While chaperoning her daughter Becca's figure skating tournament in Madrid, Jenny Franklin (Margarita Levieva) finds herself kidnapped by secret agents, who unearth her past as SVR assassin Anya "the Whisper" Petrova. Jenny is forced to assist Chauncey Lew (Cillian O'Sullivan) and Chris Clarke (Charles Brice) in investigating a series of suspicious murders.
This series contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents:
- Anya/Jenny's mother Svetlana. She forces her daughter into dangerous work as a spy, admits to having knocked out one of her teeth in basic training, physically manhandles her when she protests, and ultimately tries to kill her.
- In a Moment of Weakness, Jenny seizes Becca by the throat and then slams her up against a wall in a rage after the latter insults her over thinking she's sleeping with Chauncey. She's almost immediately distraught and apologetic for it.
- Action Mom: Anya/Jenny is highly skilled at unarmed combat and using weapons, given she's a trained assassin. Early on she takes down multiple armed CIA agents with ease before she's overcome, and it only continues to be shown from there. In the present, she's also the newly divorced mother of a teenage daughter, Becca.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Anya's horrible mother Svetlana is her worst enemy. Her father however is not mentioned so far.
- Ambiguously Evil: In the Season 1 finale, Anya calls an unknown figure, introduces herself as "Agent Anya Petrova" and assures them that everything is under control, all in Russian. Who this person is and what their intentions are is unknown.
- Ambiguously Bi: Anya claims to Su Yin and Polina that she is attracted to both men and women. However, she truly falls in love with Faina and the Season 1 finale implies that her marriage itself to Lee, Becca's father, may have been a ploy, along with her and Chauncey sleeping together. It's left unclear if she's attracted to men or not.
- Apologetic Attacker: Anya sobs and apologizes as she strangles Faina's father and then Faina herself.
- Big Eater: To make up for the iron lost from her body morphing, Jenny gorges on foods rich in it after (largely meat).
- Bioaugmentation: Jenny is the only survivor from the Yaroslav Program, an augmentation that lets her “body morph” to appear like other people and blend into her surroundings.
- Black Bra and Panties: Jenny is wearing this lingerie when she and Felipe sleep together.
- Blackmail: Jenny is forced into working for the CIA with her old assassin/spy skills as otherwise they'll reveal her past and she'll live the rest of her life in prison for espionage, with her daughter Becca's life ruined.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: In a very unusual example of this, Jenny copies the palm print of a club owner by using her body morphing power, therefore copying her hand into his form temporarily.
- Brainwashed:
- The series opens with showing three people in Madrid influenced somehow to attack or harass others, apparently at random. Another is later shown as well, who kills others in her wedding party. While this is triggered, it shows as their eyes flashing a metallic blue gray.
- Jenny later pretends she's one to get away with killing one of the Jackals during the mission to the bathhouse. By now the cops are skeptical of this however, since after the events many people have also claimed this and see through her claims, and the lead detective is able to eventually get her to confess to everything since Chauncy is already suspected of being involved in this particular crime.
- Toward the end of the first season, Becca's also brainwashed and sent to carry out an attack too. Jenny learns how to stop it however.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Becca begins complaining more and more about her mother's admittedly erratic behavior. She even slut-shames her when thinking Jenny has been ditching her to hook up with Chauncy.
- Cape Snag: Anya kills Tomas by grabbing onto his coat and getting it trapped between the train doors so he would be dragged into a wall and crushed.
- Cast from Calories: Transformation takes a lot out of Jenny, and often can be found gorging herself on iron-rich food after missions in order to recover.
- Chained to a Bed: Rather than delivering the threesome which she promised him, Anya leaves poor Su-Yin tied to a bed (he thought it was some light bondage foreplay).
- Chameleon Camouflage: Jenny alters her skin at one point to hide so she looks like the wall she stands against behind her.
- Coincidental Disguise-Complementing Trait: After infiltrating the Calero estate under cover of darkness, Jenny assumes the form of Diego Calero, then presents herself to Felipe and Andres so she can get some information out of them. Given that Diego was last seen in the middle of a breakdown over Ramon's death, both men are suspicious of his suddenly upstanding behavior, and decide to test "Diego's" composure and loyalty by having him play them something on the piano. By sheer luck, Jenny turns out to be a gifted pianist as well as a shapeshifter, and though the ex-FSB operative's repertoire is limited to Tchaikovsky (an odd choice for a Spanish terrorist), she's able to pass it off as a new piece she just learned, placating Felipe enough to involve "Diego" in the latest scheme.
