Ponies Recap Season 1 Episode 8 ‘The Stranger’: Welcome to the CIA

Even as Manya fulfilled her promise to Sofia to return for her, 55 years later, everywhere else in Ponies, there was betrayal. ‘The Stranger’ is a packed finale that gave us an effective gut punch near the end. If you have risked your life multiple times believing that you are on the side of the angels, what is left of your worldview when you find out that as you pursued a murderer, the people you worked for were murderers too? Think back of all the sweet moments Sasha and Bea shared, the two of them thinking that they worked toward justice, only for Andrei to now declare that Galyna was not a prostitute, she was KGB. She was killed by the CIA to persuade her brother Sasha to work for them. If Sasha survived his wound, would he survive this information? Remember all that he went through to get a measure of justice for Galyna. What would he be willing to do once he found out that he worked for the very people who killed her? How would he process this level of manipulation and betrayal? 

Twila and Bea did not have time to process this, along with Andrei’s revelation that Chris was the mole, not Tom, because they ended up surrounded by the KGB in the secret CIA floor inside the US embassy. Andrei, who was their prisoner, casually walked out of the Bubble with a smirk. Dane was gone a few days and his station was already up in flames. Ray needed to step way up, but the poor guy did not even know his wife Cheryl was the mole. 

Like I said, this was a packed finale. Let’s go through this slowly. 

Twila was brought in to Moscow mostly to watch Bea’s back. Since she had near native fluency in Russian, Bea had a valuable skillset. It was Bea who handled Sasha, an important asset, and who spied on Andrei, a high ranking KGB official. Yet, as the two women spent all these months in Moscow, it became clear that Twila was invaluable to Bea’s success. Quick-thinking, fearless, and a survivor, Twila has saved operations – planting a bug on Andrei’s car, getting Ivanna to point her toward Maria, who gave her and Ray intel on the women who were murdered, getting the package from Tatiana that eventually led the team to realise how Andrei’s blackmail material was hidden. Twila was as street smart as Bea was book smart. More than that, however, Twila’s genuine care for Bea’s well-being was constant. When Andrei gripped Bea’s hand at the diplomatic reception, it was Twila who recovered first and pulled her out of there. When Andrei caught up with them – after they briefly hid in Elton John’s dressing room and met the legend himself – Twila pushed Bea out of danger, so that it was her that Andrei hit first. Even whilst hurt, Twila kept getting back up to try and save Bea from Andrei, whose angry hand had slammed her against a wall and strangled her. 

It was Ivanna who saved the two of them; she walked in and hit Andrei on the head with a stanchion. Twila and Bea knew they needed to rush to get Sasha, and so they left Ivanna in the parking lot and took Ray’s car; Ray had trusted Twila with the spare key. After getting Sasha, their next stop was Aksana’s salon; Bea took her up on her offer of a dacha outside the city should she need to get away from Andrei.

Why didn’t the ladies just head to the US embassy and hide there? Well, they were not alone, they had Sasha, and getting a Russian citizen the KGB was after might have created complications. The work they did was secret; they had cover jobs within the embassy because its employees were not aware of the work the CIA did. The embassy was always watched; they could not be certain that they could even get inside the gate before Sasha was spotted and they were stopped. Of course, all these questions also applied to Andrei and their decision to bring him to the embassy. The difference was, at this time, they still thought they had a choice, a dacha that was offered should Bea find herself in distress. By the time they got Andrei, they knew they had nowhere else to go, and they decided to risk returning to the embassy.

Why did Bea trust Aksana, just like that? Well, Twila trusted Ivanna, and that worked well for her. Aksana was good, she created a bond with Bea through fear of Andrei. As they said goodbye, Aksana even switched to English, just another layer of trust me to make Bea feel comfortable. Bea was frightened not just for herself and Twila, but for Sasha; she needed to trust someone, she rolled the dice with Aksana. She was wrong to do that, but in the context of what they were up against and their relative inexperience in the field, it was understandable.

The drive to the dacha was long, and it was then that Bea noticed a pin on Sasha’s sweater. It was a winged horse on top of the world, the same symbol on the card in Chris’s pocket, on the bar where she and Sasha met, on the ambulance that carried the blackmail tapes to the KGB kompromat facility. Sasha said it was at his work, too, not the symbol but the name – Pegasus. Bea told Sasha that her husband Chris knew his sister Galyna. Sasha recalled that he met Chris when he started working for the CIA; he told him he could trust him, he knew his sister.

