At Lake Como, Italy, a young man--Angus MacGyver--pulls up to a villa in a sports car. A fellow agent, Nikki Carpenter, is watching him via spy satellite. His teammate Jack Dalton is on a boat in the lake. Mac collects some soot from his car's exhaust pipe and points out to Nikki that he's going to need a fingerprint to access the safe. The intel indicates there's some kind of weapon in the safe that their target is going to sell to the highest bidder. Jack tells Mac that he's got 30 minutes and assures him that he's got his back.
As Mac goes in, the guards check him for any weapons. The only thing they find is a Swiss army knife. As he goes in, MacGyver dons a pair of glasses with a hidden camera so that Nikki can monitor him. A woman, Patricia Thornton, joins the party. She's the director of field operations and a clandestine operative, and greets Mac. Patricia points out the seller nearby and the location of the vault. Once she leaves, Mac removes his jacket and blends in as a waiter, and then takes the seller's champagne glass.
In the kitchen, Mac gets some tape from a drawer, dumps out the champagne, and uses the soot and tape to lift the seller's fingerprint from the glass. He then finds a stud finger, removes the magnet, and rigs an EMP generator to scramble the guard's earbud. When Mac gets close, the guard goes off to have it checked and Mac goes into the fingerprint.
A guard finds Jack at the dock and Jack takes a selfie with him before knocking him out.
Mac reaches the vault but discovers that the vault is protected by a palm scanner rather than a fingerprint scanner. Nikki admits that they got bad intel, and MacGyver scraps some plaster dust off the wall to spread on the scanner. It picks up the oils of the last person to use it, and Mac presses firmly to bypass the scanner. Inside is a case holding a large container with the bio-weapon. Mac removes it and an alarm goes off.
A guard comes in and Mac grabs a serving tray and uses it to deflect his bullets and then knock him out. Another guardcomes in and opens fire, and Mac takes cover and then throws the tray, knocking the guard out. Mac then runs outside as more guards open fire, heading for the dock. Jack pulls out as mac leaps onboard, and the guards pursue in another speedboat. A shot hears the fuel line and the speedboat starts slowing down. Mac uses his tie to lock the steering wheel and tells Jack to jump, and then does so himself. Jack does so as well and their speedboat slams into the pursuing speedboat, blowing both up.
Mac and Jack swim to shore and get to Nikki's van. A man, John Kendrick, is holding a gun to her head and demands the canister. Another man knocks out Jack from behind, and Mac hands over the canister. He then shoots Nikki and she drops to the road. As Mac charges forward, Kendrick shoots again and Mac goes backward over the bridge into the water below. He wakes up after a minute and swims to shore.
Three Months Later
In LA, Mac is out jogging and remembers what happened to Nikki. He goes home where his roommate Wilt Bozer is making waffles. Wilt is unaware of what Mac really does, and believes that Nikki died in a car accident. Mac takes a shower and remembers showing Nikki how to pick a handcuff with a bobby pin. As Mac goes back out to the living room, he finds Patricia waiting for him. They briefly talk about Nikki and then Patricia says that Mac's vacation is over. Technicians at a research facility in Greenland sent out an SOS. Ten minutes later, they were all dead and the CDC has contained the building. The CDC thinks the virus responsible is prehistoric and that the technicians dug up while frakking in Siberia. Mac's superiors believe it's the bio-weapon that Mac tried to recover in Italy, and the deaths were staged as a demonstration to show that the seller had the virus. The intel now suggests that Kendrick is another broker trying to make a sale, and someone at the party was the buyer. They need mac because he's the only person who can handle a biologic.
At the Department of External Services (DXS), which everyone believes is a government think tank, Mac meets Jack and they check with the technicians examining Nikki's laptop for the video from the night of the party. It's encrypted and the technicians can't break it, but Jack says that there's someone he knows who can break it. They meet with a prisoner, Riley Davis, and her file is heavily redacted. When they go in to talk to her, Riley asks Jack if there's anything he wants to say to her. Jack says that when they met, he was CIA and now he works for DXS. She says that she did something to help someone even though it got her locked up, and admits that she's guilty of what they arrested her for. She says that she'd do it all again if she had to, and Mac says that she's coming with them. Riley wants her sentence commuted if she helps them, and unsupervised access to tech. when she hesitates, Mac says that she can do the right thing or spend the next five years in prison and unlocks her handcuffs with a paperclip. When they take Riley out, Patricia objects but Mac tells her that they can either let the hacker go, or watch everyone on the planet die from the virus.
At the DXS computer lab, Riley hacks open the laptop and removes the hard drive so that they can scan it read-only. As she works, Mac privately asks Jack what's going on between him and riley, Jack admits that he dated Riley's mom, and Jack had to beat up the mother's husband when he abusive. The man told Riley that Jack was jealous,. Riley brings up all the potential buyers, and Kendrick is among them. Mac notices that Kendrick's watch is set to nine hours earlier, indicating the U.S. West Coast. Riley accesses the Shadownet and runs an image search on Kendrick, and finds him in San Francisco. One of the potential buyers, Benjamin Chen, is there as well and Patricia tells Mac that he only has a few hours to get there and stop the sale. Jack and Mac both insist on taking Riley with them, and Patricia reluctantly agrees.
