balls
quite a lot, let that happen. I think they wanted the war to
be over and they did not want tofight the Russians, which I

(25:35):
mean, you know. Fair, that's fair.
But yeah, we will soon learn more about it in an episode.
So I'm very excited about this and I think Chinese too.
And I hope you are look forward to that Harry.
And you and Alfred are together.And the plan was for the train
Faber and Sabina and Aurora are on to arrive to the station that

(26:00):
Harry, New and Alfred are comingto by train to be there first so
they could get them off that train, because it's a transit
train for people who are being sent to concentration camps.
But obviously with the police resistance showing up and not
knowing that they have this whole plan for the Allies,

(26:22):
there's no one to take them off the train.
So they are stuck on the train toward the Constitution camp.
If y'all remember, Alfred is theone who has the photographic
memory and the people on the train are basically telling him
their names and their families names and their life stories.

(26:42):
Because as long as he survives, they'll be remembered and their
names will be remembered and he'll be able to tell their
families what happened to them. And so they're all just coming
up to him and like giving him all this information for him to
remember. It's very heavy.
Yeah, I wonder how does he even cope with that?
The answer is he really doesn't.It's really tough thing to

(27:05):
watch. They've realized that they're on
the train toward the concentration camp, and they
know what goes on in the camps because of the prisoner that
escaped that they talked to and whose drawings of the camp they
saw. So they come up with a plan to
set a train on fire so it has tostop and they can't get out,
which works and they get and youthink for a second that they're

(27:29):
gonna get away. But then Harry's girl out of
fucking nowhere gets shot and hedies and they bury him within 10
seconds and then they move on. I was a little bit disappointed
about this scene. I didn't realize he was dead for
the 1st 10 seconds. I'm like, well, did he just die?

(27:50):
I also was expecting his death scene to get perhaps a bit more
drawn out, but maybe they did itthat way because so often that
happens in war. Someone gets killed next to you
and you don't really have time to stop and think about it and
grieve. You just kind of have to move on
for everyone else's sake. Yeah, all I'm thinking about is
Neil, who is literally losing. Everybody cares.

(28:13):
About I know, and Neil is also present every time someone dies.
It's unfortunate for him. The only thing Harry gets in
this goodbye is New holding ontohis glasses.
They've already buried him. If you compare it to Tom's
death, I thought that was properly emotional.
And then Harry's one happened soquickly and he didn't even get

(28:35):
to sputter. Like he just collapse and that
was it. And then we didn't see him
again. Like they didn't even turn him
around. So I guess they did.
I guess they kind of dragged himoff and I thought, is he still
alive? But now he's already gone.
So I don't know. I'm just sad about it.
I wanted them to mourn him a little bit more.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like they did react to his death in later

(28:57):
episodes. I didn't, I don't know, To me, I
didn't mind that. It was kind of abrupt.
I was like, yeah, you know what?I guess that would be probably
how it would happen. Like on the one hand I'm and
plenty impacted being Sophie andthen on the other hand of like
every series more drama So what the fuck do I want?
Well, listen, we're all entitledto have our own feelings and

(29:17):
opinions about how the show went.
That's all good. Aurora is offered a job in the
race and resettlement office in Poland under her German alias of
Helena. She's still pretending to be
Sabina's friend. And now she's met a new friend
named Heidi Adler, played by Madeleine Knight.
And she's also sort of Sabina's friend.
And she's the one who offered for the job.

(29:37):
And she is a dyed on the wall Nazi.
I was about to say this lady, this lady is just nasty.
Yeah, she's not great. I like what they did in the
writing of her character where she's incredibly cheaper about
the resettlement of people. She's like, all these Nazis are

(29:58):
going to get pretty hassles because the people will be
moved. Yeah, she's like, oh, don't
worry, the people will be gone from the house that you live in.
Like we got rid of them. And as if that's your concern,
you're like, I sure hope there'sno original owners of this house
I'm about to live in. Aurora is getting more and more
entangled with her persona. Helena.

(30:19):
He's like in the thick of it. She's in the same office that
France works, but also Sabina's father works next door to her,
so she's pretty close to the bigbad.
For sure, and there's definitelythis whole running thing where
anytime she sees Sabinas father he flirts with her a little bit
and she definitely uses that to her advantage but.

