Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Carter’s campaign against HR finally exposes Alonzo Quinn as the corrupt network’s leader. She and Reese fight their way across New York to deliver him to the FBI, while Fusco resists torture and Shaw protects his son. Quinn is arrested and HR is broken up, but the victory does not save Carter. The fugitive officer Simmons shoots her and Reese outside the precinct, and she dies in Reese’s arms. Reese’s hunt for revenge nearly consumes him. Fusco captures Simmons alive rather than abandon Carter’s example; Elias later has his own man kill Simmons in the hospital. Root, meanwhile, becomes an increasingly important ally through her direct communication with the Machine.
The surveillance conflict expands around a competing intelligence called Samaritan and the violent anti-surveillance group Vigilance. In the finale, Vigilance puts Finch and government figures on trial, but its crusade has been manipulated by Greer. Decima created the organization and uses a bombing at the trial to secure approval for Samaritan. Reese gets Finch out, while Hersh dies trying to stop the explosion. Root and Shaw cannot prevent activation, so they prepare a way for a handful of people to survive it. Their altered servers give Finch, Reese, Shaw, Root and three allied programmers cover identities Samaritan will overlook. The team abandons the library and separates into new lives, with Greer now taking orders from the intelligence he helped unleash.