It’s a shame that more people don’t remember “Alias.” Between his buzzy college drama “Felicity” and his blockbuster ABC hit “Lost,” writer, director, and producer J.J. Abrams created “Alias,” a delightfully heightened and watchable series that stars Jennifer Garner as a super-spy, Sydney Bristow, who’s been led astray and finds out in the worst possible way. (It’s no wonder that Abrams’ future “Lost” collaborator Damon Lindelof cited this show as an influence.) Also, a narrative arc features none other than Roger Moore, one of a handful of actors in the entire world who’s previously played James Bond.
To be fair, “Alias” welcomed a ton of amazing guest stars throughout the series. Faye Dunaway, for example, briefly plays Ariana Kane, who’s trying to sniff out a mole in a top-secret organization called SD-6, during Season 2. Meanwhile, Quentin Tarantino plays a villain and directs an episode in Season 1, Gina Torres begins her brief run as Sydney’s nemesis Anna Espinosa (a Russian spy) in that same inaugural outing, and “The Mummy” star John Hannah has an emotionally resonant arc in Season 1 as a man whose mind must be unlocked to solve a massive mystery. Moore is in excellent company, and he appears in Season 1 as Edward Poole … though he only plays Edward for a single episode. Why? He gets murdered. (That’s kind of common on “Alias,” to be fair.)
Roger Moore’s character on Alias, Edward Poole, meets a horrific fate
When we first meet Sydney, she’s living happily with her fiancé, attending graduate school, and pretending to work at a bank despite actually being a super-spy with SD-6, which she’s told is a covert branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Here’s the thing: SD-6 is actually a terrorist cell run by Sydney’s terrifyingly sociopathic boss Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin), who’s bugged her house and immediately has her fiancé murdered in cold blood when he overhears her spill those secrets. Betrayed and grieving, Sydney briefly goes rogue and heads to the real CIA, agreeing to become a double agent with Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan) as her handsome handler; when she returns to SD-6, she finally learns that her father, Jack Bristow (a phenomenal Victor Garber), is also a double agent working by her side to bring SD-6 down from the inside.
So, what does this all have to do with Roger Moore’s Edward Poole? He briefly pops up in the sixth episode of Season 1, “The Prophecy,” and tells Sloane that there’s a mole at SD-6 that must be dealt with. While Sydney is trapped in the bowels of SD-6 receiving a strange examination to see how she might be related to a long-ago prophecy by a Renaissance thinker named Rambaldi (long, different story), Edward tells Sloane he believes another member of the villain supergroup known as The Alliance is working with an enemy arms dealer. Long story short, that guy is Edward, not the man he accused, and Sloane kills Edward himself under the cover of darkness before the episode’s credits roll.
Roger Moore’s role in Alias is linked to one of the show’s best plotlines
“Alias” is a truly great show … for its first two seasons, at least. Part of this is just due to the fact that the storytelling started to run out of steam, but ultimately, the best parts of “Alias” concern SD-6 and the larger Alliance that counts Arvin Sloane as a powerful member, and everything building up to it is what makes the show so great.
That’s why Roger Moore’s Edward Poole is so important, despite the fact that he only appears in a single episode. Obviously, Sloane ordering the brutal death of Sydney’s fiancé makes it quite clear that he’s a deeply evil man who will stop at nothing to ensure that his criminal enterprise keeps running, but the fact that he personally kills Edward drives this point home in a different way. Specifically, it’s that Sloane seems to be completely fearless throughout the show (except when it comes to his wife, Amy Irving’s Emily, but he ultimately figures out a clever and disturbing way to keep her safe). All of this is to say that Edward is just one of many puzzle pieces that links together to build to one of the most satisfying episodes of TV ever, “Phase One,” where Sydney, Jack, and Vaughn finally destroy SD-6 for good … and, decades old spoiler alert, realize that Sloane has escaped and left his colleagues to die, be punished, or both, caring only for himself.
Sadly, the third season of “Alias” is irksome and the fourth is straight-up bad … but the first two are actually great, and they feature amazing guest stars like Moore. You can watch the whole series (if you want) on Disney+ right now.
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