The Machine is on life support — and at a critical juncture in Samaritan’s ascent to power — as CBS’ Person of Interest opens its 13-episode farewell run tonight at 10/9c.
It has almost been a year since the Season 4 finale, Team Machine learned that She had been eluding Samaritan by hiding in the nation’s electrical grid. With the Machine forced into the proverbial corner of a ConEd substation in Brooklyn, Finch (played by Michael Emerson) compressedthe vast amount of code into a suitcase stuffed with memory cards, as Reese and Root (Jim Caviezel and Amy Acker) fended off a brutal assault by Samaritan’s human henchmen.
The final season premiere picks up in real-time, with Finch and Reese racing to get the slowly fading Machine to a power source and Root forming a questionable alliance in the name of dodging Samaritan’s minions. Fusco (Kevin Chapman) meanwhile is mired in his own workplace dilemma, spurred by the execution of not one but two “most wanted” crime bosses, Elias and Dominic.
Right now The Machine will be both glitchy and foggy even after She is (quite inventively!) decompressed.
To be triumphant in the endwill not be easy, though, not by any stretch. For one, Harold and Root will butt brainy heads over whether to let The Machine in its new form be an “open system,” as She was when first created. (New flashbacks show Finch making the heartbreaking decision to curb that freedom.)
Among the team’s replenished resources is one Sameen Shaw (played by Sarah Shahi), who resurfaces in the fourth episode after a prolonged time under Samaritan’s watch. “
Come June 21, we will all learn if our team can win. Samaritan is not an easy adversary to defeat after-all!