(30:40):
At Francis party in the beginning, they have a dance and
it's just, yeah, just makes me yeah.
I can't deal with it. It's so creepy.
But good for Aurora for using her hotness to get closer to
this guy and get information from him I guess.
I mean she is pretty hot. Yeah, I mean, for sure.

(31:10):
In episode 5 we need the resistance again and they've got
Fuber and they aim to trade him for resistance fighters and ex
company who need him alive must attempt to facilitate the
exchange. At the same time I was like
can't they just tell them what their plan is?
But I guess they can't. No, I mean, I feel like it's one

(31:32):
of those things where few peoplecan keep a secret if one of them
are dead. You definitely want the fewest
number of people possible to know about this plan.
So they're trying to keep the resistance from killing Faber,
and trying to make it so that the prisoner exchange goes as
chill as possible so that Faber survives.
And at this point, obviously they've lost Harry, but Alfred

(31:52):
and you are still with the resistance and they're also
pretending to hate Faber and youdoesn't have that hard of a time
pretending to have Faber. Yeah, I don't think he's really
putting it on too much. There's a scene there where
sometimes I get really confused by this show because they show
murder in the most gruesome way and then there's a scene where

(32:14):
Farmer gets bestowed by resistance guy and it's not
shown. I'm like, why is this not shown?
They're like, I can allow some gruesome murder, but I draw the
line at getting peed on. Farmer's not having a very good
time, guys. Well, yeah, deservedly, perhaps.
But anyway, the Nazis, of course, they can't give the

(32:35):
resistance fighters back becausethey have already killed them.
And so they disguise a bunch of Nazis as resistance fighters,
and this is all just a trap. They're going to kill the
resistance guys. As soon as they show up and
Farber manages to escape, the Nazis are able to kill all the
resistance fighters, but not before one of the fighters
reveals that there's a mole amongst the Germans, which of

(32:56):
course, we already know. It's Aurora.
So now, unfortunately, the Nazisare going to be on to.
Her. Uh oh.
Can I just say I liked the fact that Fiber was obviously tied up
and Leo actually hesitated aboutwhether or not to cut him loose?
Yeah. It's super tense or what is he
going to actually leave it? But he ends up cutting him loose

(33:18):
because he knows that if he doesn't, he's going to screw up
her ex company. In episode 6, Sinclair is back
in Canada and he stops Christinafrom going into the field even

(33:40):
though she's really good and shereally wants to.
Instead of choosing new recruits.
David, played by John, Brittany and Peter, played by Louis
Rayner to replace Harry and Tom on a mission to blow up the
parish or refineries. They're newbies and new looks
after them a little bit and tries to train them a bit better
than they are. Because these guys, they're not

(34:02):
very dude, as Christina says, doesn't learn.
Look, they filter, test. They're shit at what they're
doing. They're new.
So why are you not putting me into the field?
And he doesn't really answer. These are the two guys that you
were talking about earlier. One of them was supposed to kill
the other. Well quote UN quote kill the
other in training and couldn't do it.
Yeah, he has attended for a second to a while and got shot

(34:25):
himself in training. I did not see this coming.
I honestly didn't. They are immediately captured at
the oil refineries by Farber. So I was like really confused
for a second. He interrogates them in front of
other Nazis and they give up a bunch of information, which is

(34:46):
false information, and then theyget shot by Farber point blank.
He just shoots them. I was like, what the fuck is
going on? But that's the point.
That's what you're meant to feel.
Yeah, and think there knew this this was going to happen.
This was all part of the plan, and that's why he didn't want to
send Christina into the field. They purposely sent them there
to spread false information or to give up false information

(35:09):
because they knew they were going to talk under pressure.
And they did. And I hated this e-mail a little
bit because Faber threatened to kill the other guy until the
other guy talked and then he shot them back.
And I was like, no, the newbies don't kill the newbies.
And I was really quite upset, Red Sinclair, for orchestrating

(35:31):
this thing. I was pretty upset.
Yeah, it mirrors the original scene where the one guy was not
able to, quote UN quote, kill the other one in training.
And then they're under torture and Fabre is threatening to kill
his friend, and he still hesitates.
He's like, no, I like, I don't want you to die sort of thing.
So the two scenes mirror each other.

