Chuck: It just finally clicked for me. You know, Sarah is - is the most important thing. I mean, what's the point of being a spy without her? I've got to win her back. And I've only got a small window to do it before I have to leave for Rome.
When Chuck has to select a partner for an important undercover mission, Casey, Devon, and Morgan conspire to make sure he chooses Sarah. Shaw is given a unique opportunity to destroy the Ring... and learns a shocking secret in the process.
Trope Flash:
- Abandoned Warehouse: The Ring base to which Shaw is taken. The only indication that it's anything else is a single plugged-in vending machine, which is of course a disguised entrance to the real base.
- Big Damn Hero: Finding out that Shaw intends to sacrifice himself, Chuck goes after him for Sarah's sake. He finds Shaw unconscious, drops the tracker next to him and carries Shaw out of the base before the place explodes.
- Big "NO!": Shaw, when he learns that Sarah killed his wife in her Red Test.
- Cliffhanger: General Beckman calls Chuck and shows him the footage of Sarah shooting Evelyn Shaw. Unable to contact Sarah, they realise she's gone somewhere with Shaw, who now knows she killed his wife...
- Foreshadowing: In the beginning, a Ring agent removes information from the body of the mole killed in Chuck's Red Test. He does so using a magnet to draw a swallowed flash drive up the man's throat, suggesting that Shaw's tactic of swallowing a tracking device won't work.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: The audience has a few seconds to recognise the street from Sarah's Flash Back to her Red Test before Shaw learns how his wife really died.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Shaw's intention when he realises the Ring want him alive: swallow a tacking device and let them take him, so the Ring's leadership can be taken out with a single strike... that will kill him as well. This goes wrong for two reasons: first, the Ring agents who take him realise what he's up to and remove the tracker. Second, the Ring Director also realises what he's up to and attends only via hologram.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: Averted: In the culmination to the arc about Sarah feeling that Chuck has been corrupted by the spy life, she no longer feels that Chuck is the man she fell for now that he's (seemingly) killed someone. Realising this, Casey finally relents and tells her the truth so she and Chuck can move on together.
- Shipper with an Agenda: Many people who were already a Shipper on Deck for Chuck & Sarah now have a vested personal interest in Chuck making it work with Sarah: Casey and Morgan want to go to Italy as part of Chuck's team, and Chuck won't go without Sarah. Ellie won't leave for Africa to do Doctors Without Borders if she feels like she's abandoning Chuck, which drags Awesome in.
- Special Guest: Roger Cross as a Ring agent and Mark Sheppard as the Ring Director.