- Cradling Your Kill: After strangling her, Anya holds Faina in her arms and sobs.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Jenny kills Andrés by tying him up then having him be fatally gored by a bull.
- Cyanide Pill: Prior to her mission to the Chinese embassy, Anya is fitted with a cyanide pill in place of one of her molars (conveniently knocked out by Svetlana during training).
- Dark Action Girl: Gaia, the third and final member of the Jackals and Svetlana's protege, shows great combat skill. She's Jenny's Evil Counterpart basically.
- Designated Girl Fight: Jenny faces Gaia, her replacement in the SVR, during “Gideon”, for an epic fight on the ice at the skating rink.
- Disappeared Dad: Jenny's ex-husband isn't very present in their daughter Becca's life. Even before they divorced, Becca says he never showed up for her events, and this continues after the divorce, to her bitterness.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Jenny really doesn't like being called “Anya” in the present.
- Everyone Is Armed: Searching for Vannick Meir's router, Chauncey and Chris visit a troll farm in a particularly nasty area of town, which is staffed by kids and young teens. Chauncey ends up threatening their boss with a handgun... at which all the kids pull out their weapons, leaving the two with a bunch of SMGs pointed at their heads. And then a group of them roll out a small anti-aircraft gun.
- Eye Scream: During one fight, Jenny fatally stabs her opponent through both eyes using improvised weapons nearby.
- Evil Matriarch: Svetlana, who it turns out is Anya's mother, becomes her worst enemy, to the point of nearly killing her. She takes her own granddaughter Becca captive too, brainwashing her to kill people.
- Evil Uncle: Felipe and Andrés Calero to their nephews Rámon and Diego. They're either treated badly or worse drawn into terrorism.
- Fan Disservice:
- Jenny is quite easy on the eyes and not above getting naked in pursuit of her goals. However, any titilation factor goes out the window when she strips down to transform, which involves a lot of unpleasant bodily contortions and agonized groaning, not to mention some rather unsightly morphing.
- Also, in a flashback, Svetlana makes a point about trust by exposing one of her breasts... which is horribly acid-scarred and disfigured.
- Failed a Spot Check: The colleague of a woman whom Jenny impersonates with her body morphing power fails to notice she's now in a completely different outfit than he last saw her just a minute ago.
- Fake Nationality: Invoked when Russian-American Jenny pretends she's Spanish-American as part of getting close with terrorists in Spain.
- Foreshadowing: In episode 1, when Jenny shakes hands with Chris Clarke, a visible glow passes from his arm to hers, hinting that there's more to her than just a highly trained assassin. The end of the episode reveals she's actually a shapeshifter (and as it turns out, the glow was her biomechanical implants automatically sampling his DNA).
- Full-Name Basis: When Becca complains about Jenny calling her "baby", Jenny decides to go with "Rebecca Mary Leah Franklin."
- Heal It with Water: After an extremely stressful mission in which she suffers numerous painful bruises plus a glancing bullet wound to the midriff, Jenny kickstarts the healing process by filling a bathtub with ice and soaking in it until her Healing Factor erases her wounds.
- Healing Factor: Jenny can heal from even pretty severe injuries so long as she has energy, which use of her body morphing power depletes. At one point, she fails to heal after morphing and then being shot.
- Heteronormative Crusaders: Anya and Faina were harassed after being seen together by some guys in 1994, saying they just need sex with a man to “fix” them. Faina's father clearly disapproves when he sees them together as well, and grounds her for it later. Svetlana also calls Anya a "sissy" when she sees her getting too involved with Faina.
- Holding Hands: Anya and Faina holding hands is the first sign of their budding attraction.
- Honey Trap:
- Anya served as one to get information the SVR needed, by becoming close with a spy's daughter, plus her friend Su-Yin, tempting him with the lure of a threesome so he does her favors.
- Later, as Jenny, she does the same thing with a criminal, including having sex but it appalls her after doing so.
- Humanshifting: Anya can only turn into other people using her morphing ability, from what's seen (but this extends to ones with much larger bodies though).
- Impersonating an Officer: One of the terrorists dresses as a police officer to get near the prime minister, whom their group is plotting to assassinate.
