Check & Mate

The day of Mallory and Koch’s game arrives. Mallory begins confidently and maintains her edge over him for some time. As she realizes how well she is doing, she contemplates winning and being able to face Nolan at the World Championships if she wins. The thought brings her a surprising joy that she has not allowed herself to contemplate. Koch makes his next move, and Mallory spends a long time considering how she could counter him before realizing that no matter what she does, he will win. She looks over at Defne before resigning the match.

Mallory, Defne, Tanu, and Emil commiserate over Mallory’s loss, struggling to understand how Koch beat her. Nolan arrives, confirming Mallory’s suspicions that he is at the tournament, and asks to speak to her alone. He tells her that he does not understand how Koch became so good so quickly that he could enact a chess simulator-level move. Worried, he asks Mallory to be another one of his seconds—an advisor and assistant to a Grandmaster—and help him train for the World Championships against Koch.

Mallory tells her family that she is taking night shifts at her job, but in truth she spends weeks staying at Nolan’s home in upstate New York studying and training with him and the other seconds. They still have not played one another, only studied other games. Mallory is able to afford better medication for her mother with her winnings, so her mother can handle more at home. Nolan joins Mallory at home for Darcy’s birthday, where Sabrina continues to be angry with Mallory and tells her that the family does not need her. On the drive home, Nolan admits that Darcy asked him to teach her how to play chess, and he confronts Mallory about her past with her father. He figures out that she must have found out about her dad’s affair with one of the arbiters—the one who had upset her at an earlier match—and told her mother, which led to Mrs. Greenleaf kicking her dad out and eventually having no insurance when she found out about the rheumatoid arthritis. He shares his own experience with his grandfather and the guilt he often feels about how his grandfather trying to stab him while in the depths of dementia gave Nolan’s father the justification he needed to institutionalize his grandfather.

He uses the story to try to help Mallory realize that the situation with her father wasn’t her fault, but instead she is angry that he tried to trap her. She claims he did it because he is trying to get into her head and play her at chess finally, so she demands they actually play a game. It is her worst game yet, and Nolan stops them partway through. Both apologize for how they behaved, and Mallory finally sees that Nolan wants to be with her. She kisses him, but they are interrupted briefly by Emil, so Nolan then leads her to his room without sexual intentions. Mallory falls asleep feeling held by someone for only the second time in her life.

Mallory’s anxiety builds the next day when Nolan does not address their kiss. She finds herself obsessing over him and his opinions in ways she has never done with anyone outside her family. They team up to play two-on-two chess with Tanu and Emil, and the casual way Nolan sits behind Mallory and expresses physical affection confuses her. In his room after the game, she confronts him, anxious over how much she is thinking about him when she normally avoids emotional entanglements. When she sees that he kept the tic tac toe game they played in Canada, she realizes how much he cares about her. They start to have sex, with Mallory reassuring Nolan, a virgin, by comparing sex to chess.

Mallory and Nolan enjoy the new ease they have with one another as they work with the other seconds the next day. On a walk, Mallory asks Nolan to tell her about when he learned to play chess, and it leads to him reminisce about his grandfather. That night Defne calls and tells Mallory that she is driving over to pick Mallory up because Mallory needs to return to the city.

Defne tells Mallory and Nolan that she is picking Mallory up because viewers have found evidence that Koch used a hidden smartwatch to cheat in his game with Mallory, which means Mallory will be chosen as the Challenger winner to play against Nolan in the World Championships.

Mallory is worried how Nolan will feel, since she has the advantage of learning his strategies and style of play for weeks, but he is ecstatic. She starts to feel happy about the idea of playing him as well. Tanu interrupts them with the news about Koch, and they watch his interviews denying the cheating. He accuses Nolan of manipulating video footage to make sure he can play Mallory, since Koch claims Nolan is afraid of facing him and losing. He reveals that Nolan funded Mallory’s fellowship, so Tanu leaves Mallory and Nolan alone to talk. Nolan reveals that he did indeed fund her fellowship, impressed by her skill and hoping to facilitate her chess career, and Mallory is angry that he has lied to her and believes that he has manipulated her life to get what he wants. She uses things she has learned about his past to say hurtful things before Defne shows up to take her away.

Mallory refuses to play the World Championships and returns home, where Darcy ignores her and moves to Sabrina’s room because she is angry over the decision. Sabrina maintains her critical attitude toward Mallory. Oz visits and confronts Mallory, explaining how Defne’s reputation and livelihood could be on the line if Mallory continues to refuse the Championship and avoid talking to FIDE about it. He is brutally honest with her before leaving, and when she returns inside, she hears her family speaking critically of the dinner she was preparing when Oz arrived. Mallory finally becomes overwhelmed, and she yells at her sisters and her mother, calling them ungrateful and reminding them of everything she has given up to take care of them. When she realizes what she has said, she goes to her room and cries for the first time since she caught her dad cheating years ago. Her mother comes in and tells Mallory she has been trying to give her time, but they need to talk about the World Championships.

Mrs. Greenleaf realizes she has spent too long allowing Mallory to handle her grief on her own. She reassures Mallory that none of what has happened was her fault, and she explains why everything that happened with her father probably would have happened even if Mallory never told her mother about the affair. Sabrina apologizes for taking advantage of Mallory’s guilt over everything, expressing that she misses their relationship as it was before Mallory started supporting the family. Mallory tells her mother and sisters about the Championship and about what happened with Nolan, and Mrs. Greenleaf makes it clear that she does not see Nolan’s lies as quite the betrayal that Mallory does. Nonetheless, she puts the topic aside to make sure Mallory knows that now it is time to focus on what she wants from life, now that her medication is helping her get back to work and care for the younger girls. She asks Mallory to include them in her life in the future and expresses how proud she is of Mallory.