The dacha was not exactly well-maintained; there were no lights, but there was a phone, and Bea and Twila were able to call for an extraction. Twila went to the bathroom that was a small room separate from the house; tissues were just newspaper pieces cut in small squares. When Twila tried to grab one, a false wall opened. It was an underground room with boxes upon boxes of Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific shampoo. 

Twila had dismissed the shampoo bottle she got from Tatiana, but this time, she found what they were really for. She took a box into the house and showed Bea and Sasha; under the label was a string that, when pulled, revealed a tape secured inside a plastic covering. They watched one and realised these were Andrei’s blackmail tapes. This was not Aksana’s dacha, this was Andrei’s. This was the second house that Dane had wanted Bea to find, that night that she first went out on a date with Andrei.

They knew they needed to get out of there, but Bea and Twila were intelligence officers first, they secured the boxes of blackmail tapes in the back of Ray’s car. The time they took to do that cost them dearly. They were just about to leave when they heard the telltale sound of a car door closing. 

Sasha was a really sweet guy; it was he who approached the door (hence, the danger) whilst Bea and Twila remained inside. A man came at him, pushed him to the floor, and repeatedly punched him on the head. Bea and Twila tried to help, but the man was strong and he was able to push them both away. As he strangled Sasha, Sasha was able to get ahold of his suicide pill. He shoved this into the attacker’s mouth, and he died. 

The three of them were just regaining their breaths when Aksana came from behind them and stabbed Sasha in the chest. This time, Bea reacted quickly and violently. She grabbed an old wrought iron poker and hit Aksana on the face with it, killing her.

Twila drove whilst Bea held the bleeding Sasha on the backseat. Bea tried to keep Sasha awake by talking about the future – her parents’ house, the bakery, a trip to New York. Sasha pointed out that he still did not know her real name and Bea gave it, finally. 

The dacha was way outside of Moscow, and for a time theirs was the only car on the road. Then, one drove up from the opposite direction and passed by them. Twila saw Andrei’s furious face before she floored it.

Andrei caught up with them quickly enough, but Twila remembered what Ray told her – Soviet cars could not make sharp turns. It was a measure of how uneasy she still was over Bea’s trust that in that moment, she had to ask Bea if she trusted her. She did, and Twila executed a sharp turn a la Ray, which caused Andrei’s car to do a few rolls down the road after he tried to follow her. 

Fearless was how Dane described Twila, and she was. She drove back up to the wreck of Andrei’s car and got out so she could check on him. Sasha is bleeding in the backseat, Twila! A car arrived, and three men got out. Bea kept reassuring Sasha that everything was all right, because she would not leave him. One of the men opened the car door; this was the extraction team that they called in earlier.

The men took Sasha, to where, it was not mentioned. They had bundled the unconscious Andrei in the back of Ray’s car. As they drove back, an emotional Twila tried to reassure Bea that she would be all right. Bea was processing how she was a murderer now, and would be for the rest of her life. Twila said that whilst time did not make it go away, it helped. Then she gave Bea a glimpse of the rough, heartbreaking life she lived before she met Tom. 

She was close to her father, who was a good man, but who drank, a lot. One time he was vomiting badly, and Twila was worried about him. She tried to take him to the hospital; she truly thought she could drive his truck. They hit a bus, or a bus hit them, she was not certain. Her father died.

All the men her mother dated after that hated her, except for one, who liked her a bit too much. When she met Tom, she lied to him. There was no miscarriage. She had a botched abortion when she was 15 that prevented her from ever having children. She could not tell Tom that because he would not have married her, and she needed Tom to get her out of there. This was where Twila’s rough edges were sharpened, on a rough life whilst she was way too young, on the lie that she needed to maintain until her husband died. Bea gently told her she mattered.

The boxes of shampoo were placed in the CIA safe, and Bea and Twila secured Andrei inside the Bubble. When he woke, Andrei told Bea he should have killed her, and when she asked why he didn’t, he replied, ‘Because I have mind. And I have heart. And they fight.’ I will not ship them. I will not ship them. I will not ship them. At first, they refused to let Andrei have the cigarette he requested. Twila told him they had leverage now, his blackmail tapes. They wanted to know who killed Tom and Chris. Vera had told them that Tom worked for the KGB. Andrei confirmed an American did work for the KGB, but he insisted on his own cigarette before he told them who it was.

