‘War’s Archie Renaux and Phoebe Fox break down episode 6’s jaw-dropping ending

HBO and Sky’s War is an addicting legal drama, but in its glorious sixth episode, it becomes a stealthy installment of The Traitors.

The traitor, naturally, is lawyer Johnny Warren (Archie Renaux), who’s playing both sides of the divorce trial between actor Carla Duval (Sienna Miller) and tech magnate Morgan Henderson (Dominic West). Johnny officially works for the firm representing Carla, Taylor & Byrne, and has even developed a secret romantic relationship with Carla. However, he’s been secretly feeding information to the firm representing Morgan, Cathcarts & Sons. It’s the kind of underhanded trickery that could cost Johnny his career and Cathcarts their reputation.

So far, their game has gone off without a hitch — that is, until Johnny feeds Cathcarts an asset list including a Ferrari Testarossa, an item that is later stricken from Taylor & Byrne’s records. When the Ferrari appears on a Cathcarts list, it becomes a smoking gun for training associate Molly Giordano (Emma Laird), who realizes Taylor & Byrne has a mole in its midst.

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From there, all of episode 6 becomes a mole hunt, with Johnny playing Molly and fellow associate Saeed Masood (Shaheen Jafargholi) against each other in the hopes of getting off scot-free. There’s so much deception and backstabbing going on, you’d have expect Alan Cumming or Claudia Winkleman to pop out of a filing cabinet and feast on the proceedings.

Johnny plays a blinder throughout the episode, eventually framing Saeed and thoroughly convincing Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox) and Nicholas Taylor (James McArdle) that he’s a company man through and through. However, he makes a crucial error at the finish line. I’m talking tripping over your own feet with one meter left to go levels of bad.

Right before heading into court for the trial, he borrows a page from Cathcarts associate David Schill’s (Miles Jupp) book and quotes Keanu Reeves, telling Serena, “The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way. You know who said that?”

Yet little does Johnny realize, former Cathcarts employee Serena has probably heard David’s Keanu Reeves spiel more times than she can count. She responds to his question with a clipped “David Schill” and a growing anger in her eyes, realizing that she and Nicholas have been played for fools this whole time. It’s an electrifying end to an electrifying episode, and it’s a moment that Renaux and Fox couldn’t wait to play.

“As an actor, you know, sometimes it’s fun to soliloquize,” Fox told Mashable in a junket interview alongside Renaux. “But often, it’s fun to try and play a very complex emotion in two words. I think I say ‘David Schill,’ and that’s it, and I have to play that landing on me and all the emotions that are coming up in that moment.”

While the discovery of Johnny’s betrayal felt inevitable from the moment he took the job with Cathcarts, Renaux and Fox both praised the ridiculousness of Johnny’s self-imposed downfall.

“You do not expect it all to come down to that Keanu Reeves quote,” Fox said.

“It’s the most stupid thing that Johnny could have done,” Renaux told Mashable. “It’s so small and seemingly insignificant in Johnny’s mind. He’s done all the hard stuff. Someone’s taken the fall for him, and he thinks it’s plain sailing, then that’s the thing that gives him away. It’s beautiful. So fun.”

The Keanu Reeves slip takes Johnny from his highest high right to the depths of hell, and there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude in watching how Johnny loses all cockiness in the blink of an eye.

“He thinks he’s so slick,” Renaux said. “And, in fact, he’s nicked [the quote] from someone else. That’s someone else’s thing.”

Johnny began the season accepting the Cathcarts mole job out of desperation, unable to find work elsewhere. But as Fox asked Renaux of the deception, “Do you think he ever enjoys it and finds it fun?”

“I think he might enjoy tiny bits where he manages to get out of things and style things out, on the rare occasions where that does happen,” Renaux said. “I think he enjoys feeling useful, but I think it starts to eat at him.”

Now that Serena’s found Johnny out, his lies won’t eat at him anymore. But what’s next for him? Will he be banished from the proverbial roundtable of Taylor & Byrne and lose out on any hope of a law career? Or will he manage to squirm his way out of this one and nab a job at Cathcarts?

Whatever happens, it’s clear Serena won’t let Johnny’s transgression go easily.

“It’s not just anger,” Fox said of Serena’s reaction. “It’s biblical, man.”

War is now streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes airing Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.