Jonathan Pine is the main character in the spy thriller series The Night Manager (2016, 2026-) on Amazon Prime. He is played by Tom Hiddleston. The story is based on the bestselling 1993 novel of the same name by John Le Carré.
Pine is originally a hotelier for a high-end resort when he gets involved in trying to stop an illegal arms deal funded by Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) during the Arab Spring. His failure to succeed in the effort haunts him. A few years later, he is approached by an English government operative, Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) who offers him a chance to infiltrate Roper’s inner circle to stop him from doing another major arms smuggling deal, and he accepts.
Pine is a man of few words, but he has a great moral courage to do the right thing in order to save lives after seeing the horrors of war during tours as a British soldier in Iraq during the Second Gulf War. He is quiet, understated, intelligent, and charming.
During the first season, Pine gets involved in a clandestine affair with Roper’s American girlfriend, Jed (Elizabeth Debicki.) During the second season, set a decade later, Pine catches wind of a similar arms operation getting set up in Colombia and works to follow the trail and stop the work being done by Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), who considers himself Roper’s truest disciple. During this pursuit, he senses Teddy’s closeted queerness and flirts with Teddy as one of many ways to get information out of him.
Pine also finds himself drawn to a second female love interest in Roxana (Camila Morrone), a beautiful shipping broker also entangled in the operation. Along the way, the three characters at one point are entangled in a steamy three-way dance in a restaurant, with sparks flying between all of them. However, the flirtation with both characters is not just business. Pine works to protect Roxana as a witness, and after learning that Teddy is the secret love child of his enemy, Roper, the flirtation takes a back burner but there is still clearly attraction and care for Teddy as he works to extract him from the operation.
Pine is a rare example of a bi male spy in the thriller genre. While his bisexuality is important to the plot, it is not the sole reason for him existing, as there is much more to him than just his queerness.