TVLINE | How does this attack by the group 3rd Testament differ from others the FBI has dealt with in the past?
JEREMY SISTO | On our show, we’ve dealt with so many different versions of terroristic behavior. People trying to ruin things for individuals or for the entire population, and yeah, this is one of the more extremist groups. More anarchistic. It’s an accelerationist group that believes the world’s gotten so rotten that they need to reset it, and so we do what we have to do to get ahead of it. But within the plans are to disrupt internet and cell service, which is frustrating for any of us, even if we’re not trying to save the world. Their plan is elaborate and the reason it takes two hours is because there’s a lot of losses. We don’t win throughout. The FBI is fallible, like each of us, and so they squeak by in this one, but it’s an exciting ride and it’s emotional for Jubal for personal involvements. There’s always an element to an agent’s experience, whenever there’s an active threat, which is thinking about where your loved ones, your family, and your friends are and hoping they’re not in the wrong place at the wrong time. During this horrible day, Jubal’s son Tyler decides he is going to go to the city for the day with his girlfriend, and so it’s bad timing for Jubal, and you see some sides of him in this episode that are hard to watch.

TVLINE | Let’s talk about Tyler, who gets caught up in an explosion at the end of Part 1. What’s Jubal mentally going through when he’s searching the rubble for his son?
As you get when you’re a parent and you lose your kid for a second, you start to become very short-sighted. As he’s running into the flames, into the smoke, and running past people covered in dust who are scurrying away, he isn’t even able to acknowledge the hugeness of what’s going on around him because he’s so afraid of what could be with his son. Then when he finds his son there in the worst of all scenarios that he was imagining, trauma does a weird thing. It starts to make you believe that you created it yourself, and so he’s gonna have some real work to do to make sure he stays on track, psychologically, after this, as all law enforcement people do. It’s not easy to have these situations and then just move on with your life.

TVLINE | Jubal goes a bit rogue after his son is brought to the hospital. Part 2 gave me some Jack Bauer, “24” vibes. Can you tell me a bit about Jubal’s motivations and actions in the second half? He’s motivated by his ex-wife, who is not a real vengeance type of character, but she tells him to channel that emotion into finding these guys. Human beings are susceptible to giving in to that emotion that fuels things like vigilante justice, this self-righteous pride, and it really does go against who Jubal is. He has dedicated his life to work within the system that he believes in and the system doesn’t always get the perfect result. But if you believe in vigilante justice, you’re probably not looking at the facts because most often vigilante justice doesn’t work. It falls apart in so many different ways, and in this particular way, he doesn’t get anything out of this guy for his extreme behavior. He figures something out because of something the guy accidentally says. We’ve learned as a society many times that that kind of behavior is not good to encourage in our society. But that said, it’s super fun to watch on TV and in the movies.