Jack's ex-boyfriend, Captain John Hart, is back at the Hub. He kills Jack, ties him up using Time Agent handcuffs and generally acts like a jilted ex-lover.
John blows up the city. Gwen, Rhys and Sergeant Andy mobilise the Welsh police force.
Eventually, John takes Jack all the way back to 26 A.D., where Gray is waiting for them. It turns out that John has a bomb grafted into his skin, planted there by Gray. His over-the-top "Psycho Ex-Boyfriend" act was supposed to be a hint to Jack, because Gray was listening in all along.
Gray and Jack have a tearful reunion, but Gray needs closure and revenge. He starts off by killing Jack, then tells him that he's spent his whole life so far being tortured, after Jack lost track of him in that air raid. He wants Jack to be buried underneath Cardiff forever. Jack reluctantly agrees, seeing no way out, and John is forced to do the burying. However, John throws in a ring as well, claming it's a sentimental thing.
John is freed of the bomb, warps to present day and immediately calls Tosh and tells her to do a scan for the ring's signal. Nothing shows up. Gray appears in the Hub and shoots Tosh. Meanwhile, Owen is trying to cool down the city's fragile nuclear power plant.
There's tapping and banging from Torchwood's morgue... and it's Jack. His burial site was found by Torchwood technology in the early 20th century, and he decided to let himself be frozen and locked up in the Hub (with a timer) so he wouldn't have to spend the next few decades avoiding himself. He tearfully chloroforms his brother when Gray refuses to give him forgiveness.
Tosh remotely guides Owen through the power plant system, but he's locked inside Turnmill Nuclear Station when an undetectable meltdown fail-safe kicks in, sealing the control room. Before that happens, Owen freaks out at the thought he'll die again and rages over the com-link. Tosh starts crying when she hears him screaming and tells Owen he's breaking her heart. Owen apologizes and calms down. He asks her what will happen to him, but Tosh doesn't want to say it. After pleading with her to tell him the truth, Tosh reveals the control room will vent irradiated coolant and his body will be destroyed. Owen calms down and soothingly chats with Tosh as he awaits the inevitable He and Tosh say their final goodbyes, reminiscing about that time with the space pig and that date they never really had. Tosh doesn't tell Owen that she's dying as well, thinking he'd be better off not knowing that when he's going to die, too. The venting process begins, and Owen tells Tosh he will be okay. The room starts going white, and Owen's final words are a subdued, "Oh, God..."
Owen's life sign disappears from the monitor in the Hub before Tosh's eyes. Jack rushes in to find a blood trail leading to the morgue, where Toshiko is slumped over and dying. Gwen, Ianto, and John soon arrive and see her slipping away. With her last ounce of strength, Tosh tells Jack that she couldn't save Owen. Near death, Toshiko can't say anymore, but Jack tries to encourage her to stay alive. She smiles faintly at Jack before the last gasp of life leaves her body, and she goes slack in his arms. Jack and Gwen break down in tears, and Ianto struggles to hold back his own grief, leaning heavily against the medical examination table. John silently looks at their fallen teammate with regret.
Jack neutralizes Gray, forgives him, and locks Gray's comatose body in the morgue. John warns Jack that Gray's not gonna simply forgive him as soon as Jack wakes him up, but Jack has seen enough deaths for one day. John kisses Jack on the cheek and steps out of his life again. He is sorry for Jack's losses. Torchwood tearfully decommissions its fallen operatives, putting away their personal belongings into storage and enacting their final logouts. But Toshiko has left a video will programmed into her records in the event she perished and got decommissioned, which she expected in her line of work. Tosh's pre-recorded "if you see this, I'm dead" message plays, and she tells the group not to mourn her, and hoped she went out doing something good. Sadly, she also posthumously confesses her love to Owen, who is also gone now, and already knew Tosh loved him. Tosh's message ends, and everybody cries. Jack braces up and says, "Now we carry on." Gwen, sobbing deeply, responds, "I don't think I can. Not after this." Jack gently tells her, "You can. We all can. The end is where we start from."
From here, the story segues into "The Stolen Earth".
This episode contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: At Comic-Con
, John Barrowman and Naoko Mori explain how the episode had one for them. In the episode, Tosh dies in Jack's arms. Previously, the pair had played Chris and Kim opposite each other in Miss Saigon, in which Kim dies in Chris's arms. - And I Must Scream: Jack endures the pinnacle of this. Gray buries him alive and leaves him to die and resurrect in an endless loop suffocating with his mouth full of dirt. For almost 2,000 years. After all those times we saw Jack die maybe once or twice, this one instance alone could very well chart up into millions of deaths. Right after we learned Jack's exact death count,
it becomes certifiably impossible to tell how many times Jack has bit it. Then, Jack gets put into cryofreeze for another hundred or so years just to wake up and confront his brother. - Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: Hoo boy, this episode is BAD about it, to the point where one's suspension of disbelief is strained pretty hard. Owen somehow "vents" radioactive coolant from the reactor (which would NOT fix a meltdown, that would make it worse), somehow sending it through the control room (which aren't usually in the same building), which, due to the lockdown, seals off the doors that close and Owen cannot escape in time. They're trying to imply that the room Owen is in is in the reactor containment building, but that isn't likely. At least they got the first part of the episode right (the meltdown being caused by a power loss at the plant caused by strategically placed bombs would logically place everything on lockdown).