(35:51):
It's very effective storytelling.
I think when Christina finds outthat these two guys have been
killed and that Sinclair set them up, she's obviously not
happy about it. But this is part of what they
do, right? In order to maintain fibrous
cover and plant this false information, then that's what
had to happen and that Sinclair had to make the hard choice, I
guess. And the short justice all the
time, like the next in popular choices.

(36:12):
And it's good that way. I like that it does that, but I
did like these guys. I also like these guys
specifically because it does newsense of purpose.
Again, it's like, all right, yougot to look after the young
guys. That's cool.
More characters to get killed onNeil's watch.
The Nazis begin to close in on Aurora as the mole working in

(36:34):
the Race and Resettlement office.
Faber provides Alfred with the location of Operation Marigold.
And this turns out to be heavilydependent on this professor
named Professor Voight, who's developing A synthetic oil, as
we talked about earlier, and so that he's kind of the heart of
Operation Marigold. Gillian Heisenberg, but for oil,
right? Yeah.

(36:55):
And there's a little side plot going on.
They're closing in on Helena or Aurora.
There are these Jewish women working in the office.
And I almost thought for a second that Aurora was going to
pin it on them, but she doesn't.Thank God she doesn't.
But unfortunately, she tries to get these women out because

(37:18):
Alfred is working at the train station and she's like, I need
to get them on a train and she almost makes it work.
And then she goes to get them and they're gone from the cells.
So she's too late. The reason why they're in the
cells is because, like, she didn't turn on them, but it was
just assumed that if informationwas leaked, then it must have

(37:40):
been these Jewish women working in the office.
And so her new friend Heidi was like, wow, clearly it was these
Jewish secretaries, so I just dispensed with them.
The way she talks about them too, like they're not even
human, it's just gross. Sabina is trying to help in her
way. She wants to do something, so
she's joined the women's party and she's sewing clothes and

(38:04):
she's just discovered that the clothes she's sewing were stolen
from Jewish prisoners and she can't really handle it.
So she changes her mind in that moment and goes to Aurora and
friends, finally says look, I want to help.
I think what's going on is wrong.
She changes her mind quite a lotin this season.

(38:26):
Well, I don't think it's necessarily that she was fine
with it after Aurora told her about the camps and stuff on the
train, but I think that Bobber did a pretty good job of
insulating her from it. And because her dad is so
heavily involved, like if you'rein that situation, you maybe
don't want to necessarily believe that that's true.
And then when she's sewing theseclothes and she sees that things

(38:49):
have been sewn into the hams andstuff like that, and she starts
to understand the truth of what's actually happening in the
magnitude of it, that's when shecan no longer kind of turn her
head away and tell herself that it's not true.
I think I told you when I was watching, I was like, I don't
like this Sabina, who doesn't really know what she wants
anymore. It makes sense for the series to

(39:11):
have her be a little bit unsure about how to proceed because she
also does like her life that shehas, and she doesn't want to
uproot herself and friends. And she still believes that
they're going to go away and getaway from all this, which is
what she really wants. So episode 7, Aurora learns that

(39:39):
the Nazis are going to quote UN quote process the village of
Nazi Asia and Poland. And if processing sounds bad, it
sure is. Neil and Alfred sort of go there
and decide they're going to joinup with the resistance there and
fight against the Nazis and try and prevent this from happening.
Yeah, Alfred has some trauma on this whole.

(40:00):
Fight after the fight is done, he's kind of breaking down a
little bit and I like that they brought this back for Alfred,
but I missed it with Neil. So I'm like, where did Neil
Stronger go? It's just kind of gone.
Like we don't see him struggle with his German radio operator
that he was struggling with before in Season 2 and we don't

(40:21):
really see him struggle with Neary either.
I like Neo being the troubled 1.Again, not something I
particularly noticed, but again,I did watch them all
back-to-back, so yeah. Aurora finagles an invitation to
an exclusive event in Berlin. Professor Freight is gonna be
there, the synthetic only inventor, because he will be

(40:41):
making a speech and getting an award, I think, and many key
nuts is probably there and the way over it gets this
invitation. Is there some party again?
I think they're hunting outside at this Manor house and this
hunting scene I could do without.

