Leverage's first season finale opens with an inversion of the first scene from the previous episode, "The First David Job," with I. Y. S. Insurance C. E. O. Ian Blackpoole holding a gun to Nathan Ford. Three months have passed since Blackpoole and Jim Sterling successfully thwarted the Leverage crew's attempt to con Blackpoole and forced the team to scatter. Now, with Blackpoole's wing about to open the crew reunites to seek revenge. With Blackpoole and Sterling expecting another attempt on the two models of Michaelangelo's David statue now in Blackpoole's possession, the team decides their best option is to recruit an inside person: Maggie Collins, Nate's ex-wife and a key I. Y. S. Employee. But doing so requires mending broken relationships - both between Nate and Maggie and between a team damaged by a member's betrayal.
This is an important episode for a number of reasons. Most immediately, it resolves the elements of the arc hinted at over the course of the season, establishing a pattern for the season finales for the rest of the series' run. Perhaps even more importantly, Nate's achievement of some long-needed catharsis for the emotional trauma of the loss of his son, which allows the show to take his character in new directions in the seasons to come. It does this while at the same time providing an extremely satisfying and seemingly impossible resolution. It's a plotting challenge made even more so by Blackpoole's and Sterling's anticipation of the team's attempt (thus making it all the more difficult to pull off any con) AND the principle maintained throughout the show that "Sterling never loses." To accomplish all of this in the course of a single episode is no small feat, and while some compromises are inevitably made in the process (the fallout from Sophie's actions receives far less attention than it should), that the show does this in what is a highly entertaining episode makes this by far the most enjoyable of the series' season finales.