- In Love with the Mark: Anya got close with Faina, whose father was giving secrets to the Chinese, on the SVR's behalf. Before long though Anya came to love Faina, with her reciprocating. She's clearly unhappy with her mission once this happens. After having to kill Faina, she holds her body and sobs.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
- Jenny is horrifically tortured by Damien once he's been brainwashed to get Chauncey's name from her. She gets free however.
- Later on, Jenny tries to get information from Andrés by torture as well, but he holds out.
- Lingerie Scene: Jenny is shown undressing to her underwear before having sex with Felipe so they can get closer as she infiltrates the terrorist group which he leads.
- The Lost Lenore:
- It turns out Chauncey had to shoot his girlfriend, who was brainwashed and forced to engage in a terrorist attack. He's thus strongly motivated to destroy the group which is behind this.
- Faina was with Anya, who ended up killing her as part of her mission. She was left distraught at doing so, and left the SVR as a result.
- Love Confession: Faina told Anya she loved her after they had been romantically talking on the phone.
- Mama Bear: Jenny, an Action Mom to begin with, flips out when her daughter Becca is endangered and rushes off for her, not even letting getting shot stop this.
- Mind-Control Device: It turns out that the brainwashing is done by a specific device that in some way influences people's minds.
- Missing Mom: Faina tells Anya her mom died of cancer because she'd been near Chernobyl when it melted down, and keeps a pendant that her mom gave her as a keepsake. Anya commiserates by telling Faina how her own mom died in a fire when she was five. Faina takes it as a sign they were meant for each other. Anya's mother is actually alive though.
- Mysterious Past: Jenny's, to her daughter Becca. She never tells her about her parents or background.
- Only Known by Their Nickname:
- Jenny only rarely gets called Jennifer.
- Becca's full name is Rebecca, though it's only used once when Jenny invoked Full-Name Basis.
- Queer Romance: Anya and Faina's romance gets a lot of focus in the series during the 90s sequences, partly overshadowing later events too. It ends tragically since Anya kills Faina.
- Painful Transformation: Jenny's body morphing is very painful, to judge from the cracking and crunching sounds as her skeleton changes, with her voice groaning while in different pitches during all this.
- Politically Incorrect Villain:
- Los Jinetes, the Spanish terrorists who serve as the antagonists in the present, are violent racists against all immigration to Spain behind several deadly attacks while they plot even more.
- After learning that Anya was genuinely falling for Faina, Svetlana scolds Anya for behaving like a sissy.
- Professional Killer:
- Jenny (formerly Anya) was once a notorious, highly skilled Russian assassin known as "the Whisper" in the 1990s.
- The series also features a trio of assassins known as the Jackals, all three of which are working for the Caleros - though they're actually on loan from Svetlana.
- A Rotten Time to Revert: In the episode "Little Bird," Jenny morphs into Damien in order to take his place at a meeting with the Caleros (after the real Damien is mind-controlled into betraying her by Svetlana, forcing Jenny to kill him in self-defence). The meeting appears to be going well at first, but then Jenny's powers begin glitching again, forcing her to excuse herself and head for the bathroom, where she painfully reverts. Unfortunately, she can't resume Damien's form. Worse still, Svetlana arrives at the Calero's mansion soon after, meaning that if Jenny is seen out of disguise this time, she'll be instantly recognized as the Whisper by her former handler; as such, she's forced to abandon the meeting and beat a hasty escape through the bathroom window.
- Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Jenny wears contacts which let Chauncey and Chris remotely see what she does. She later shorts these out to stop being surveilled by them using this.
- Sex Shifter: Anya can take on a male form due to her body-morphing ability temporarily.
- Shapeshifter Baggage: Jenny can “body morph” somehow into the shape of an older man who's much heftier than herself.
- Shapeshifter Showoff Session: In the final episode, Jenny's shapeshifting powers seemingly kick into overdrive as she hurries to save her daughter. By now, snipers are targeting her in the belief that she's a terrorist, but she is able to throw them off by transforming so quickly that none of them can work out what happened, much less recognize her. An extended tracking shot of her marching down the corridor reveals that she's actually transforming into everyone she's ever sampled over the course of her career, but at a speed she's never been able to utilize up until now. However, the ending indicates that Jenny has actually been lying about her true allegiance, suggesting that she may have been lying about the limitations of her powers as well.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Jenny has to strip before body morphing or else use clothing which fits both forms.
