Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer‘s Judith and Debbie prove what it really means to be Ride or Die best friends in Prime Video’s globe-trotting action series, which tests their bond after Judith’s secret double life as an international assassin is revealed. Warning: Spoilers for Ride or Die Season 1 ahead!
After a series of events exposes Judith’s true occupation, she’s forced to go on the run after a hit she’s assigned to goes sideways, and other parties become involved. At the heart of it all, though, is vengeance from former friend and fellow assassin Ana (Sylvia Hoeks), who targets Judith and Debbie.
It turned out that after Ana noticed Judith’s closeness to Debbie, she intended to kill her, as assassins aren’t meant to build bonds like that within their agency. Instead, Judith shot Ana, leaving her to fall off a cliffside into water, believing her dead. In the present, Ana plans to get payback for her struggles by targeting both women, and along the way, she reveals to Judith how the agency they’re employed by really works.
Most of the assassins were groomed as orphans, having been adopted and then returned, on purpose, to be recruited by the Director (Bill Nighy), Judith being one of them. Lured back to the place of her training in youth, Judith is set up by Ana and essentially left paralyzed and hidden away until Debbie manages to find her after uncovering clues in the secret room in Judith’s apartment.
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Together, the friends are able to overpower and defeat Ana, but a target still looms on Judith’s back as they conclude the season, embarking on a new adventure. While Debbie leaves behind her lying ex-husband after devoting so many years to helping him attempt to reach the Prime Minister position, only to squander it with poor choices, she’s finally putting herself first.
And Judith turned her back on assassin life, as her colleague Sam (Calam Lynch) helped to deactivate her status, setting her seemingly free until the final minutes revealed that Debbie and Judith are surrounded by trained professionals aboard a train that’s meant to take them away from England. While no second season has been ordered yet, there are certainly plenty of lingering questions, such as what is Judith’s real name? And what could these pals face next if the action were to continue?
As for whether they’d want Judith’s real name to be exposed, Spencer says, “I hope that that gets to be a secret between the two of them because… if people know her real name, then she’s vulnerable, she’s extremely vulnerable, so I hope not.”
“And she’s in on it now,” Waddingham chimes in, as Spencer points out, “They have to have a secret between the two of them.”
Meanwhile, when it comes to winning Debbie over, it takes some serious convincing to believe their friendship was true, until she saw Judith’s secret room at her apartment. But why did it take seeing that to believe in their bond? Spencer adds, “If you believe something about a person for 20 years and then you find out nothing you’ve been told is actually true, you will question everything until you see the evidence… And so, I love that reveal that Judith is exactly who she has presented herself to be.”
As Waddingham explains, “It’s like [Judith]’s living in 10% of her apartment, but it means she’s living in 10% of her life.”
Meanwhile, the Director had ordered Ana to kill Judith, and now with his seemingly biological daughter Queenie (Savannah Steyn) on staff at the agency, there are high stakes for him, and risk for Judith out in the world.
“It must be torture to think of putting her in dangerous situations,” Nighy says of the Director bringing Queenie into the agency. “I think it’s going to be very interesting if we get the opportunity to see how that develops.”
And while he may be a concerned father for Queenie, does that extend to the assassins he groomed? Not really, but does that make him irredeemable? “I don’t mind if he’s just an unredeemable villain,” Nighy admits. “I’m quite happy with that.” We’d need a second season to find out for certain. See what else the stars have to share in the full video interview above, and let us know if you’d like to see a Ride or Die Season 2 in the comments section below.
Ride or Die, Season 1, Streaming now, Prime Video