Sophie Turner commands the screen in her latest show, “Steal” (TV Series 2026). Its anxieties around the financial world and its messy, unwieldy abscesses barely jump out of the screen, pillaged by contrivances and shallow deliberations aplenty. The heist may be glossy and slick. It helps to tide past niggling issues in the script, but it doesn’t wholly suffice.
Turner is an incredibly compelling lead. Her performance steers the narrative through spells of stubbornly unpersuasive decisions. The fact that other actors in the ensemble are barely sketched exacerbates the show’s critical failings, stretches them to areas that are unforgivable and lazily mounted. You wonder if it couldn’t have exerted more intelligence and wit in making its whole cast bring something to the table, instead of pat motivations that dry up soon.
A solid, crackling heist narrative demands multiple stakeholders, whereby interest can be mustered and suspicions batted from one end to the other. You need a variety of players equally compelling and resolutely thrilling for the narrative to land with gusto and force. There’s also the question of sustaining the momentum in films and shows like this.
The tension has to keep going without being interrupted or held up. The threads can peek through, but the viewer must be locked in to care and stay piqued till it all wraps up. “Steal” is serviceable but not sparkling. It never turns into essential viewing. There’s the leap a great show has to make where it will resonate and cut and render itself bracingly effective. This series remains a shadow, hemmed in by allegiances to tropes and cliches.
Steal (TV Series 2026) Recap:
The show plants tracks and sections but lacks the nerve and verve to follow through. Something always pulls it back, keeps it on leash. Most of the characters are sketchy and vapid, sucking tension and contained interest out of the show. It launches several fronts without the maturity and foresight to cleave them into a satisfying, cogent whole. As a result, the show feels scattered and severely misjudged.
There are masterminds and covert operations, but no trace of cleverness or sound reasoning seems to have been baked in at any stage of the writing whatsoever. This is why the narrative struggles to stoke anticipation. Stakes are raised only to be thrown into a strange stalemate with no character or circumstance having the requisite pull. Tension is revved only to be cast into an annoying maze of diversions and low-energy spirals.
Who are the insiders in the heist?
The show opens in the bustle of London. Zara meets with a new intern, Myrtle. Few people head to Lochmill’s office and wield guns. A full-blown hostage situation is created. Efforts to quieten the gang are only dismissed. Zara and her teammates are coerced into turning in key possessions. Zara tries her best to execute the money transfers via the banks, but the procedure does take time.
Restlessness spikes the scene with volatility. Everyone’s on edge. Ultimately, the robbers do get away with the transfers having been completed. Senior police investigator Rhys interrogates Zara. The first episode opens with Zara flashing a smile once she gets her privacy. Could the heist have been conducted with insiders?
The day after the robbery, Zara gets five million in her account. Zara insists that Luke remove the money from his crypto as well so that no incriminating online trail can be located. The thieves, too, have experienced credentials. Zara goads him into not letting slip all that they know, even though he is keen to confess to the cops. The detectives suspect Luke, but they also gauge that he worked with someone. Zara hides her money in a shoebox. Luke is spied on by the thieves.
Zara observes the assassins scuffling with Luke. Rhys also sees Zara in the scene. Later, he interrogates her. He knows she’s fibbing, but he can’t yet pin her down. He needs evidence to back his conjectures. Rhys owes a lot of money to important people. He has to procure the sum as soon as possible. Zara does foolish things when searching online for stuff that could raise suspicion about her. Yoshida dredges up information on the money having been transferred to the Defence Contractor.
The problem is that the show introduces all these characters with intersecting desires and agenda but fumbles in truly complicating or enlightening a rich moral tussle. Things happen in brisk succession. The plot surges and builds in great haste, but there’s a deeply felt lack of characters whom you can relate to and whose angst you can bask in.
Does Zara hide her tracks?
The Superintendent insists that Rhys be let go. This might endanger his professional life. Rhys has a gambling problem, which could be the peg for laying his career on the line. Zara continues being driven to cover her tracks, doing whatever she can to bury it all. She breaks into the thieves’ operational base. Once Zara lands at her mother’s place, after being chased, the latter admits she knows of the stashed money.
This leads to the always-unenviable situation of striking a bargain. Her mother wants a million. Zara finds that her house is populated. Rhys tells her the MI5 is seeking to apprehend her. Zara and Rhys try to escape the MI5 that’s closing in on them. Rhys compels her to team up with him; otherwise, they’d be nabbed soon.