- Beyond Redemption: Jack fails to convince Grey to stop committing abhorrent actions and is forced to put him into cryofreeze. Whilst he doesn't intend to give up on him, John Hart believes that Grey is too far gone and may well be better off dead.
- Big "WHAT?!": Ianto gives one out in response to Captain John Hart telling him what he and Gray did to Jack after transporting him to the past.
- Buried Alive: Grey buries Jack alive in Cardiff in the distant past. The worst part is that Jack, being unable to die, is trapped into a loop of resurrecting and instantly suffocating for about 2000 years, with Grey wanting him to be subjected to this fate forever.
- Continuity Nod:
- The Weevils freak out and bow when Owen passes by. He's the "King of the Weevils", remember?
- A Hoix escapes through the Rift.
- Jack forgives his worst enemy, one whom he has a brotherly relationship with, like the Doctor did with the Master.
- Tosh mentions how she covered for Owen on his second week by pretending to be a medic, encountering a Space Pig in the process.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Owen gets the lovely fate of watching his body slowly decompose from the radioactive waste shredding him apart. And since he's The Undead, he'll likely be conscious for most of it.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Toshiko, being straddled by Jack as she perished from fatal blood loss.
- Dies Wide Open: Again, Toshiko.
- Downer Ending: Tosh and Owen are dead (in Owen's case for good this time), and Jack is forced to put his brother into cryofreeze.
- Easily Forgiven: Jack does this to Gray when he emerges from cryofreeze:"I forgive you."
- Even Evil Has Standards: For his obnoxious evil ways, John Hart is horrified at the fact that Grey plans to bury Jack alive for eternity and tries to put a stop to it.
- Explosive Leash: Captain John Hart reveals that his actions — at least in that episode — were motivated by the bomb grafted to his wrist. How long the blackmail had been going on is not explained, though he was at least in contact with the man who planted them at the end of "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang".
- Face Death with Despair: Owen does not take his impending doom well, planning to rage his way to oblivion. It takes Toshiko to calm him down enough that he ultimately tries to face death calmly.
- Face Death with Dignity: Owen has a soul-crushing meltdown when he learns he's doomed. It takes Toshiko to snap him out of it and he tries to await his ultimate demise at peace.
- Fade to White: Once the nuclear meltdown begins, Owen goes to face it and the screen turns to white, sparing the viewers his death on-screen.
- Go Out with a Smile: Toshiko's last expression before her body went motionless was a relieved smile at Jack and Gwen when they arrived to help her, knowing both were okay.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Owen's most likely horrific death is thankfully not shown to the viewers, due to a Fade to White just prior.
- Instant Cooldown: The first part of what is happening at the nuclear power plant is pretty realistic. Bombs are detonated around the city, causing a widespread loss of power. The nuclear power plant was specifically targetted. With the cooling systems down due to the power loss (same thing that happened at Fukushima), the reactor goes into meltdown. In real life the meltdown would happen over several days, here it takes about an hour. Owen is sent in, with Tosh giving him instructions. He fiddles with some controls in the control room that somehow "vents the radioactive coolant through the control room", and then instantly the reactor is fine again. What.
- Made of Iron: Tosh is shot in the stomach by Gray and manages to inch her way down the stairs of the Hub's medical room, leaking out blood, and then stick a needle full of painkiller in her to dull the agony she's feeling just to keep talking to Owen.
- Mortal Wound Reveal: Toshiko stumbles back after a gunshot and sees she's been hit deep in the stomach. She looks up and sees Gray pulled the trigger.
- Out of Time, Out of Mind: Considering the fact that he had been repeatedly suffocating and resurrecting for almost 2000 years, Jack is remarkably fine once he is exhumed.
- Resurrection/Death Loop: Jack Harkness is buried alive and spends almost 1900 years repeatedly suffocating to death and resurrecting before being exhumed. It has surprisingly little mental effect on him in the long run.
- Slave Brand: Gray has a mark burned into the right side of his neck and jowl.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Even after Torchwood gets a hold on the chaos Gray has wrought, Owen and Tosh end up dead due to unpredictable disasters. And though Tosh's posthumous message plays, Owen is no longer around to hear the love confession she recorded for him.
- Stuff Blowing Up: The show blew up bits of Cardiff.
- Video Will: Jack, Gwen and Ianto come across a video will left behind by Tosh as they are logging her permanently out of the system. Tragically, it includes a Love Confession to Owen, even though he had died around the same time as Tosh.
- Wham Episode: Enormous. Owen and Toshiko die (for Owen, this time permanently). Torchwood is reduced to three people and then they have to decommission their beloved friends in the most heartwrenching manner. And Jack is forced to chloroform his brother and put him in deep freeze when he won't come around.
- Wham Shot: A loud BANG followed by Toshiko recoiling and looking down at her belly... now oozing out blood from a high caliber bullet... and Gray's the shooter.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Gray is placed in cold storage, but considering that the Hub's going to be blown up, we don't know if Gray was blown up with it, or if Jack stored him someplace where he would be out of harm's way.
