‘Countdown’ Creator Teases Fate of Eric Dane’s Character Following Cliffhanger

After Countdown killed off Jonathan Togo’s Drew in Episode 4, the Prime Video drama might be repeating the heartbreak for Eric Dane’s Nathan Blythe.

The ending of Wednesday’s episode saw the FBI agent getting stabbed by Volchek (Bogdan Yasinski) and bleeding out.

Creator Derek Haas tells TV Insider that viewers will “see in the first two minutes [of Episode 9] the strength and resilience of a guy who obviously had a military background, has been on multiple task forces, has gone through FBI training, and it’s going to take every ounce of his strength to even try to put up a red flare for help.”

“You’re going to see in those first two minutes Eric’s acting is off the charts,” he continued. “And I like a show where we keep the audience on its toes and you think that everybody’s going to make it through, but they don’t all make it through.”

There are 13 episodes in Countdown’s first season, so there are still five episodes left. There is still a lot going on as the team continues to try to save the city of Los Angeles. With the season over halfway done, Haas revealed his reason for raising the stakes at this point, saying it “feels like both the villain’s storyline and the task force’s storyline were getting on a collision course anyway.”

“And I hadn’t really had a chance to get Blythe out of the office too much,” he explained. “I always described him as he could wrangle politically as well as strategically on the task force. I wanted to see that he could be in a senator’s hallway, but also down in the grit of Los Angeles, so it was really my first chance to get him out of the office, and then it was not a great first chance for him. But I wanted a one-on-one with Volckek, and it doesn’t go so well.”

Countdown so far has been unpredictable and filled to the brim with action, so it’s hard to tell how things will go for Blythe. His death would certainly change things moving forward since he is practically behind this whole task force. At the very least, even if he doesn’t die, the impact the stabbing will have on him physically and emotionally will be intense. Tune in to new episodes of Countdown on Wednesdays on Prime Video.