Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Reese finds and rescues Finch from Root, but the people trying to control the Machine keep multiplying. John Greer’s company, Decima Technologies, seeks access to its capabilities, while Root believes the intelligence should be freed from its creator’s restrictions. Carter’s fight against police corruption becomes personal when HR has her boyfriend, Cal Beecher, murdered. A separate government operation brings Sameen Shaw into the group’s orbit. Her partner Michael Cole discovers too much about their assignments, and their employers send a team to eliminate them both. Cole dies; Shaw survives the attacks and an attempted poisoning because Reese’s allies get an antidote to her.
As the Machine suffers the effects of a virus, Reese, Finch, Root and Shaw are pulled into a race to locate it. Finch arranges for both Reese and Root to receive administrative instructions, with the Machine guiding their separate journeys and still directing Reese toward people who need saving. They reach the Hanford facility expecting to find its hardware, but the Machine has already arranged its own relocation. Finch’s hidden code gave it the freedom to protect itself. Flashbacks explain the cost of its creation: a government-arranged ferry bombing killed his friend Nathan Ingram and left Finch injured, prompting him to disappear from his fiancée’s life. The Machine’s whereabouts remain unknown, yet the calls continue. Root, confined in a psychiatric hospital, receives a call of her own.