(41:02):
I never want to think about it again.
Because she's been flirting withSabina's father, she's become
part of this circle of Nazis whohang out together, including her
friend Heidi. So they go on this little
hunting expedition, and Heidi's used to being the one lady who's
involved who's allowed to go. And then Aurora sort of gets
herself involved as well. But then it becomes the most

(41:24):
dangerous game where they're hunting Jewish people, and it's
very traumatizing, understandably for Aurora.
Yeah, I liked how they did this,but man, it's so tough to watch.
You can tell that Aurora is really struggling with her
trying to still remain herself, but also being Helena.

(41:46):
And she's in this awful situation where she's not alone.
Sabina's father is right there, and so it's Heidi.
So she has to shoot a Jewish person up close in front of them
and she can't break. And she does break a little.
She even tries to tell them it doesn't really seem like good
sport to try and get out of it, but then they make her do it

(42:08):
anyway. This was really hard to watch.
Yeah, almost feels like she has to justify it to herself as
like, a mercy kill because if she doesn't shoot this guy,
probably worse things will happen to them.
Yeah. Sabina's father, quote, UN
quote, acquires a new kid for them stolen from a Polish
village. And we talked about the
Lebensborn program a bit in Season 1, and the plot line with

(42:29):
Sabina's quote, UN quote, new child did happen in real life.
This program would repatriate children with the, quote, UN
quote, right, racial features tobe adopted by German families.
So as the German army moved across the continent, they would
take kids from other countries. And the German families with
whom they were placed would believe they've been orphaned by
the war. They would have no idea that

(42:50):
their parents had been potentially captured, taken
away, killed, whatever the case was.
And Aurora and Faber say a few incriminating things to one
another, which is significant because Heidi is in the other
room overhearing it. And they share an angry kiss,
which Heidi also witnesses. And we were like, girl, no.

(43:10):
Oh my God, Aurora, what are you doing?
When I first watched it, I put in the chat Aurora No and all
caps and mark was like what? What happens?
And I was like, you'll know whenit happens.
And then it happened and you were like, it's happened.
Aurora No. I have to give it to this
actress playing Aurora because she does a great job at

(43:33):
portraying both want and absolute disgust in the same
moment. Like it's really well acted.
Yeah, it's such a weirdly tense scene.
Like after they kiss, you're like Aurora, Why?
But in your mind, you can kind of they've just been tossed in
together into this really absurdtension filled situation for so

(43:55):
long that I don't know, man. Like it makes sense in the
context of the show. But also you're like, that's, I
guess how you can tell that Aurora is getting sort of
confused with her character Helena, that she's been playing
for so long. In the background Alfred is
trying to get something to do with what is it again?
Train codes or something from the train.

(44:17):
He works at the train station and the boss of the translation
has this little booklet that he's supposed to get, and he's
flirting with his daughter. And you can tell that Aurora
doesn't like it. So there's a little bit of
jealousy going on, like in the background, and then she gets
his father and you're like, girl, what are you doing?
Yeah, that was really something for sure.

(44:39):
I did like this whole plot with Alfred having to pretend to be
this other guy. Initially, Alfred didn't really
do undercover stuff. It was really like a Tom and a
for a job mainly, and then he sort of got better at being a
spy, so now he gets to do the more big ticket stuff.
So we're. Slowly nearing the end of the

(45:01):
series. In episode 8, Sabina's father
figures out that Faber is a double Asian.
Oh no. But Faber then explains that he
was only pretending to be a double Asian, and he struck down

(45:23):
Sinclair's son in a Japanese POWcamp and has had him transported
to Berlin in order to more effectively infiltrate the
Allied intelligence, which he has.
Like he's got this whole like backup plan for himself.
I think that he probably just did that because the Allies have
leverage on him, so he wants to have leverage back.

