The Day of the Jackal Episode 6 ‘Escaping Budapest’ Recap
Episode 6 recap: the Jackal escapes Hungary, disguises himself with Nuria's help, and boards a Tallinn flight seated directly behind Bianca Pullman.
Spoiler warning: This recap covers the full events of Episode 6, including its closing scenes in Tallinn.
Episode 6 of the 2024 Sky Atlantic/Peacock series, directed by Paul Wilmshurst and written by Charles Cumming, closes the Budapest chapter and puts the Tallinn endgame in motion. The Jackal (Eddie Redmayne) kills his way off a Hungarian farm, calls in a favor from his wife, and clears customs in a wheelchair disguised as an elderly man. He then boards a flight to Estonia and takes a seat directly behind the MI6 agent who has been hunting him. The episode airs in the US on 21 November 2024 on Peacock, the week after the UK premiere on Sky Atlantic.
How the Jackal Gets Off the Farm
The Jackal makes it out of Hungary by forcing a farmhand named Laszlo to drive him away from a property where he has just killed two people, putting distance between himself and the scene before Bianca Pullman’s (Lashana Lynch) surveillance team can close in.
The sequence begins in the direct aftermath of Norman Stoke’s death. Norman (Richard Dormer), the gunsmith who built the Jackal’s custom sniper rifle over the prior two episodes, was killed by his own client at the end of Episode 5 to prevent him giving anything to MI6. Bianca and her partner Vincent Pyne (Nick Blood) arrive at the Budapest location too late to stop it.
The Jackal, clearing the scene, winds up at a farm owned by a man named Attila. The situation does not stay manageable. Attila and his brother Gabor discover the Jackal’s weapons and decide the discovery is a negotiation rather than a danger. When the standoff turns violent, the Jackal kills both men, then drags farmhand Laszlo into a car and drives away before Bianca’s team can establish how far the trail runs.
The Jackal Releases Laszlo
The Jackal releases Laszlo at some point during the drive. He stops the car, lets Laszlo out, and issues a single condition: silence, enforced by the implication that his family would pay the price for talking.
The scene reads less as mercy than as efficiency. A dead Laszlo is another body on a farm that is already generating Hungarian police reports and Bianca’s full attention. A frightened Laszlo who goes home and says nothing contributes nothing to the investigation.
Nuria and the Disguise
What Nuria provides is a full transformation. Prosthetics and makeup age the Jackal into a convincing elderly man; the wheelchair completes the picture at customs. He clears the airport without incident.
The Jackal calls his wife, Nuria Gonzalez Martin (Úrsula Corberó), and tells her he may not make it back. She travels to Budapest anyway.
By this point in the season, Nuria’s doubts about her husband’s real profession are substantial. Episode 3 showed her and her family searching his home and finding two hidden vaults, the second containing money, weapons, and a cast of his face. The earlier Paris interlude in Episode 4 offered temporary reassurance, but the pattern has continued. Episode 6 shows the Jackal telling her enough to bring her in without spelling out everything.
By bringing materials to Budapest and helping apply them, Nuria moves from passive ignorance toward active participation. The show does not underline this, but our reading is that this shift carries more weight than the disguise itself, and that Nuria’s growing complicity is what the season is building toward in its final episodes.
What MI6 Is Tracking
Bianca is running two threads at once. One is the Budapest trail, which has just gone cold again with Norman dead and the Jackal off the grid. The other is internal.
The Belarus operation in Episode 2, in which Norman killed two MI6 colleagues and escaped, opened a leak investigation that has not been resolved. Episode 3 confirmed the internal probe formally. By Episode 6, suspicion covers multiple figures in Section 303, among them Osita Halcrow (Chukwudi Iwuji), a senior MI6 official, and Damian Richardson (Ben Hall).
The season later establishes that neither Halcrow nor Richardson is responsible. The leak runs through Isabel Kirby (Lia Williams), who has a relationship with the financier Timothy Winthrop (Charles Dance). Episode 6 is laying the groundwork for red herrings that the final two episodes will dismantle.
From Budapest to Tallinn, and What Rasmus Means
The Jackal’s destination is Tallinn. Ulle Dag Charles (Khalid Abdalla), the billionaire targeted for $100 million, is scheduled to appear at the Kontserdisaal (Estonia Theatre). Before the Jackal can take his shot, he needs inside access.
Rasmus (Andreas Jessen) is an employee at the venue. The episode’s closing scenes show the Jackal beginning to seduce Rasmus, a calculated approach to gain inside access to the building.
The boarding sequence resolves the episode’s central irony. Bianca and Vincent are on the same Tallinn flight, and the disguised Jackal takes his seat directly behind them. Bianca has no idea. The show presents this not as incompetence on her part but as a gap she had no way to account for, because the gap is Nuria’s work.
Our reading is that this reframes the disguise subplot. The Jackal’s ability to be invisible depends on his wife being unwilling to stop him. Nuria’s choice in Budapest is not a small domestic moment, which is why the season keeps returning to it in the episodes that follow.
