Steal Recap ‘Fill or Kill’: Sophie Turner stars in a tense heist thriller

It was the relative silence followed by violence that racked up the tension in this episode, where armed thieves broke into the office of Lochmill Capital, stole four billion pounds, and walked out. It happened first when the thieves moved the workers to a conference room, collecting their phones along the way. One of the office workers told one of the thieves that if he fired his gun, it would be heard by other floors and the building across the street. He doubted the gun was even loaded. The man who appeared to be the leader of the group quietly said they did not need to fire a gun, then his man proceeded to beat the office worker on the face with the butt of his SIG Sauer MPX-K and stomped on his body on the floor. 

The second time, the employee involved was Donny, the receptionist, who tried to signal the people working in the building across the street through the glass wall. He, too, was hit with the butt of a gun and, bleeding, dragged bodily to the washroom, where he was tied and threatened. 

Silence was used when the building mailman Peterson walked up to one of the thieves pretending to be a receptionist. When Luke Selborn (Archie Madekwe) and Zara Dunne (Sophie Turner), two members of the Trade Processing Team who executed the trades at gunpoint, were waiting for the inevitable call from their bank to confirm the massive transaction, there was a single tear that silently rolled down Luke’s cheek. There was disciplined restraint in the use of silence, which only served to heighten the drama, and when the final scene rolled, when Zara alone in a toilet cubicle finally allowed a smile to touch her lips, and the low music that started playing a minute ago was slowly turned up, it signalled the end to a satisfying beginning. How many ways can a heist story be told? I suppose we’ll find out. 

The setup to get us to care about four billion pounds, an unbelievable amount most of us would never be able to grasp in our lifetimes, started early, with establishing shots of people using various modes of transportation as they went about their day, most of them to work. The thieves smoothly blended with them. Inside Lochmill Capital, Zara, struggling with a nosebleed, had to give a tour to a new employee, Myrtle Clarke, which gave her a chance to explain the work that they did. Lochmill Capital was a fiduciary pension fund manager; it meant that private companies, government departments, and unions for lower income workers gave them their pensions to invest. The money the thieves would steal were not anonymous funds, they were products of decades of hard work of normal people with normal lives and normal needs, who would quite normally need that money once they hit retirement.

The thieves were able to gain access to the office easily enough, and I hope there will be an explanation to this in later episodes. I would have thought being a massive financial institution that the Lochmill Capital office floor would have only been accessible via a secure card key. In any case, they had their guns, their phone jammers, and their plan, to keep most of the employees in a conference room, save for the two they needed to execute the trades. Separately, the Investment Committee – these were the people who decided where the pension funds were invested, and they were the ones who got paid serious money – were kept in their own conference room, where they were having their regular meeting.

The lead thief – we don’t have his name yet – gave Luke, the senior member of the Trade Processing Team, a USB with details of six trades and forced him to load them up into the trading system. Another thief forced three members of the Investment Committee to sign off on the trades, even after one of them, George Cartwright, pointed out that they did not hold the money, their custodian bank did. Warren from the custodian bank called to confirm the trades, and since Luke was already full-on sobbing in fear by this time, Zara answered the call. She even dropped Cartwright’s name to get Warren to put the trades through. The funds arrived in the thieves’ accounts, and they coolly put their guns in black bags and walked out of the building, even as armed police stormed in. 

It was a tense opening, and it took up most of the episode. The few minutes that were left were used to introduce us to DCI Rhys Covaci (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), the senior investigating officer who got the call interestingly as he was leaving a casino. Hmm. Based on what Zara overheard from Chioma and Dahlia, the bosses were already worried that the heist was an inside job. The thieves knew everything about their operation; it made sense that someone who worked there told them. 

When DCI Rhys had a quiet conversation with Zara, where he explained to her that she and a few others were kept separate because they interacted with the thieves the most and were potential significant witnesses, her first question was to ask about her co-workers who were injured. DCI Rhys assured her they were fine, their injuries were not serious. Steal decided to reveal in its first episode at least one of the people involved in the heist. This was not a whodunit, this was a thriller, and based on this season opener alone, it looks like we’re in for a good ride.

Rating: A

Strays

🌳This is a minor thing, but I really liked that they gave or allowed Zara a small blemish on her jawline. Sophie Turner is so beautiful, so Zara having a tiny imperfection made her far more human and believable as just another office worker doing the daily grind like the rest of us.

🌳When Donny was already bound and gagged on the floor of the washroom, the thief who caught him signalling for help asked him if someone saw him. The thief made it clear that if someone did see him, and the police came, this would turn into a hostage situation, and he would be killed. Donny still shook his head. The thief knew he was lying, but did not hurt him further. At least in this early episode, they exercised relative restraint in the violence they wrought. 

🌳The higher-ups were considering making the employees sign NDAs following the robbery. 

🌳Zara’s conversation with DCI Rhys was interrupted when her nose started bleeding again, and she asked to go to the toilet. It was notable that DCI Rhys had a PC accompany her. 

Episode Title: Fill or Kill

Episode Writer: Sotiris Nikitas

Episode Director: Sam Miller

Original Release Date: January 21, 2026