(45:44):
Like, I don't know that he ever necessarily intended for
Sabina's father to find out and to turn into a triple agent sort
of thing. But yeah, it's a pretty
convenient for him now that he has been figured out to be like,
no, I'm being sneaky. Yeah, I'm doing this on purpose.
I thought it got kind of muddy at this point, but I think
that's we're not supposed to really know what is the truth at

(46:08):
this point because you're supposed to figure it out at the
end of the next episode. Yeah, he's really tap dancing
for his life. It feels like, you know, just
he's juggling a lot of plates. The child that Sabina's father
has brought in for them, he's 1.To get really good with this
girl, they're making him out to be this really good father.

(46:32):
And there's a point to it because you need to believe that
he would do anything for his child.
Yeah, and Heidi, meanwhile, she was there, of course, in the
last episode when Father and Aurora were whispering to each
other and then made out for a hot second.
She revealed that she knows Aurora's a spy.
And he tricks her into going into the cell and she locks her

(46:54):
up and she attempts to interrogate her.
But then Aurora manages to escape and Heidi chases her and
it's a whole thing. And then Aurora murders her, I'm
pretty sure, with her bare hands.
Doesn't she choke her out in thelong grass?
She jokes around, but not before, saying you were killed
by a Jew very deliberately. This scene, this was our tense.

(47:16):
And also Neil and Alfred have figured out that Aurora is in
danger. So they've gone after her and
they get there after she's done killing Heidi.
She's kind of, she's become a little bit despondent almost
after she's killed her. She's like had to be done, had
to do it. Let's move on.

(47:36):
And they can tell that she's really struggling with this
persona that she's trying to keep up.
In episode 9, all of X company converges on Berlin, including
Sinclair and Christina, because they have to assassinate

(47:58):
Professor Freud. And they must, I guess all of
them must do that. I don't know why they all have
to be there, whether just to do or have to be there.
I think it's one of those thingswhere if you come for the king,
you best not miss like they're only going to have one shot, so
they want to have everybody so they can have all these
different moving parts to this plan.
But then they find out that Faber has Sinclair son and they

(48:19):
have to trade their leverage that they have on Faber to get
Sinclair son William to safety. So it's a whole thing.
Like they come to murder professor for it and instead
they have to go and live up their leverage.
Yep, and then Faber betrays them, not necessarily because he
would anyway, but I think he doesn't really have a choice in

(48:40):
this instance because Sabina's father and everyone is on to him
and they obviously know. So he betrays them.
Sinclair and Neil get captured, and then Sinclair unfortunately
has to sacrifice himself so thatNeil can escape and help Aurora
to carry out the remainder of this plan.
I thought this was stupid. Let me tell you why.

(49:01):
I don't think the idea of him buying new time was stupid, but
I don't see why they couldn't have just found their way out of
there together. Yeah, I think that if the show
were to go on for another seasonor two, I don't think they would
have killed off Sinclair at thismoment.
It didn't seem strictly necessary for the story.
I agree with that. I did like the idea that he was

(49:24):
like, if they're going to torture my son in front of me, I
I am going to talk. So I either get out of here or I
kill myself. I do get that because he thought
he was going to give up secrets,but then the way he dies is by
suicide. And I'm like, really?
Can you not just first try to get out of here?
But I get your point. The shower is undone and he

(49:47):
needed to do something. But I just liked him so much.
Like can we just not have one person that we love going to
stay alive? Well, I think to it's going to
parallel something that happens in the last episode where he
feels obligated to do this because of his son or for his
son. So we're about to get that

(50:09):
storytelling parallel that'll come full circle in Episode 10.
Stop being so smart and reasonable Sam.
I just want to hate this choice.They're trying to set up our
plan to kill Void, that they have a whole plan.
It's really complicated and involves a lot of moving parts
and a lot of moving people. Aurora and Alfred find each

(50:31):
other and Aurora is like, I don't know who I am anymore and
Alfred is like, I know who you are.
And then they sleep together finally.
Yeah, finally they smash. It's been a long time coming.
But in like the most inconvenient place and time.
Yeah, but I guess that's what makes it, like, fun and sexy
because it's kind of dangerous. Do they even still love each

(50:53):
other or is this just kind of a please remind me I'm still alive
kind of smash? Yeah, I mean, that's allowed
too, I guess. Well, episode 10 Neil is
captured. Unfortunately he doesn't manage

