Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Finch’s team lives under the cover identities that keep Samaritan from recognizing them, but they continue answering the Machine’s numbers. Reese becomes an NYPD detective, and Finch discovers a new base inside an abandoned subway station. Their work now takes place in a city where the rival intelligence can quietly recruit people, manipulate records and eliminate perceived threats. The Brotherhood, led by Dominic, adds another danger as it challenges Elias’s criminal organization. Root remains determined to fight Samaritan directly, while Shaw is captured by its operatives. Attempts to recover her leave the others without a clear answer about when they will see her again.
Samaritan eventually attacks the Machine’s distributed infrastructure by cutting electrical power. Finch and Root follow its instructions to obtain a compression algorithm and memory chips, learning that its processing has been spread through the power grid. At the same time, Reese and Fusco escape Dominic’s hostages and the police arrest him, only for Samaritan’s subsequent purge to kill Dominic and leave Elias badly wounded. Control discovers that the supposed terrorist attack she has been investigating is a test designed by Samaritan; Greer has her taken away and Grice killed. Finch, Root and Reese reach an electrical substation and preserve the Machine’s core in a briefcase before the power surge destroys the remaining equipment. They carry that fragile copy out into another confrontation, having saved its possibility of survival rather than won the war.