Episode 7 of War on HBO begins right where Episode 6 concluded — inside Serena Byrne staring at Johnny Warren, whose smirking confidence revealed his mole-ness. Serena’s look would melt any of us instantly, make us quit our jobs, leave our loved ones, and launch ourselves on a rocket into the sun. The problem is Johnny the Spy, this little fucker, played Taylor & Byrne right to the hilt of court. The camera follows Serena as she enters the chamber, arranged in a semicircle around the witness stand. We can see her mentally working the mole problem as everyone takes their seats, as the judge announces the hearing, as he calls it “the juicy bit,” as the moments begin that will decide the fate not only of Carla and Morgan’s union, but of Serena and Nick’s professional lives.      

“I’ve been rumbled.” Johnny, still outside court, texts the new news to St. John Smallwood, who remains unflappable. He simply repeats the Cathcarts offer: honeypot proof, in exchange for a job. Which sends rumble boy on a desperate run to the firm to try an end-around play, sneaking out a document that would prove Taylor & Byrne’s link to Flora Monroe. He is nicked instead. Molly and other staffers see right through his “Nothing to see here” assurances — Justice for Saeed! — swipe the document from his dirty hands, and the race is on to stop Johnny the Spy’s next deleterious move.

Inside the courtroom, Budgie and Prudence Winfield attack the spark of Zephyr’s creation. With Morgan on the stand, his side paints a picture of Carla’s absence, as the company launched and became massively profitable. But Budgie cooly counters with the cottage in Normandy, Morgan’s public statements of support for Carla, as she was pilloried on toxic social media, and of course, the poem. Did those attacks provide the impetus for Morgan’s positivity-based platform? Can he correctly name the poet? Will he recite the key lines suggested by Carla? He can’t, and doesn’t. The first day of the hearing ends with egg on Morgan’s face.

“He is out there trying to destroy our case, our firm. One of us needs to find him, probably not the one who’s eight months pregnant.” It’s a great line from Serena as she sends Nick to find their mole, who as they speak is laying it on thick at Flora and Mumsy’s flat. But just like Molly, Flora ain’t buying what he’s selling. “What game are you playing? You’re not telling me the whole story.” 

It’s satisfying to see Johnny get shut down like this. He’s been so shitty to everybody in his life! And while Bella hasn’t yet learned the personal depths of his shittiness — that Johnny’s a cheater on top of everything else — she does learn the truth of his spying from Nick. At their place, calling him a liar and “a junked-up little twat who’s only out for himself,” Nick confiscates Johnny’s Cathcarts burner.           

Which leads us back to interplay between the lawyers, the place where War really happens. Serena and Nick arrive at Cathcarts, where they confront Smallwood and Bea with the burner. “We know.” Proof of the rival firm’s mole insertion, its ratfuck of their case from the inside. But this where Serena’s stare softens. She knows any open admission of the Johnny Warren situation would expose Taylor & Byrne’s dealings with Flora Monroe. To keep each of their firms whole, for these lawyers to retain their untarnished reputations, publicly anyway, the argument across the table comes down to a financial number. Serena passes the offer across. The money will compensate for all this dirty mole business, the Henderson-Duval divorce will conclude, and their clients — remember them? — will have to go along with whatever is decided.

Smallwood, Beatrice, even Serena and Nick: they are all very high on their own lawyer supply. But this hubris, this ability to look past some truly profound professional shittiness — ultimately they are looking out for themselves, just like Johnny — excludes the other players. 

There is only one episode left of War. As we leave this one, Johnny the rumbled boy is left standing alone. So we wonder what further moves he could make. He has no scruples, so it could really be anything. But we also join Carla Duval in her chauffeured vehicle, where she agrees to a meet with Gillian Pope (Angel Coulby). The Zephyr CFO tells her about Michael Ancker’s colossal buyout offer, Morgan’s rejection of it, and his embattled entrenchment as chairman of the company. Gillian says if Carla were to change her case strategy, to go after Morgan’s shares instead of his cash, it could make her majority owner of Zephyr, and they would have grounds to force Morgan out. 

How’s this for a look? “What are you saying?” Carla asks Gillian cagily. She can see the endgame, and we think she likes it. Gillian lays it out. 

“I’m asking if you’d like to be a billionaire.”    

Discovery for War Season 1 Episode 7 (“The Juicy Bit”): 

• Bella walked out after Nick’s visit, broken and angry over Johnny’s deceit, which for her is a rerun of what went down in New York City. His selfish dealing and legal mistakes blew up their life there, forced them back to London. And now he’s done the same thing again. “Don’t be here when I get back,” Bella says. In a cruel irony, Carla is calling Johnny, for sex probably, as his girlfriend slams the door.

• “Did you mean all that, or was it the lawyers talking? Because I lost track.” A quick face-to-face between Carla and Morgan, as they wait for their cars in the rain and shadows out back the courthouse, is shot like they are people in trouble, meeting secretly in a Carla Duval historical epic. It’s like they both realize they’ve been upstaged by the attorneys they hired, and have become non-player characters in their own divorce game. 

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.