(51:15):
to fully escape and he faces interrogation, but he gets out
of it by pretending to make a deal with Faber 2nd and
meanwhile Alfred and Christina are out there trying to discover
what happened to him. So all of this is kind of
happening in the background of this main plotline that involves
Aurora and Faber. I have some feelings about
Faber, second guy, the new one, because first from the last

(51:39):
season was an asshole. But this guy really, he likes
Faber. He's really trying really hard
to impress him all the time and he's kind of a young guy and
he's kind of stupid for making this deal because you can just
tell that no reason you're goingto keep his hand off the burden.
Yeah, but he's so young, right? Like this guy is just, of course

(51:59):
Neil's going to be able to manipulate him.
He's had a ton of practice doingit.
Yeah, he does get beat up quite badly, but he's been through
that before, I think. So it's like no big deal.
And he manages to get away with Sinclair's son, so he lives.
That's good. We don't see him again after
this, but he lives in a very tense moment where Aurora is

(52:22):
arrested because they figured her out.
Faber, at the very last minute, decides whose side he's on,
finally, once and for all, and kills Professor Freud and also
himself in his son's memory. So he finally decides I'm going
to be on the right side. Yeah, Aurora is bringing up with

(52:44):
him this thing that he had said about his own son when he was
talking about his grief over having killed Uli.
And he was saying that because his son had Down syndrome, he
was like, yeah, when he felt something, he can only feel one
thing at a time. So when he was happy, you knew
that he was happy. And this was something that
really profoundly affected Farber.
And so Aurora brings it up with him.

(53:06):
She kind of throws that back in his face at the last minute and
reminds him of what he was forced to do to this son that he
loved so much. And then he decides to sacrifice
himself at the moment when it counts.
Again, I'm wondering here, did he really have to die?
But I guess he did because that's the only way he can get
redemption. And I did to give myself a
little pat on the back at the end of Season 2.

(53:28):
I said to you after we finished recording, the only way Fabric
can really redeem himself is by dying at the end.
So yeah. Yeah, I think he had to.
I don't think there's any narratively, I don't think if
there's any way you could not kill Fabre at the end of this
season. No, true.
So Aurora goes to Sabina and tells her about France and they

(53:49):
cry together, which I thought was quite sweet.
And then they all go home on theplane and they all jump out at
different moments. I thought this was quite nice
actually. And Neil is reunited with his
niece. Sabina joins the body's
resistance, and I thought this was really fun to see her join
the body's resistance, finally being able to actually do

(54:10):
something. And Alfred and Christina
returned to compacts where Alfred trains new recruits.
Yeah. And Aurora goes back undercover
in Germany and the work continues because, of course,
it's, you know, still 1942. So there's quite a lot of war
left. And then that's it.
That's the end of the show. No, I want more.
Yeah, it was really nice to see Sabina get a chance to, because

(54:35):
we've kind of seen her as someone who's super naive and
really sheltered. But ultimately, when she does
find out that bad things are happening, she does not want to
be involved and she wants to prevent them from happening.
So even though she's kind of a spoiled, sheltered person, she
means well, I think. And so to get to see her move
away once Franz has died, then she's freed from kind of

(54:57):
participating in this Nazi hierarchy situation.
And for her to move away from that and get a chance to
potentially redeem herself laterand to bring this little girl
back to her people where she belongs, I really liked that.
And I also really liked Neil getting to reunite with his
niece because his whole thing ishe keeps losing people, and his
family was killed, and he didn'thave anyone, but he had this
niece that he was always writingtoo.