They have to get the money back from the thieves. Rhys is confident someone on the Investment Committee was involved. He tries to get Zara to help out. Meanwhile, the show circles back to Luke, who’s shown the video of Zara by the thieves. Luke obviously has no idea or clue. But he’s witnessed potential fissures among the thieves and attempts to rake up further friction.
Zara returns to the office and somehow succeeds in getting work back. She signs into the systems and has the passwords printed out. Rhys, Yoshida, and Fitch go to Toby Gould’s place, who alleges innocence about the money transfer. It turns out money was taken out of Gould’s account ten minutes prior. The thieves ferreted out Gould’s own money as well. Zara guesses Kate might be the orchestrator. As always, the drama keeps getting mired in more and more convolutions. This could have been fascinating and twisted. However, this isn’t rooted in believable, rounded characterisation, hence taking off the edge.
Is Luke entirely innocent?
When Zara is on the street, a man forces her into a taxi, and she’s held at gunpoint. Elsewhere, Luke attempts to bargain with one of the thieves, Morgan, teasing that he can have Zara’s share as well. The MI5 demands information from Zara. If she doesn’t accede, she’ll be plain killed. MI5 wants complete control of the narrative around the money in a manner that wouldn’t sully Britain. Rhys could take the hit.
The money has been traced to an account of the Chancellor. Zara discovers it’s Milo who orchestrated. But there’s someone else, too involved. Other people are overseeing this massive orchestration, setting Luke, Milo, and Zara as pawns and possible casualties. But mainly, it’s Zara who’s targeted to be the one dumped with all the apprehensions linked to the robbery. MI5 gives Zara a chance to make a new life and identity elsewhere.
However, the situation is far more mucky. Zara’s mother had tried to hack the wallet. Zara tells Rhys about the deal with the MI5. He looks down on it, but she’s adamant that it’s the only safe way going forward. However, when she’s about to leave her house with her belongings, Morgan is met with a gun.
This has led to a dangerous tangle of several complicit people. Innocence is almost wholly annihilated. The fight for survival spares no one. It’s tough to maintain pristine morality when there’s so much at stake. Even if the characters aren’t willing or ethically amenable to the decisions they make, they are bound anyway. It’s an inevitability that rings out loud and persistently, echoing inexorably and with complete significance. A cheekier show could have delved into the moral rot these compromises render, the shadow on the heart once such terrible deals are inked or implied.
This is no such show, more prevalent in shock and silliness than caring to etch characters with sufficient nuance and depth. You wish Luke registered more beyond the reach and affiliation and dissociation with the heroine. Archie Madekwe does more to lift the character than in the script. He drums up a desperation that has no right to feel as authentic and striking as it does. The show rests on Turner and Madekwe to anchor the banal progression, even while things get quite messy and unwieldy.
Steal (TV Series 2026) Ending Explained:
Who’s behind the heist?
Zara is held at gunpoint. Luke is tied too. Morgan threatens Zara to hand over her cold wallet and key in the password. But Zara snaps that Milo would have more money, that Morgan should swoop on him instead. Once they land at Milo’s place, he’s tied up as well. Milo’s attempt to spray Morgan fails, and he ends up bleeding out. In the high stress situation, Luke slips up with the passwords. Luke takes down the thief after being threatened himself. He frees Zara and scampers off with the codes.
All the other thieves land at Lochmill, and Morgan starts eliminating them since the friction has started quite a while back. Rhys gets shot, but does get away along with Zara. She confronts Morgan again, tasering him. Eventually, she triumphs. Luke and Zara reconcile and even out their differences that have accrued. There have been misunderstandings and gaps in communication that needed quick, urgent addressing.
It gets out in the media that Milo was behind the robbery and killed himself, racked by guilt. Various influential individuals had gotten the money, which was redirected to the company accounts. Rhys suggests to Zara the true extent of the actual incriminating source, the real mastermind behind it all. Before she can dig further and go down the rabbit hole, Rhys tells her it’s Yashido. They confront him. He does concede to his complicity but also paints a far more grim picture. He insists the financial system is skewed and broken, and he wanted to rat it all out, even if it meant orchestrating an extremely risky operation that entailed multiple casualties.
He points to a separate cold wallet that still has a vast sum of money that belonged to rich individuals. He lures them. Ostensibly, Zara and Rhys reject the proposal, but she has already plotted something. She’s not someone to slow down once she has got the wind of fruitful, lucrative schemes. She has Milo’s cold wallet, which she intends to use all by herself. The show closes with her vowing to embark on something that can turn her life around from the Lochmill drudgery.
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