Thursday morning, the US’ Amazon Prime Video account tweeted the trailer for season two of “Jack Ryan,” set to premiere November 1, in which one American agent is the only hope of preventing Venezuela from becoming a nuclear power that endangers the safety of the world.
The series stars John Krasinski, who is better known as the mild-mannered Jim Halpert from the American version of “The Office,” but this show is light on laughs and heavy on the action and drama. In this particular season, Krasinski’s character Jack Ryan is tasked with inspecting a suspicious shipment of illegal arms sent to Venezuela from - you guess it - Russia.
“Your concern is the Russians are secretly selling weapons to Venezuela?” questions a US CIA official in the first 30 seconds of the trailer. Ryan replies that “it would fit a pattern.”
Because we all know Moscow just goes around selling the world’s most dangerous weapons to heavily impoverished and cash-strapped nations, right?
Get ready. The new assignment for #JackRyan begins November 1. pic.twitter.com/4ZRxHGydEe
— Amazon Prime Video US (@PrimeVideo) September 5, 2019
“As Jack’s investigation threatens to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy, the President of Venezuela launches a counter-attack that hits home for [Ryan],” details the season two description on YouTube. He’s then sent on a series of missions that take him between Venezuela, Russia, the US and the UK.
“A nuclear Venezuela you will not hear about on the news ‘cause we’ll already be dead,” he tells another intelligence official, stressing his need to thwart the delivery of Russian-made nuclear weapons to the country.
“Jack Ryan” proved to be a major hit for Amazon Prime during its first season and earned itself a 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. It would appear the multinational tech giant’s web series is looking to classic anti-Russian narratives to entertain its American viewers this time around.
However, rather than go about it from a direct US versus Russia standpoint, the web series is instead stoking recent conspiracies concerning Caracas’ ties with Moscow.
US-Venezuela relations have been significantly strained since then-US President Barack Obama signed and issued a 2015 order stating that Venezuela was a “threat to its [own] national security” and imposed sanctions on several Venezuelan officials. The move was denounced by several Latin American countries.
Since then, the US has made several overreaching attempts to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and replace him with Juan Guaidó of the country’s National Assembly, while also criticizing Russia’s deployment of Tu-160 bombers to the country to conduct military drills that were actually in accordance with international regulations.
Not having to look far for inspiration, it would appear Amazon’s web series saw these recent rumors of Russian interference in Venezuela as the perfect way to tap into an age-old beef and inspire a new generation of warmongers.