- Shapeshifting Sound: Jenny/Anya uses her body-morphing power with a distinctive electronic buzzing sound, often accompanied by loud cracks and crunches as her skeleton reshapes itself. For good measure, given how painful this process seems to be, it's not uncommon for Jenny to groan in agony, her voice audibly shifting to different pitches and registers as she does so.
- Shotgun Wedding: Name-dropped by Chauncey explicitly when Jenny tells him she only married her ex-husband due to getting pregnant with Becca, though it wasn't a literal example.
- Shout-Out: The title is an obvious reference to the famous espionage thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
- Soviet Superscience: The Yaroslav program enables Jenny to shapeshift. Svetlana's mind control isn't explained in detail, but may come from a similar source.
- Spiteful Spit: A particularly disgusting variation. When scolding her at one point, Svetlana forces Anya's mouth open and spits into it.
- The Tooth Hurts: Svetlana reportedly smashed out one of Anya's teeth during her spy training - which later comes in handing when she needs to outfit Anya with a Cyanide Pill for the mission to the Chinese embassy.
- Their First Time: Anya and Faina have sex in “Little Bird” after much obvious sexual tension.
- Threeway Sex: Anya tempts Su-Yin using a promise that she would have a threesome with him and Faina, which gets him to do lots of favors for her.
- Time-Shifted Actor: Margarita Levieva plays a present-day Anya/Jenny who's grown and has a daughter, while Stasya Miloslavskaya portrays her in 1994.
- Token Religious Teammate: Inés Calero is the character who's shown as the most religious, as a devout Catholic frequently shown praying in church, although her family invoke God a couple times too.
- Tragic Keepsake: Faina, Anya's youthful Love Interest, kept a pendant whom her deceased mom gave to her as a treasured memento. She lost it while with Anya and is overjoyed to get this back. Anya planted a tracking device inside it though on orders from her handlers, since Faina's father works in the Chinese embassy and they map it out this way.
- Transformation Discretion Shot: Only Jenny/Anya's first shapeshifting scene is shown in all its CG glory, with all the others occurring mainly through cutaways. Most of these scenes feature Jenny's skin glowing and the lights around her beginning to flicker right before she drops out of shot - as the transformations are usually extremely painful; we then cut, either to the reactions of the onlookers or Jenny's transforming shadow being cast on the wall, then cut to the completed transformation.
- Translation Convention: Possibly the case — it's somewhat confusing. While the Russian characters speak Russian to each other, Spanish characters often speak English instead of Spanish among themselves, yet also speak Spanish at times. It's hard to understand whether this is meant to be Spanish, or they simply use English for unexplained reasons often. Plus, Inés uses Spanish when praying alone, so it's pretty unclear.
- Traumatic Haircut: When she's blackmailed by the CIA into their service, Jenny has to cut her long hair short into a sexy style that's better for seducing her target. She's in tears when she does this, due to this being part of getting forced back into an existence she once escaped.
- Troubled Teen: Becca's behavior becomes more erratic as the series goes on. After finding a dead bird, she makes a pair of earrings out of its feathers for her friend and puts its skeleton in the soup of a rival team player. She also likely sabotaged said rival's ice skate so she suffers an accident.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Felipe and Andrés Calero lead a racist terrorist group which kills many people. They're respectively a well-known philanthropist and respected diplomat, which leads to skepticism from Ohana, a chief inspector of the police, about them doing this.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Jenny has some kind of implants inside her body which let her “morph” into a new body, which is discovered after she's changed into an older man in the prison. However, this is a bit more realistic as it puts an incredible strain on her internal organs, so much that she risks death through even using it and can only “copy” a body whom she's already touched. After using it, she craves foods which have a lot of iron since morphing costs this. She can only control this for so long, and it sometimes reverts on its own after a time.
- Western Terrorists: Los Jinetes (Riders) is a group of racist Spaniards who want to expel all immigrants in Spain, carrying out violent attacks against them while planning even worse ones. Jenny infiltrates the group to stop it.
- Wham Shot: After the first episode looks like a typical grounded spy thriller, the final scene has Jenny shapeshifting into a man.
- You're Insane!: Jenny to Svetlana in the final episode, after the latter reveals her plan to start World War III. Svetlana calmly replies that the same is said of most visionaries.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: When Jenny confronts her near the end and points a gun at her, Svetlana calmly claims that if she were going to kill her, she'd have done it already. She then proceeds to brag about the "connection" she has formed with Becca, which prompts Jenny to shoot her in the head.
