Paris Has Fallen villain: who is behind the attacks in both seasons, and what do they want?

Paris Has Fallen, the TV spinoff of Gerard Butler's Has Fallen movies, has now run two eight-episode seasons, with Tewfik Jallab as French protection officer Vincent Taleb and Ritu Arya as MI6 agent Zara Taylor. Season 1 premiered in 2024. Season 2, subtitled Apollo Has Fallen, finished on Hulu on October 26, 2026.

The two seasons have very different villains, and the show treats them very differently. Spoilers for both seasons.

Season 1: Jacob Pearce

The man behind the season 1 attacks is Jacob Pearce (Sean Harris), a British former captain in the French Foreign Legion. His war isn't with France so much as with a handful of people inside it:

• The betrayal: In Afghanistan, Pearce's team captured a minister who had embezzled education funds. That cost Pascal Moulin, CEO of the French defense contractor KMI Systems, money, so Moulin, Defense Minister Philippe Bardin and an MI6 station chief fed Pearce false intel. His team was ambushed and killed, and he spent six years as a Taliban prisoner while France listed him as dead.
• The second hit: Rescued by U.S. special forces, Pearce hid in Lahore with his partner, Amina, and her children. A car bomb meant for him killed Amina and two of the kids. The order came from President Juliette Levesque.
• The plan: Pearce assembled a crew of ex-soldiers and went after everyone involved, starting with a siege at a gala at the British Embassy in Paris, where he humiliates Bardin in front of the hostages.

What Pearce wants is simple: every person who signed off on his team's deaths, dead or exposed. He tells Moulin he can't be bought and can't be negotiated with.

It ends with Levesque. Pearce kidnaps Zara's girlfriend, Théa, to force the handover, and in his warehouse the president shoots him in the gut and then confesses. Vincent takes a bullet for her, and Zara kills Pearce.

Season 1's terrorist was hunting a defense CEO, a minister, a spy chief and a president. The show makes you wonder which side of the gun they belonged on.

Season 2: Yuri Mishkin and Voltov

Season 2 trades the personal vendetta for a mercenary army. The villain is Yuri Mishkin (Jacek Koman), leader of a mercenary group called Voltov that has taken over Libya, per Screen Rant's trailer breakdown. His plan has three moving parts:

• The scientist: Voltov kidnaps microbiologist Rachel Moss (Annabel Scholey), code name Apollo, which is where the season's subtitle comes from. Mishkin threatens her family to make her weaponize a strain of MERS.
• The mole: Voltov has an operative inside MI6, and Zara becomes the prime suspect after her boss, Andrew, is murdered. The mole turns out to be Karen (Charlotte Spencer), the one MI6 contact Zara kept talking to.
• The target: When the main plan breaks down, Mishkin's backup is to contaminate a soccer stadium. Zara and Vincent get one hour to stop it.

As for what he wants, the trailer puts it in four words: Mishkin intends to "watch Europe collapse." Finale recaps add that Voltov meant to blackmail European governments with the threat of mass casualties. In the finale, Vincent kills Mishkin, and Rachel's antidote saves Vincent after he's infected.

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What's next: Shadow Has Fallen

Season 3 is already shooting in the UK and South Africa as Shadow Has Fallen, six episodes this time, Broadcast reported. It opens with an ambush on a prison bus in Mozambique, and Zara and Vincent extract a whistleblower named Miles (Iwan Rheon) who holds a cyber weapon "capable of hijacking any computerised system." Brendan Coyle and Atandwa Kani join the cast.

Creator Howard Overman promised Vincent and Zara's "most demanding and morally challenging mission." After a villain who wanted justice and a villain who wanted chaos, a whistleblower with a weapon is the obvious next step: this time, the person everyone's chasing might be the good guy.

Previously we wrote: Is James Reece crazy in The Terminal List? Jack Carr answers that in the books — the show keeps it open on purpose