Red Eye season 2 ending explained: Who is really behind the murders?

ITV kicked off 2026 in dramatic fashion with the return of its espionage thriller Red Eye, which sees Jing Lusi return as detective Hana Li – who ends up at the centre of another deadly conspiracy.

Creator Peter A Dowling returns to pen the scripts for this follow-up, which depicts another imperilled flight thousands of feet in the air as well as a pressure cooker of a crisis inside London's US Embassy.

Catastrophic events unfold at the welcome party of the new ambassador to the UK, whose associates are targeted by a vicious killer, forcing Hana and an old rival to cooperate on a high-stakes investigation.

But what shocking secrets are at the centre of all this chaos? Read on for our spoiler-filled breakdown of the Red Eye season 2 ending, including who is the true mastermind behind all the deaths and deception.

Red Eye season 2 ending explained: Who is really behind the murders?

Red Eye's season 2 finale reveals UK Secretary of Defence Alex Peterson (played by Nicholas Rowe) is the true architect of the murders inside the US Embassy.

He is in cahoots with Fox (Tom Forbes), a ruthless hitman on the ground, who he pays to eliminate individuals capable of exposing his corruption. The latest victim is none other than newly installed US ambassador Ronald Tillman (Trevor White).

As it turns out, Peterson has been embezzling money from a deal relating to military planes, but unluckily for him, the scheme was discovered by the ambitious Tillman during his tenure as CEO of the aeronautics company involved.

Tillman does so after retrieving the cockpit voice recorder from a plane crash depicted in the prologue, which not only incriminates Peterson, but reveals that his deceit caused the craft to go down.

In a bid to stop whistleblower Nicholas Martin (Mark Weinman) from getting to the United States, he contacts the doomed flight remotely and falsely tells the two pilots that their passenger is a threat to UK national security.

This causes a rift between Flight Lieutenant Patrick Johnson (Jack Ambrose) – brother of Clay Brody (Martin Compston) – and his co-pilot, Flying Officer Edney (Tega Alexander).

Johnson is confident that Peterson is lying, while Edney wishes to follow orders, and this disagreement leads to a physical fight between the two airmen that inadvertently ends in disaster.

Of course, Tillman is no angel either, so rather than alert the authorities to his discovery, he decides to use the information to blackmail Peterson into supporting his bid for US ambassador to the UK, which proves effective.

He then plots to go public with the scandalous details shortly after taking office, manufacturing a major PR win for himself to boost his career – and setting him on track for the White House.

All too aware of what Tillman has planned, Peterson concocts an outrageous scheme to silence anyone who could pose a threat to him, which he sets into motion on the day of the new ambassador's welcome party.

For a while, things go his way, with several key targets picked off one-by-one.

But when Hana and Clay flee the US Embassy with the cockpit recorder and turn it over to MI5 boss Madeline Delaney (Lesley Sharp), his elaborate ruse comes tumbling down.

Previously, the authorities were misled into thinking that Fox was a Russian operative targeting attendees of a recent security hearing in the US – but this was pure misdirection.

Instead, the targets were all connected to uncovering Peterson's misdeeds.

Delaney explains: "Once the voice recorder was recovered, Perry Lambert [Tibu Fortes], whose company made it, would have been tasked with accessing the recording.

"And as chief safety officer on the project, Craig Stewart [Glenn Wrage] would also have heard it and reported its contents to his boss, Ronald Tillman, while he was still CEO of AM Aeronautics."

With the facts of the case established, Delaney now sets about trapping Peterson by lulling him into a false sense of security, before quietly blocking all communications to or from his mobile phone.

At a rendezvous spot, he waits to meet Fox, not realising that this seemingly quiet car park is actually crawling with police. Fox notices, though, and assumes that Peterson has turned on him.

As it becomes clear that their meeting isn't going ahead, Clay intervenes to extract a confession from Peterson, while Hana faces off against Fox on a rooftop, where he was about to shoot Peterson with a sniper rifle.

She manages to disarm him in a visceral fight scene, but things go less smoothly inside Peterson's vehicle.

Clay manages to get the corrupt minister to incriminate himself all over again, but almost squanders the confession – and his own future – by coming terrifyingly close to killing Peterson there and then.

Doing so, he feels, would avenge his brother, but it would also land him behind bars and derail the rest of his life. In a show of growth from his hot-headed days in training, Hana manages to talk Clay down.

Peterson is arrested and gets an eviscerating reprimand from Delaney, before being dragged away.

In the epilogue, Clay manages to patch things up with his estranged father, having helped restore Patrick's posthumous military honours, while Hana is offered a job at MI5 by Delaney. For now though, she chooses to remain a detective.

The cool-headed chief leaves Hana in a public park, where she smiles to herself, relishing another job well done – and perhaps considering that new opportunity a little more carefully. It remains on the table.

Red Eye is available to stream on ITVX.

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