‘The Capture’ Season 3 is Possessed by AI
'The Capture' continues to be the scariest series tackling the rise of the deep fake, as AI joins the mix in Season 3.
In the last decade, there’s been a phenomenon in Hollywood where real events overtake shows in production, making them far more relevant and timely than the producers originally intended. The Handmaid’s Tale is the most high-profile of this group, but there have been a slew of “near-future-set” shows that are far more present-day set than they’d like to admit.
One of those, the BBC’s The Capture, was originally scooped up by NBCUniversal at the end of 2019, as part of its high-profile launch package for Peacock. By the time it aired in the U.S., six months into the pandemic, Western culture had shifted from vaguely aware of platforms like Zoom into hardcore video communication, turning a hypothetical series about the dangers of deep-fake videos far less theoretical than when it first aired across the pond.
Sadly, Peacock’s launch was a disaster, and its quick move away from British offerings has left the series underwatched in the U.S. (along with fellow Peacock victims Vigil and PONIES). Despite the lack of American viewership, The Capture has only become more relevant with each passing season; with Season 3, the production introduces everyone’s new favorite boogie-man, Artificial Intelligence, to the party.
Season 1 introduced a deepfake AI technology called “Correction,” which secret government entities use to create video evidence of crimes that didn’t occur, to convict people they believe are guilty. Season 2 took that real-life tech a step further, with “Real Time Correction,” which inserted itself between the actual broadcast and the TV signal received by devices to digitally alter events in real time.
Season 3 begins with the pretense that “Correction” has been exposed to the public, and over the course of a year, our heroine, DI Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger), has cleaned out those who were using it as a corrupting force. However, as she tells her loyal second-in-command, Tom Kendrick (Nigel Lindsey), it’s been almost too easy. By the end of the premiere, it is clear that forces are at work behind the scenes to remove the whistleblowers and discredit the moral crusaders so the agency can return to its nefarious ways.
At the heart of Carey’s newest problem is a man who may or may not be an assassin, but has definitely, somehow, just been installed as the head of Carey’s agency over her, Commander Noah Pierson (Killian Scott).
To reveal the secret behind Pierson’s persona would be to spoil the fun and would take the rest of the review besides, as the character is the very definition of what Winston Churchill once called “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Viewers will be left guessing just how much of what Pierson claims is true by the time it’s all said and done, but that’s part of the point: we believe what people tell us in a manner we’ve been taught to recognize as true.
When Artificial Intelligence learns how to mimic that, how can we tell if anything is real? When that humanity is stripped away, and all that’s left is a cog in a larger machine, how much of what a person says is real, and how much is saying whatever is necessary to ingratiate themselves with those around them?
As Carey finds herself once again down a rabbit hole, with all the evidence somehow altered to make her question her own sanity, she finds herself having to turn to those she laid waste to in exposing Correction in the first place, her mentors: Gemma Garland (Lia Williams), Danny Hart (Ben Miles), and the show’s token American CIA operative, Frank Napier (Ron Pearlman). The three function like the adults in the room who are waiting for their teenage daughter to realize she doesn’t know everything – Danny and Gemma are more Dad-and-Mom -coded, while Frank is that Republican Uncle who will never admit if he voted for Trump or not.
Unfortunately for them, Carey’s mentors are from a time before the technological leap and are ill-equipped to handle the strange monster she’s begging them to help her figure out. But then again, the monster himself doesn’t seem to understand the whys and wherefores of his own mind, so perhaps understanding isn’t something anyone is equipped to handle.
What’s more shocking is that, unlike Seasons 1 and 2, where Carey found the answers and triumphed over adversity, the close of Season 3 strikes a very different tone. One would like to believe that The Capture Season 4 will be along soon to right the world’s wrongs, but even Carey isn’t so sure that’s possible anymore.
“Ask yourself: Do you really have enough to go on against all the evidence they will have against you?” she tells the next would-be whistleblower. She’s learned the hard way that sometimes there is no winning against the forces when they hold all the algorithms and the cards.
All three seasons of The Capture are streaming on Peacock in the U.S. from Thursday, June 18, 2026.
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