In San Francisco, the trio goes to the hotel that Riley tracked Chen to. They go to the circuit room and Mac rigs a smoke bomb that sets off the smoke alarms. The guests evacuate and Mac spots... Nikki. She sees him as well and runs, and Mac and Jack chase after her. She runs out through an alleyway and gets into a car, and Kendrick is with her. He opens fire on Mc, who runs into another alleyway. It ends with a dead-end, and Mac unfastens the fire escape. When Kendrick comes in, Mac releases the fire escape and it slams into Kendrick. Jack arrives and Mac runs back to the street, but Nikki is gone. As riley runs up, he tells them that he saw Nikki, and she and Kendrick were in on it together
Back in the alleyway, Jack threatens Kendrick with a nail gun and demands to know where the virus is. Kendrick says that Nikki has the virus and he doesn't know where it is. She's going to meet the buyer alone and then meet Kendrick after the transaction. Mac demands to know what Kendrick did to get Nikki to cooperate, and Kendrick says that he didn't convince her of anything. He gives them her secret bank account in Prague, and Jack realizes that they shot Nikki with a blank. She wanted to disappear and didn't want Mac to get hurt, but understood it might get messy.
Riley records the entire conversation on her laptop and they gag Kendrick. They then hit redial on Kendrick's cell phone and call Nikki's number, riley digitally impersonates Kendrick's voice and Nikki says that she'll see him in New York. Riley is unable to trace it but they hear planes in the background and Mac figures that she's at an airport. Jack figures that it's a private airport and Riley comes up with a location: the San Carlos Airport. She calls Patricia to ground all flights and drive for the airport
Jack crashes the gate and they see Nikki's private jet taking off anyway. Mac runs over and leaps onto the landing gear. Hanging on, he cuts the landing gear retraction wires and they request an emergency landing at San Carlos. Nikki realizes that they're circling back, draws her gun, and yells at the pilots through the cockpit door.
The plane lands and Mac rolls clear. Meanwhile, Jack enters the cabin, gun drawn, and tells Nikki to drop her gun. Mac comes in and tells Nikki that she'll have to shoot him first. After a moment, Nikki lowers the gun and he searches her for the virus. She doesn't have it and Mac tells Jack to tear the plane apart. Once they're alone, Mac asks if everything between them was a lie. She says that what they had was real, and Mac realizes that the virus isn't there because she already sold it.
The team contact Patricia and tell her the situation. Mac realizes that Chen is going to unleash the virus in San Francisco because the alias Nikki is using matches that of a poet who wrote about the San Francisco earthquake. Nikki insists that she and was selling the virus to keep it out of the U.S. Government's hands, and warns that the people who have it will stop at nothing to unleash it. Mac says that he's not going anywhere and neither is Nikki, and they'll both die when Chen releases the virus;
Nikki gives up Chen's location and Jack and Mac fly by helicopter to it and spot the truck Nikki and Chen were driving. Mac leaps onto the truck from the helicopter and drops into the back there the vial is inan IED to send it airborne. Mac tries to disarm itwhileChen's guard grabs out of the cab and makes his way back. Mac cuts a wire and sets off the timer as the guard drops in and attacks him. Jack drops a gun to his friend, who uses it to knock the guard out the back.
With the timer counting down, Mac uses a paperclip to remove the virus container from the IED but can't jump without potentially shattering it and releasing the virus. With 30 seconds left, Mc cuts a strip of the canvas from the truck top and rigs a parachute, and then gets clear just in time. The IED goes off, destroying the truck and Chen. Jack lands and makes sure that his friend is okay, as the military arrive to take the virus.
Later, Mac is at home burning everything he has reminding him of Nikki. Jack and Riley visit him, and Wilt greets them. Mac says that Riley is a new member of their IT division, and Wilt goes to cook a meal. Jack says that Patricia has okayed Riley to work with them, but the hacker is still on probation. He asks if Mac is okay, and Mac says that he will be. Riley thanks Mc for getting her out of prison and letting her do the right thing, and asks about a phoenix amulet Mac has hanging up. He says that they got it in Cairo and Jack doesn't want to discuss it.
Patricia comes in and says that they're shutting down DXS because Nikki compromised their covert operation. They're moving the team to a new location and the trio gets to pick a new name. Mac suggests the Phoenix Foundation because they're rising from the ashes just like the legendary creature. Everyone agrees and they share a toast.
The government is taking Nikki away via military convoy. When they pass through a tunnel, they discover that she's gone... and has left a bobby pin behind.
Written by Gadfly on Sep 24, 2016