Episode Two follows Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi through the final and most painful chapter of his exile.
After months of rejection and uncertainty, the Shah arrives in the United States as a seriously ill man seeking urgent medical treatment. But even in hospital, he is no longer treated simply as a patient. Hidden under an assumed name in New York, surrounded by security, and watched by protesters outside, his cancer becomes a political crisis. The seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran turns him into the central demand of the hostage-takers, and Washington begins looking for a way to move him out.
This episode travels through the real locations of his final journey: the United States, Panama, and Egypt — from New York Hospital to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, from the isolated island of Contadora in Panama to Cairo, where President Anwar Sadat finally comes to his rescue.
In Panama, the Shah is weak, isolated, and facing the threat of extradition to revolutionary Iran. His refuge begins to feel like a trap. Then, when many former allies refuse to help, Sadat opens Egypt’s doors once again — not just as a political gesture, but as an act of loyalty to a fallen friend.
The episode ends in Egypt, where the Shah dies in Cairo on 27 July 1980. Unlike the governments that turned away from him, Sadat gives him dignity in death, holding a state funeral in Cairo and burying him at Al-Rifa’i Mosque.
This is the story of a king who lost his country, became unwanted by the world, and in the end found his final refuge in the loyalty of one friend.