War Recap Season 1 Episode 3 ‘Chip Off the Block’
This is a full recap of the third episode in the first season of War. If you would simply like to read a short episode summary, please scroll down.
We’ve been keeping a bit of an unofficial scorecard here. In the first two episodes, Cathcarts came out ahead of Taylor & Byrne. This is why I went into this episode hoping that Taylor & Byrne would score a win. After all, a fictional TV war between two law firms representing a billionaire and a movie star is no fun if only one side keeps winning.
I have to admit that when I heard Serena’s proposed strategy — that Morgan becoming a father to Carla’s son from her first marriage, Gabriel, represented a change in circumstances that could invalidate the prenup — I was sceptical. They meant to paint Carla as a largely absentee mother whilst Morgan had become the present father figure in the boy’s life, though he had never formally adopted him. Why would Carla being a crap parent entitle her to a larger share of Morgan’s money?
Thinking about it, though, from a layperson’s point of view, Serena just wanted to nullify the prenup, full stop. There was no new fight over the assets yet; that would come later. Proving that Gabriel was effectively their child, when he had not been accounted for in the prenup, represented a change in circumstances. Maybe this is why there is finally a win in the Taylor & Byrne column. If anyone with a legal background in the UK would like to weigh in, please do so.
Beatrice was already concerned about the case, even before this latest battle. She pushed for a settlement in the second episode, which did not go through after Johnny told David how Morgan’s one night of fun with Flora had been arranged by Carla. She was concerned about Morgan, but also about Johnny, and how David hiring a spy in their rival law firm could come back to haunt them. St. John tried to allay her concerns, but Beatrice said that after protecting the prenup at arbitration, they should reach a settlement as quickly as possible.
How to protect the prenup, though? Johnny, whilst being fitted for a suit at Morgan’s tailor (Carla had sent him there after overhearing that he did not have black tie attire for his girlfriend’s dinner), told David about the strategy Serena had come up with — the prenup was outdated because it had been signed when Carla was a single mother. Morgan becoming Gabriel’s de facto father was the change in circumstances they were going to use to break the prenup.
Gabriel becoming part of his mother’s lawyers’ legal strategy came just as he decided to leave his fancy boarding school and show up in London. Though Carla and Morgan had agreed to talk to Gabriel together, Carla went ahead and told him about the divorce anyway. Gabriel went to Cathcarts, where Morgan was forced to tell him that he had cheated, not Carla, as Gabriel had suspected. I love Gabriel’s line about how no one’s parents were in love; they just made the best of it. It was an insightful observation from a child of privilege desperate to keep his family together, for things not to change.
Morgan told Gabriel to head to his hotel room, where Gabriel nicked a table by using it to open a beer bottle, then posted on social media looking for fun (trouble). He found it with a kid named Thibault Hürlimann, who just happened to be throwing a drug- and drink-fuelled party at his parents’ house. Even the dialogue here showed that Gabriel was a thoughtful, if somewhat forlorn, kid. Kudos to the writers for writing him so well.
Even with a kid his own age, Gabriel remained in denial about the state of his parents’ marriage, which was apparently already being discussed in posh circles, since Thibault’s parents had heard that Morgan had moved out. Gabriel tried to deny it, and when Thibault went from trying to be supportive to behaving like an incel, Gabriel punched him.
When Morgan returned to his hotel suite and realised Gabriel was not there, he assumed the boy had gone to Carla. However, when Carla later tried calling him, he figured she would not be calling unless she was worried about Gabriel. St. John, however, told him to let the call go to voicemail. Johnny had already warned them about Serena’s strategy; St. John wanted it established that Carla was the sole parent, not Morgan.
At a time when she needed help, Carla just happened to see Johnny’s text thanking her for the suit. She called him, and he decided to leave without telling his girlfriend, who was already inside the important work party she needed to attend. It was Johnny who figured out where Gabriel had gone, and Johnny who chased him through the house when he tried to run away upon seeing his mother.
