[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers forCountdown Season 1 Episode 6, “A Needle or a Bullet.”]
Danill (Nikolay Moss) learns the perils of betraying Volchek (Bogdan Yasinski) in the latest episode ofCountdown.
After Astapov (Pasha D. Lychnikoff) tells Volchek that with the Americans closing in on him and asking questions, Belarus would rather not antagonize their host country. Therefore, he says, Volchek should return to Minsk, where he will be welcomed back. Volchek handles that “suggestion” by planning to strike Astapov during one of his routine stops. However, when the time comes, Astapov isn’t where he’s supposed to be.
Volchek gathers his men and explains that he planned to pick up Astapov and show him he’s not untouchable. He’d been wondering how Astapov knew where he was going to be to initially find him and realized he was betrayed. And so he told each person he was going to grab Astapov at a different place, so he knows who’s turned on him: Danill. At gunpoint, he took Danill’s phone and found proof. He then executed him because he has no tolerance for disloyalty and ordered the others to find a place for him where no one will find him.
Executing Danill like he did was about the betrayal itself as well as to serve as a warning to everyone else not to follow in his footsteps, Bogdan Yasinski tells TV Insider.
“I would even add the fact that it was Volchek himself validating to himself how far he is willing to go, right? It’s almost like, ‘Let me prove this to myself. Am I serious?’” he adds. “Yeah, I mean, that’s a big moment I think for him because it’s like obviously the thing that happens in Episode 5 [killing his wife], but this is him, self-perpetuating, ‘I am committed to this no matter what.’ And of course, it’s a message to the rest of the team. It’s not you’re either in or out. It’s you’re in, period. It’s funny because the guy who played Danill, I actually know him. We’ve known each other for some time, so it’s a really cool moment. Sorry, Nik.”
Countdown, Wednesdays, Prime Video