Legends Recap ‘Old Kings’: Control
- May 24
- 5 min read
This is a detailed recap of the fifth episode of Legends and contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t seen it yet, please head over to Netflix and watch this 1990s-era thriller about a group of white collar Customs officers who went undercover to bust the heroin trade.
When Istanbul decided to help Zeki in betraying Hakan, only for Hakan to come out on top of their duel, the middleman in this vast drug network was effectively removed. Hakan simply went straight to the source in Pakistan, and this time, he wanted to do something that has never been done before – bring in two tonnes of heroin – product with a street value of 100 million pounds.
Why did he decide to bring in that much product when transportation was being handled by someone he has not worked with before – Guy? He may not know Guy but he knew Mylonas, and Mylonas brought someone invaluable to the negotiations with the warlord Ayub Afridi, the woman he introduced as his wife who just happened to be an exiled princess of Afghanistan. The massive haul was not only a test of Guy’s skills and connections, it was also a way for Hakan’s son Aziz to learn how large scale smuggling worked so he could take over Guy’s part of the business.
Legacy, roots, a deep-seated connection to the land of their ancestors, a profound sense of history – Hakan and Afridi understood each other. Hakan wanted to give his son Aziz to his friend and business partner Afridi, to live and work in Pakistan once he had learned all the transportation secrets he could from Guy. Aziz was not happy with this, but his father, whom Mylonas had described as an ‘old king’, told him he could not say no.
For Customs, this was the end game. If that much heroin entered the country, the price would plummet, which meant an increase in drug usage and deaths. Blake has tried to give the team operational independence, but with this massive operation with an international component, they needed official cover.
Security Services was not happy with the plan, and though they got all the operational details (including the name of Don’s mother), they did not interfere. Lawrence from the Service was in Karachi when the London and Liverpool crews, along with Guy, Mylonas, and Zahra (the secret princess) met with Afridi. It was Lawrence who warned Don of the danger as Afridi moved the meeting to the mountains of Khyber.
Don and Bailey were in Pakistan for support, and though Guy had figured out that Bailey had a source inside the Liverpool team, he did not know it was Eddie. Guy’s plan was to load up the heroin on a boat and leave it with the boat crew Don recruited, whilst he and the rest flew back home. But Carter remained suspicious, which forced Guy to hop in with the boat crew. Carter even wanted Eddie to go with Guy on the boat, but Eddie refused.
‘In this game, it’s about having control. And I reckon we just lost that.’ Don told Bailey as they watched Guy go off plan and get on the boat that the leader of the boat crew insisted was not ready for the voyage. Yet it felt like it was Carter who was losing control. He had noticed how Eddie had been saying no to him lately. What he did not yet know was that back in Liverpool, he has also lost the one person who has kept him out of prison all this time, his cop friend Goodwin.
Despite Don’s misgivings, Kate had insisted on making every effort to find Carter’s crooked cop. Since she and Erin could not request records without alerting the Liverpool police, Kate decided to go to the police station and ask for Declan Carter’s records personally. Kate was able to convince the records officer to get Carter’s file, but there was a note there about alerting Goodwin, and she dutifully did.
Goodwin was a smooth liar. He told Kate he knew Carter must have had help from the police. He arranged to meet Kate later so he could give her the file. When they were alone, he spoke of how Kate did not understand how things worked in Liverpool. He claimed that he kept Carter in check, that he had prevented murders. It looked like he believed what he was saying. But Kate was way ahead of him. As he stepped toward her, Kate called in her armed police backup. Goodwin would be booked in Manchester under a fake name and fake charges, until he was ready to talk.
‘Old Gods’ is a packed, propulsive episode that also knows when to breathe. It was in the moments when it lingered – as when Zahra touched the ground of her home again for the first time in years, and later carefully half buried a photo of her father the King – that it hinted at an older tale that a six-episode miniseries does not have room for. With just one episode left, and with the huge heroin haul now on its way, the story would need to be brought back to where it started, at the politically calculated reasons for forming the undercover group, and this small band of souls who decided to do a job in a scale no one in their line of work has ever done before. Let’s see how it goes.
Rating: B+
Strays
🕵️Bailey offered new identities for Eddie and his family, which Eddie, at least initially, refused. The unspoken part of Eddie’s plan was that after he has humiliated Carter and made an example of him to the kids at the estate, once he has shown that being a dealer was not a way out, he would kill Carter. What Bailey wanted him to do was to make sure the deal in Pakistan went through, then Bailey’s team would take Carter down. Eddie figured out that Bailey had an informant embedded with Hakan’s group.
🕵️In Pakistan, when the group was about to leave the Karachi hotel and toward an (at that time) unknown location, Eddie contrived to head to the washroom so he could quickly speak to Bailey. He told him they were going to the source; he also asked Bailey to tell his wife he was sorry for what he did, and that he tried to put it right. There has been some very good character work on Eddie in such a short amount of time.
🕵️I will always appreciate little details like Guy’s wife Sophie finding and removing a receipt from one of the pants he packed, because it was to a garage not far from their house and it was not in keeping with his legend.
🕵️Erin’s father made and lost money; it was why she had a posh accent but worked a relatively low paying job. Bailey went to Eton on a scholarship. His snooty school discouraged him from taking his A levels, which was how he ended up working for Customs.
🕵️Afridi giving a history lesson to his guests then having one of his men shoot an unarmed man right after as a warning was cold.
🕵️Aziz told Guy he did not want to deal drugs forever, and that they should talk when they were back in London about going into real business.
Episode Writer: Neil Forsyth
Episode Director: Julian Holmes
Original Release Date: May 7, 2026