Awesome / Leverage: Redemption

The revival takes no time as the show hits the ground running…

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Season 1

The Too Many Rembrandts Job

• Simply put, the sight of Team Leverage as they gather around at Nate's grave with each member's first words simply being their roles.
  Sophie: Grifter.
  Eliot: Hitter.
  Hardison: Hacker.
  Parker: Thief.
• Since the original series, the remaining Leverage crew have expanded their operations to become Leverage International with 12 teams working around the world. This plus opening various charities and assisting resistance groups, helping people both within and outside the law.
• Eliot versus four men showing that he has not lost a step and what's more seem to have gotten even more badass. Before the fight starts, he tells them exactly how he's going to take them down which their boss thinks is to mess with their heads. Eliot just isn't in the mood to fight and simply tells them the fight's over and should leave. He then proceeds to take the men down exactly as he said he would...
  • Also the only reason he got made is because he is so infamous in the "field of violence" that "not knowing Elliot Spencer is to not know Rembrandt". The boss of the guards reveal the fight is an audition for them though its not clear if she actually expected them to win or not.
    Eliot: [Points to one guy] Big guy’s got potential. You can cut the rest.
• Harry Wilson is The Fixer for his law firm's rich and powerful clients. One of them went way too far over the line, using Harry's work no less, to epically screw over the people he hurt. After exhausting every legal avenue, he chose to hurt his client by stealing a painting despite no prior experience. The team is actually impressed by how well thought out the plan sans an easy to miss detail for a rookie.
• Parker outdoes every single feat she accomplished in the original series by breaking into eight different museums, stealing a masterpiece painting from each of them and swapping them with fakes in 24 hours.
• Hardison's "Come to Jesus" talk with Harry at the end of the episode.
  Hardison: Oh, I'm sorry. Did you think you were done? Oh, if only you could find all the names, then you could just move on. Harry, Harry. You didn't do just one thing wrong. You've been working on the wrong side for a long time, right?
  Harry: Yes, yes, I would have to say that.
  Hardison: Yeah, so you don't get to just do one thing and claim you've repented. You see, in the Jewish faith...
  Harry: Jewish faith?
  Hardison: My Nana leads a multi-denominational household, so... In the Jewish faith, repentance, redemption, is a process. You can't make restitution and then promise to change. You have to change first. Do the work, Harry. Then and only then can you begin to ask for forgiveness. (Points to Eliot.) You see that cowboy back there? Man, for the last 12 years I've seen him risk his life to save hundreds of innocent people who will never know his name, all that, and every single morning he still gets up, and you know what he says? "I still got more to do." So this... This isn't the win. This is the start, Harry.

The Panamanian Monkey Job

• Fletcher Maxwell, The Mark from the previous episode, has fled to Panama with the intent of getting his money and fleeing to a non-extradition country with the help of a man named Ryan Corbett who safeguards valuables for all manner of criminals and nefarious people. How does the team beat both these men? Harry tricks Maxwell into setting off an explosion that destroys all the valuables belonging to Corbett's clients using a bomb the team planted in his vault. The result is Maxwell and Corbett having to spend the rest of their lives running and looking over their shoulders for fear of retaliation from Corbett's very powerful and angry clients, and that's on top of the US Marshalls already after Maxwell.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job

• A seemingly easy "expose the tricks to their client and scare the marks with legal action" job goes horribly wrong after it's found that the marks, who were buying out buildings in the area, were hired by a darkweb hitman known as The Wraith to secure a quiet location for a political assassination and takes Sophie hostage. And without Eliot here, there's no one skilled and strong enough present to take him in a direct fight. The solution comes, however, in the revelation that The Wraith is deeply afraid of ghosts, being haunted by his past actions. From this, Sophie hatches a plan that takes advantage of the fact that all of this is happening in their HQ.
  • Parker becomes a silent assassin herself, managing to covertly take out The Wraith's own personal goon without anyone hearing the struggle.
  • Sophie manages to spook The Wraith by using information that Breanna feeds her to about his past assassinations to get her and one of the conmen alone, specifically the nephew of the duo. She overheard earlier that the nephew is deeply unhappy with the life because his uncle pulled him out of a design college to participate in petty real estate scams, and gets him to fake her death in return for giving him a ticket out of this life and back into art school.
  • Breanna finds and hijacks the equipment of the uncle-nephew conman duo to sow tiny seeds of dissent in the invading group and prepare for the grand finale, priming them to suspect that the place really is haunted.
  • When The Wraith needs to break away to snipe a politician partaking in a parade passing by, he hears whispers in his ear before hearing the voice of Sophie's now-dead character for the episode.^note Breanna playing audio recordings of a previous monologue over the speakers Parker hid around the house. The Wraith is shown the faces of three of his most recent victims, quietly condemning him as he tries to brush away his guilt.^note Parker hiding in the rafters with a projector, beaming the image into the mist from a fog machine. The Wraith accidentally slams open an armoire, only for a ghost^note His muscle, tied up in a sheet and chains to walk forward screaming at him and herd him into the hallway. After the trio reconvene just outside the door, a ghoul^note Parker in a skeleton outfit rises from the mist, drags the son away out of sight and slams the door shut, successfully freaking out the remaining two criminals and forcing them out into the back alley, where the team's client, Tina, had alerted the police to their presence. By this point, while the bumbling con artist uncle is attempting to talk his way out of this, The Wraith is begging to be arrested and confesses to everything he's done. If there were ever an argument for brains over brawn, this entire set-up would be it.

The Golf Job

• The episode is a string of awesome moments for Harry. To wit:
  • He manages to get into a lawyer's personal computer with his first social hack: he calls the lawyer under the pretense of a data breach and tricks him into resetting the password for him.
  • He builds a bomb out of hairstyling equipment to crack open a safe and manages to convince the salon owner he's fully willing to detonate it.
  • When the mark comes into the aforementioned scene and calls Harry's bluff, he concedes... and then reveals the bomb was just to stall for time long enough for the police to arrive.
• Jack Hurley's been learning a thing or two since the last series. Not only has he been taking pickpocketing lessons from Parker, but he instantly figures out the scam the mark is pulling on his golfing buddy, a far cry from the bumbler he was in the original show.

The Hurricane Job

• Elliot still being able to beat the Dirty Cop main villain even with an injured shoulder. This exchange between the two is also very impressive.
  Abel: Why do you even care? Why are you protecting these people?
  Eliot: Because you were supposed to.

The Harry Wilson Job

• Hardison marks his return by jumping in out of nowhere and knocking out a security guard with a wrench just before he can call backup.
• Harry once again proving he's a natural criminal by pretending to join RIZ, then communicating with Hardison through a series of magazines to get more intel on the company.
• In a verbal blink-and-you-miss-it one, Agent McSweeten and Taggert, Those Two FBI Agents from the original series have taken a major level in badass: McSweeten is now the head of the Bureau's Anti-Terrorism Task Force and Taggert has made Deputy Director. This is incredible for the two well-meaning and enthusiastic yet slightly incompetent agents the team and fans of the original series met in season 1. It also doubles as Heartwarming after a whole season about how the world has gotten worse, showing that the good guys (both our Anti-Hero team and law enforcement) are still fighting the good fight and winning.
• After a whole season of getting The Worf Effect, Breanna's tech finally works, and she successfully carries the server out of the building.
• After all is said and done, the team goes the extra mile of ensuring RIZ can't worm their way out of the situation in an epic fashion: Hardison modifies the worm so that when the power in the surrounding buildings comes back on, the lights on all of them spell out RIZ.

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