Bea took a cigarette pack from inside his jacket, lit one herself as Andrei tilted his head and stared at her, then placed the cigarette between his lips. Why is this scene hot? He finally described the American who worked for the KGB, and it was Chris, the one who went to an Ivy League university. 

‘Do you think I am bad, and you’re good?’ That was exactly what Bea thought. In a show that had many good decisions and excellent writing overall, the decision to make Galyna’s murder the work of the CIA was one of the best ones, and one that was set up early in the season. When we first saw Galyna’s body out on the street, that was followed by Tom walking past her, and Emile carefully wrapping a bloody knife. I was suspicious that the murder was CIA’s work, and according to Andrei, I was right. The CIA needed Sasha’s cooperation, and so they killed his sister, a KGB agent, and convinced him that it was the work of the KGB. Andrei did not put things together until he broke into Sasha’s apartment after he found out that Bea was American, and he saw a photo of him and Galyna, whom he recognised. Perhaps Twila and Bea had not yet realised it, or perhaps they had, but now Andrei had something on them, too. If Sasha survived, all he needed to do was tell him who actually killed his sister, and this CIA asset – smart, dedicated, a young man who now knew how to kill too – could very well turn into their enemy. Sasha took on the KGB from within Moscow for Galyna. What would he do to get back at the CIA not just for his sister’s murder, but for manipulating him all this time?

The device Cheryl manipulated the ambassador into putting inside the vault (we will discuss this in Strays) detonated, and caused a fire that spread through the floor. The embassy employees calmly walked out, thinking there was nothing on that floor except storage. Firemen rushed in, but they were not firemen, they were KGB, and they were grabbing CIA files as Twila and Bea, the only CIA agents on the floor, left the Bubble and found the chaos. Andrei calmly followed them, a free man now, and declared, ‘Welcome to the CIA’, as two men trained guns on the two women. A show that was powered by the chemistry of its two leads fittingly ended with a shot of them holding hands. 

The first season of Ponies was short, too short in my opinion, but it was a successful one, a female buddy espionage tale that never forgot its heart. Congratulations to everyone involved, and I hope the second season is announced soon!

Rating: A-

Strays

🐎We got a flashback of Manya and Sofia in 1922, when they talked about marrying and vowing not to live boring lives. Sofia asked Manya to promise she would come back, and she did, though decades late. Their reunion was sweet. As they ate in a restaurant, Manya noticed a man watching them; she told Sofia that she has been feeling like she was being followed. This was the finale, and we spent precious minutes with Manya and Sofia, including a flashback, so I suppose this meant that their story would become important later on.  

🐎It was Dane who sent a man to follow Manya, and he reported to him and Emile that they were just old women talking. Dane and Emile later picked up Manya, and together they went to a house, where a very much alive Chris waited.

🐎Eevi was stabilised at Ray's flat and later taken to the hospital. She looked like she’ll be okay, but Cheryl later went to the hospital and injected something to her IV.

🐎The shooting brought Ambassador Toon to the flat. Cheryl gave him the device she claimed she caught Eevi looking at, and the Ambassador had it placed in the vault. This was the device that caused the fire.

🐎In the embassy tunnels a week before, Cheryl met a man who might have been her lover because they kissed, and he gave her the device. They agreed to wait until the concert so the building would be mostly empty. They could not have known that Andrei’s blackmail tapes would be there, so this plan was for something else. Cheryl carefully erased her footprints as she walked back to the embassy.

🐎Cheryl got out of being questioned by embassy security by pulling a do you know who my husband is, and referring to the Office of Special Projects. If the security guy did not know that was the CIA, then he would have once Cheryl dropped Dane’s name. Still, he looked at Ray first, who nodded, before he left.

🐎Cheryl laid all the blame on Ray and pointed out that she did not want Eevi in their house. There certainly was something about Eevi, and I hope we find out in the second season.

🐎The fire at the embassy vault may have destroyed Andrei's blackmail tapes, but one survived -- the one inside the shampoo bottle in Twila's bathroom.

🐎Thank you so much for joining me on these Ponies recaps! This coverage was unplanned, but once I started watching and writing, I realised this show was special and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I appreciate you all, and see you on the next one!

You can view Recap Lab’s coverage of Ponies via this link. 

Episode Title: The Stranger

Episode Writers: Susanna Fogel and David Iserson

Episode Director: Susanna Fogel

Original Release Date: January 15, 2026

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