Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Sydney Bristow is a college student and field agent for SD-6, which she believes is a covert branch of the CIA. After she tells her fiancé Danny about her work, SD-6 has him killed, and Sydney learns that the organization is part of the hostile Alliance of Twelve. CIA handler Michael Vaughn recruits her as a double agent, while her father Jack—also secretly working for the CIA—becomes both an uneasy ally and a source of long-buried family conflict. Her partner Marcus Dixon remains unaware of her real loyalties.
Sydney’s assignments take her from Madrid and Oxford to Tunisia as she and Dixon pursue stolen technology and the writings of Milo Rambaldi. The artifacts draw Arvin Sloane deeper into the Alliance’s hierarchy, while his search for Rambaldi’s work threatens to expose Sydney. At home, journalist Will Tippin keeps investigating Danny’s murder, and Sydney struggles to protect him and her friend Francie from the risks surrounding her double life. Jack’s history with Sydney’s mother and his past operations repeatedly unsettle their fragile trust.
When Sark kidnaps Will for Alexander Khasinau, Sydney and Jack abandon their official chains of command and work with Vaughn to rescue him. They trade Rambaldi materials for Will and destroy the enormous device Khasinau wanted, but Dixon’s suspicions about Sydney remain unresolved. Afterward, Khasinau’s men capture Sydney and tie her to a chair. Khasinau tells her she can ask his boss why the device mattered; the woman who steps from the shadows is her supposedly dead mother, Irina Derevko, alive all along.