S6E1 · Dead Hand

Complete story — includes the ending

In 1987, Philip has become a full-time travel agent, Henry has become a promising hockey player at boarding school, and Paige is now in college and is a Soviet agent-in-training. Stan has married Renee and has moved out of counterintelligence except for Sofia and Gennadi, whom he still handles with Dennis. Elizabeth is exhausted and resentful from her KGB case load nine weeks before the Reagan–Gorbachev summit. On orders from Claudia, Elizabeth meets with a Soviet general in Mexico who tells her about " Dead Hand " (a doomsday device ) and the Soviet military's plan to overthrow Gorbachev if he or his representative Nesterenko renounces it. He gives her a cyanide pill to take if captured. Arkady, now deputy chief of Directorate S and a Gorbachev supporter, recruits Oleg, now married and out of the KGB, to travel to the US and ask Philip to uncover (and possibly stop) Elizabeth's unapproved new mission. While Paige is on a surveillance detail, a young US security officer tries to coerce her for a date by taking her (fake) ID. Elizabeth kills him to recover the ID. When Philip tries to tell Elizabeth about Oleg's visit, she rudely dismisses him.