How 24's Most Progressive Story Created Its Best Villain
Like most of the TV series, 24 season 2 had right-wing undertones for the majority of its run. A little over a year after 9/11, its initial main plotline of a group of heroic counter-terrorism agents working to thwart an Islamist plot to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles felt in sync with the neoconservative messaging of the Bush administration. However, once this plotline was resolved, matters took a decidedly more progressive turn, in large part thanks to a standard-setting performance from a then-little-known character actor as the season's new primary antagonist, Peter Kingsley.
With substantial parts of season 1 having been written and filmed prior to 9/11, 24 season 2 was the first season of the show to reckon with the post-9/11 world directly. This aspect is perhaps what caused the writers to briefly consider adopting a non-real-time format for 24 season 2. The season's depiction of Islamist terrorism and the issues surrounding it largely echoed the Bush administration's Manichean worldview, pitting Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and the Counter Terrorist Unit against Second Wave, a jihadist group led by Syed Ali (Francesco Quinn). At the conclusion of episode 15, CTU director George Mason (Xander Berkeley) safely detonated the nuclear bomb Second Wave planned to use to kill thousands of Angelenos in the Mojave Desert. Audio evidence then emerged of government officials from three unnamed Middle Eastern countries planning the attack alongside Ali. It soon transpired that this evidence was faked at the behest of Peter Kingsley (Tobin Bell, shortly before the Saw franchise belatedly shot him to stardom), the leader of a shadowy cabal of industrialists aiming to implicate these three countries in a terrorist
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