The party had already broken up. Thibault was being attended to beside an ambulance. Gabriel said he would go to the hospital, then to the police; he showed Johnny the drugs he had brought to the party. Johnny cautioned him that he could be charged with supplying drugs. A teenager hurt by his parents splitting up and wanting to hurt them in return, Gabriel did not care, not at that moment. Johnny told him that getting arrested would not stop his parents from splitting up. That worked, and Gabriel got into Carla’s car. Johnny thanked Carla again for the suit, and the vibe here, earlier in the car, and later when Johnny was on a bus, was that Carla was attracted to him, and Johnny was starting to consider the possibility himself.
The meeting with the arbitrator was the first time Beatrice acknowledged Serena, and St. John came up with my word for the day (comestibles). At first, it looked like another Cathcarts victory. Serena presented her argument, along with photos of Morgan and a young Gabriel. Then Team Morgan played the voicemail Carla had left the night before, in which she berated Morgan and accused him of never having been a father to Gabriel.
Carla picked a fight, and Morgan angrily responded. Gabriel, who was outside the conference room, slammed his hand against the glass wall, his teenage anger now directed at Morgan. Morgan was furious that Carla had brought him there, then proceeded to scold Gabriel as a father would. Serena could barely contain her smile.
Steven Dixon, a financial adviser who worked with Gillian Pope (Zephyr's CFO), had an idea about how to prevent Carla from accessing Morgan’s Zephyr shares — simply transfer them to Gillian temporarily. The way Morgan reacted to that suggestion was the first true glimpse of the hard man beneath the relatively easy-going billionaire. Later, however, after the arbitrator invalidated the prenup, he called Gillian and told her to start moving the money.
Rating: B
Strays
💼 As an alternative strategy, Johnny suggested bringing a malpractice suit against the firm that had negotiated the prenup and making a case that Carla had been badly advised. He argued that although Nick had been Carla’s lawyer, she would be suing the firm he had worked for before Taylor & Byrne was set up. Carla seemed to like this idea, but Serena, naturally, would not go for it.
💼 Carla’s legal team was supposed to choose the arbitrator from a shortlist of five. They chose Rachel Grann, who used to work for Beatrice but who had once given an interview in which she stated that prenups were ‘morally and inherently unfair’. Johnny heard all this, and whilst he told David about the plan to use Gabriel to break the prenup, he did not share this bit of information about the choice of arbitrator.
💼 It was beginning to look as though Carla’s career was on a downswing, but not because she had made particular sacrifices for the family. As for one major role she had lost out on, the producer claimed she had never even been offered it.
💼 In response to Steven’s suggestion that Morgan ‘gift’ his Zephyr shares to Gillian so Carla could not touch them, framing it as a matter of whether Morgan trusted Gillian, Morgan offered Steven his watch, worth about a million, if he would strip. Steven started to do so when St. John walked into the hotel suite, and Morgan told him to stop. Morgan explained that for people like him, the word ‘trust’ had lost all meaning. There were no lengths people would not go to, no humiliations they would not endure, to get a slice of his fortune, as Steven had just proved.
💼 The scene with Nick and Serena pretending to work but actually talking to each other over the phone in the office, discussing how to handle the coming baby, did not really flow as well as I would have liked with the rest of the episode. It was notable that Serena, as the mother, was worried about the (unplanned) baby, and Nick, as the father, was merely excited and kept brushing off her concerns.
💼 Lol at St. John silently mouthing Carla’s words. His evil is so entertaining.
💼 Carla: ‘I was upset, all right? What am I supposed to do, repress it? Make myself ill?’ St. John: ‘It’s what they taught us at Gordonstoun.’ Hahahahaha.
💼 Cathcarts: 2. Taylor & Byrne: 1. Team Carla is catching up.
What happened in War Season 1 Episode 3?
As Carla and Morgan’s divorce battle intensifies, Serena devises a strategy to invalidate their prenuptial agreement by arguing that Morgan’s role as a father figure to Carla’s son, Gabriel, constitutes a significant change in circumstances. Meanwhile, Gabriel struggles with his parents’ separation, leading to a reckless night out that inadvertently strengthens Carla’s case. The arbitration takes an unexpected turn, handing Taylor & Byrne their first major victory, and leading Morgan to give the go ahead to transfer his Zephyr shares to Gillian.
Episode Title: Chip Off the Block
Episode Writer: Kelly Jones
Episode Director: Ben Taylor
Original Release Date: October 15, 2026