In the episode, Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) throws Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) a surprising relationship curveball as the CIA orders Vivian Volkoff (Lauren Cohan) assassinated.
Meanwhile, Ellie Bartowski-Woodcomb (Sarah Lancaster) suspects that her mother Mary (Linda Hamilton) is interfering with the search into her father Stephen's past.
After Ellie Bartowski-Woodcomb (Sarah Lancaster) unlocks files about "Agent X" on her father's laptop, she begins reading about the Intersect.
Advised by John Casey (Adam Baldwin) and Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez) to "be cool", Chuck signs the agreement, worrying Sarah, who had expected an emotional reaction.
Chuck and Sarah meet Vivian's father Alexei Volkoff (Timothy Dalton) in prison, and he confirms that the weapon is one of three components of the "Norseman", a DNA tracker that could instantly kill a target.
Volkoff manages to access the vault by winning a game of computer chess before a timer expires and triggers several turrets.
She takes the thorium and leaves everyone in the vault with armed plasma bombs which Volkoff deactivates with a portable EMP generator.
"Chuck Versus the Family Volkoff" was directed by producer Robert Duncan McNeill,[2] and was written by Nicholas Wootton and Amanda Kate Shuman.
Sepinwall wrote that after becoming roommates, Casey and Morgan have become "an old married couple", drinking orange juice in unison and bickering with mouths full of cereal.
[7] IGN writer Eric Goldman criticized the scene where Chuck and Sarah meet with Vivian for its frequent use of quick zooms to increase tension, writing that it "just didn't feel like it was natural to this show's style.
[1][7][8] Volkoff jokes that to mine said thorium, he had to wage war with natives and destroy their Hometree, only to reveal that he and the other prisoners had recently watched Avatar.
HitFix Senior Editor Alan Sepinwall wrote that "Timothy Dalton was everything we had come to expect from him in the part: scary and dangerous and then so much the funnier for the way he kept trying to work the steps and turn over a new leaf.
The episode left [Alexei]'s sincerity up in the air for most of the hour - was he really serious about making amends, or just trying to distract Chuck from his latest evil plan?
Though he praised Dalton's performance, McGee wrote, "The direct parallels between Chuck and Vivian haven't really panned out in the way the show initially envisioned it.
As such, Vivian's existence largely serves to connect her to the larger spy world of the show, not draw a direct parallel to the support system that helped Chuck overcome any potential temptations.