Intelligence Postmortem: Is Gabriel's Wife Really Dead?

[Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Monday's episode of Intelligence. Read at your own risk!]

 

Just when you thought Gabriel Vaughn (Josh Holloway) would spend most of Intelligence's first season using his chip to track down his presumed dead wife Amelia (Zuleikha Robinson), her story line is seemingly wrapped up neatly in the second episode. Emphasis on "seemingly."

When the Clockwork team looks into a terrorist bombing using a new chemically undetectable and ingestible bomb material, their investigation leads Gabriel to proof that Amelia is still alive and possibly working with the terrorists. Determined to prove that his wife is not a traitor, Gabriel sets out to prevent the next attack — except this time, the bomb is inside Amelia as she prepares to blow up a hospital. Before Gabriel can attempt to save her life — as she posits that she chose to work with the enemy — Riley (Meghan Ory) tackles him out the window into the river as the bomb blows up above them, seemingly killing Amelia for real this time... possibly.

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"We're not sure yet if she's really dead," executive producer Michael Seitzman says. "She's dead as far as we know at the end of Episode 2. Part of the fun of this is we want to unfold the story in a series of fun reveals for the audience, so we don't want to give it up too soon."

The speed at which Intelligence addressed Amelia's apparent death might shock some viewers since it's a climactic story line normally reserved for a season finale. "It was one of my first questions when I went in to meet them when I decided to do this job: So when does the wife die?" Holloway tells TVGuide.com. "I love it because it really plays to humanity. We have to deal with it right away so he can move forward. In the script, it's been six years. It's time for something to happen or move on or something. Or get her back."

Part of the reason producers chose to address the Amelia elephant in the room was to free Gabriel up so he wouldn't spend all season in search of his wife. "We also found some other things that seemed very interesting to do for the season finale," executive producer Tripp Vinson says. "Putting that to bed early felt like it was an interesting and unexpected thing to do. Most people would expect that to be at the end of the season. Also, for the writers, it definitely freed them up in terms of Gabriel and his mental attitude and what he's struggling with. It gives him more bandwidth because we've put a pin in that for now."

Moving forward, Gabriel will struggle with what his purpose is now. "If Gabriel got the chip to find his wife and his wife, in his mind, is dead, it's the quandary of, 'What do I do now?' Now [he] has the chip, what does [he] use the chip for?" Vinson says.

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Amelia's apparent death will also cause some tension at Clockwork since Riley pulled Gabriel out of the room when he thought he could save Amelia. "That definitely throws a wrench into the relationship, but the thing that Riley is really committed to is to make sure he understands is that it was about him and not about her," Ory says. "Her goal was basically to help him to see where she was coming from and why she had no choice. Hopefully he sees that and maybe he does and maybe they move on."

But was Amelia really working with the terrorists? Or had the former CIA agent been deep in cover all along? At the close of the episode, Lillian (Marg Helgenberger) tracked down information that seemed to indicate that she was trying to help Clockwork locate her before the bomb exploded. But don't expect Gabriel to spend any more time trying to clear his wife's name. "He never believed she had turned until she dies with this," Holloway says. "Yet, Lillian finds out something in the end of that that I didn't know. She hasn't told him that. Though he doesn't really believe it, he has no other options, so he's going to move on. He's just going to be the spy he is and go a little more rogue."

Intelligence airs Mondays at 10/9c on CBS.

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