(55:19):
So I thought that was a nice wayto tie up his storyline too.
Yeah, I also thought it was nice.
I don't know if you noticed this, probably you did, but
Sabrina, she literally lets her hair down.
When she turns the resistance, her hair's down.
It's a different color, like she's broken free of the grip of
the Nazis almost visually too. And I thought that was quite

(55:40):
nice. And they would have liked to
have seen another season of her with the resistance as well.
Yeah, for sure. I definitely think that had they
wanted to do more seasons, they definitely could have.
And I like Alfred being the one who's training new agents.
It's kind of a parallel to him, and I think they even do.
It's a parallel of him leading anew agent into the halls of X

(56:03):
Company, while we also see him in the first episode entering X
Company and seeing all this stuff for the first time.
They do quite a nice roundup at the very end with some scenes
from the beginning and throughout the series.
But it also made me sad because there's no more.
I know I agree. With regard to Real Camp X,

(56:34):
there was a decline in the need for covert agents later in the
war, so they closed the trainingschool there in the fall of
1944, though Hydra, the telecommunications system,
continued to operate until the war ended in Europe.
After the war, Hydra operations were shifted to Ottawa and
continued there for many years. I'm just really glad we watched
this show, really, so I would like to read it.

(56:57):
Yeah. So I think we're going to rate
it, girl, no, don't kiss that Nazi out of 10 because we had
lots of visceral, intense reactions to things that
happened in this show. But that one definitely made me
be like, what the fuck? So I'm going to rate this show
8. No, don't kiss that Nazi out of

(57:20):
10. I really enjoy, well, as always
learning new things, kind of a perspective of history that we
haven't necessarily seen before.For me, obviously, I like
talking about perhaps lesser known Canadian history and
bringing that to people and learning a lot more about it
myself. And I enjoyed that there were in

(57:41):
this ensemble of characters, I felt that they were all pretty
fleshed out. They had different kinds of
interesting relationships with one another.
We had a few female characters who actually had something to
do, that they were all quite different from one another.
They all had different motivations and they all behaved
in different ways. And I quite liked that.
And I thought the whole thing where, as we've said, we sort of
could tell that the only way forFaber to redeem himself was to

(58:04):
die at the end of the third season, but nothing about it was
a given. They did a really good job of
making it so that you never really know what side he's going
to come down on. It really is the big question.
And I just think that the storytelling was really good.
I love watching spy shit and I really enjoyed it.
I think I'll probably watch it again at some point.
I agree, I also will watch it again for numerous reasons.

(58:26):
I specifically like season 1 and2.
I also like 3 but not as much asone and two.
But I'm gonna give it maybe an 8.4 girl don't kiss and Nancy
out of 10. I like the new ones with which
tackle things like killing. It never seemed easy.

(58:47):
We are particularly heroic the way sometimes American media
portrays killing people. And you've pretty much said
everything else that I also wanted to say.
So I'm going to keep it short and I'm just going to say spies
many times. And that's why it gets a high
rating for me. Yeah, I think other Canadians,

(59:08):
if you're used to shows on the CBC, this is not like those
other shows in a lot of ways. I think, like you said, it's
quite violent. They really don't pull any
punches. I wish more people in Europe
were able to watch it because I had to jump through some semi
legal hopes to watch that. Try and find a way to watch the
guys. It's really fun.

(59:29):
And then come talk to us about it on Instagram.
Yes, definitely. Send us a message about it.
Tell us about all your feelings.Tell us why your favorite
character is Neil, because he's clearly the best.
Neil and Christina are my favorites.
Everyone. I said that up top and I stand
by it. I think mine is also Neil, so
I'm I'm boring. Anyway, thank you so much for

(59:50):
listening. Wait, what are you reading?
What am I reading? Am I reading everything?
I don't know, I don't remember what I'm reading, so I'm sorry,
what are you reading? I'm reading a book that was
recommended to me in teachers college, and I picked up a copy
years ago and I had never read it, so I'm reading it now.
It's called Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louvre, and

(01:00:13):
he's a journalist, and he sort of tries to pull together
scientific studies and anecdotalstories in order to draw a line
between the vanishing opportunities for kids to engage
in unstructured play outside in green spaces and the rise in
like, childhood depression and ADHD and that kind of stuff.
So I don't know, it's interesting to read about.

(01:00:35):
Something different for sure. Thank you so much for listening.
You can find us wherever you getyour podcast.
You can follow us and comment tous on Instagram at Rosie the
Reviewer Podcast. You can visit our website
rosiethereviewer.com where you can actually find some goods
nowadays. So please do and what else can

(01:00:58):
you do? Please send all these Ex Company
episodes to all your friends because we need an Ex Company
revival in 2025 please. Thank you.
And we'll see you next week. Bye.