Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
MacGyver’s second season widens the Phoenix Foundation’s security and rescue work. In the opener, a research facility’s defense computer turns against its occupants; Pete and the military are locked outside while Mac finds a way to disable its threats. Other assignments send him after a stolen navigation device, into a con to recover a colleague’s savings, and to Chinatown to rescue a teenager a crime boss believes can grant immortality.
The season pairs Mac with people whose loyalties complicate each mission. After a plane crash strands him with troubled youths, he turns their rivalries into cooperation to survive. Jack Dalton draws him into a Central American orchid-smuggling case, while Pete asks him to rescue a nun, orphans and Mac’s former girlfriend from a new Southeast Asian regime. Mac also protects a wounded golden eagle from poachers and helps uncover a plot against a Phoenix missile.
Danger reaches the Foundation when assassin Victoria James plants a bomb and holds Mac’s grandfather Harry hostage. Mac and Pete face a past enemy who traps them in a hot metal container; Jack returns after faking his death to clear himself of murdering a CIA contact. Near season’s end, Mac is injured investigating a threat against senior military figures and suffers amnesia, unable to tell who is hunting him or why.
His final mission pairs him with mercenary Diana Rogers to free political prisoner Anton Dubcek in Czechoslovakia. They escape with Anton and his wife Viera, but she vanishes after they reach Los Angeles and summons him to the zoo. There Viera reveals she is a GRU agent; she shoots Anton, whose bulletproof vest saves him, and Phoenix agents arrest her accomplices. Anton is free to help refugees, while Mac donates his $200,000 share to their cause and Diana adds $20,000.