“War” premiered on HBO on October 1st and on Sky Atlantic in the UK on October 2nd with its first episode, “It’s Done”. Dominic West plays Morgan Henderson, a tech mogul who built the social media company Zephyr, opposite Sienna Miller as his wife Carla Duval, an international film star. By the end of the first hour the marriage is over and both legal teams have already played dirty. The episode opens with a honey trap and closes with an ambush on a red carpet.
George Kay, known for “Lupin”, “Killing Eve” and “Hijack”, created and runs the series. The premiere runs 53 minutes and Ben Taylor directs all eight episodes, which roll out weekly. Episode two, “No More Nasty Surprises”, airs October 8th. This piece is built from several independent recaps of the broadcast that agree on the beats, not from a screener viewing. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “War” season 1, episode 1, “It’s Done”.
The episode opens with a honey trap and closes with an ambush on a red carpet.”
The first scene is a victory lap, with Morgan accepting a Pioneer of the Year award for reshaping social media through Zephyr. He gives a high-minded acceptance speech about what his company has done for the world. Then he heads back to his hotel and a beautiful stranger named Flora, played by Rose Williams, approaches him on the way. He hesitates at first and then sleeps with her anyway. TV Fanatic put it sharply when it wrote that “Morgan wants to enjoy himself while retaining the option of believing this isn’t how he usually behaves.” That is the man in one line and the rest of the season will test it.
Flora is not a stranger at all, because Carla sent her to prove that Morgan cheats. While he sleeps she takes photos of him and texts Carla two words that give the episode its title. The message reads “It’s done” and five separate outlets describe the same beat in the same way. Carla has suspected Morgan before and he has always denied it. Now she has proof on her phone, and the show plays this cold opening move without apology.
Carla takes the photo to Taylor & Byrne. The firm belongs to Serena Byrne and Nicholas Taylor, played by Phoebe Fox and James McArdle, who are married to each other. Their first instinct is not about the marriage at all. The firm’s advisor Budgie, played by Celia Imrie, tells them to have Carla delete the photo and send it again through proper channels. The point is a clean paper trail that keeps the firm away from the honey trap. Time framed that scene as an ethical test and The Review Geek describes the same advice. The lawyers have the evidence in hand and the first thing they do is launder it. That is the thesis of the whole show. TV Fanatic titled its review “The Lawyers Are Almost Worse Than the Marriage” and the premiere backs that up scene by scene. Morgan and Carla are wealthy and famous and furious. The people they hire are colder than either of them. Kay does not ask the audience to pick a side in the divorce. He asks it to watch two firms treat a broken marriage as a market to win.
Morgan’s firm is Cathcarts, where Nina Sosanya plays Beatrice Ubosi, a partner known as “Queen Bea”, and Pip Torrens plays St John Smallwood, a senior figure at the firm. Miles Jupp plays David Schill, a barrister there who turns out to matter more than his rank suggests. Morgan confesses the one-night stand to his own lawyers. They do the math and decide the best defense is to control the story and strike first. The Review Geek and Collider both describe that call, and it sets up the ending.
The episode also runs a second story that has nothing to do with celebrities. Archie Renaux plays Johnny Warren, a working-class lawyer who has just come back from a job in the United States. He is hunting for work and Cathcarts turns him down after an interview with Schill. His girlfriend comes from a wealthy family and her friends do not let him forget where he comes from. The Review Geek, But Why Tho and TV Fanatic all describe the same class friction. Johnny is the only character in the premiere who has something to lose besides money, which makes him the audience’s way in.
Then Schill makes him an offer and secretly recruits Johnny to take a job at Taylor & Byrne and feed information back to Cathcarts. Johnny says yes and even lies to Taylor & Byrne about a competing offer from Cathcarts to talk his way into a better position. Once he is hired he texts Schill the same two words Flora sent Carla. The Review Geek, Collider and TV Fanatic all describe the mole plot and TV Fanatic points out the echo directly. It is the best idea in the hour.
Not every critic agrees on that. Time called the line one of the “misplaced crime-drama clichés” that drag down otherwise solid scripts. That reading misses what the repetition does. The first “It’s done” is a wife trapping a husband. The second is a law firm planting a spy inside its rival before the case has even started. The episode title is about both texts and the parallel is the structure of the show. Both sides open with a plant, and at that point neither one has served a single paper.
The ending turns all of that into one public moment. Taylor & Byrne get Carla’s permission to serve Morgan with divorce papers at the red carpet premiere of her new film. Time’s review identifies the film as “The Milliner” and calls it a dire-sounding period drama. Cathcarts gets there first. Morgan and Carla ride to the premiere together and play the happy couple for the cameras. Then Morgan’s team serves Carla on the red carpet and she has to keep smiling for the photographers while it happens. The Review Geek, Collider and TV Fanatic all confirm that Morgan’s side lands the first blow.
Miller gets the best material in that final scene because she has to act two things at once. The divorce papers are in her hand and the cameras are on her face. Morgan sits beside her in the car knowing his own firm has a plan for the night. Collider quoted one line that sums up the tone: “I do love it, the way you talk to me with such disdain. So refreshing.” ScreenRant’s season review quoted a line from Carla that names the whole arc. She wonders “how you can start so in love and end up so stuck, so humiliated, so determined to ruin each other.”
The critics mostly like what they see. Rotten Tomatoes has the season at 84 percent from 25 reviews with an average rating of 7.2 out of 10. Metacritic scores it 73 from 21 critics, and Collider called it slick and ruthless. ScreenRant wrote that “War represents every negative stereotype that leads people to hate lawyers, but that’s also what makes it so entertaining.” Time is the clear outlier with a review headlined “HBO’s ‘War’ Doesn’t Know What It’s Trying to Say”. It also called the supporting characters “cyphers or types” and compared the tone to “Succession”.
Time’s complaint about the supporting cast is the one to watch. The ensemble is large, and Emma Laird plays Molly Giordano, an assistant at one of the firms. Angel Coulby plays Gillian Pope and Patrick Fabian plays Eric McDaniel. Nick Mohammed is in the cast too, and NexusPointNews called him underused in its review of the full season. The recaps of the premiere barely mention most of these names. Johnny is the exception because the first hour gives him a home life and a reason to lie.
There is plenty of runway left, since the season runs eight episodes on a weekly schedule, with the finale set for November 19th. A second season is already greenlit, and that one will move from divorce to a defamation case. The premiere has done its job, because both sides have fired once and the papers have been served. The mole is inside and the real fight starts now.
What Do You Think? Was Carla’s honey trap a fair move or the moment she lost the moral high ground? Is Johnny’s double game the most interesting thread in the premiere? And who do you trust less after one episode, Taylor & Byrne or Cathcarts?
See you on the next binge!
