Jack Ryan co-creator speaks out after scene from show goes viral amid US Venezuela intervention

When it comes to major events, strangely, sometimes the media out there already seems to have predicted something happening - just look at The Simpsons' ever-growing list (there's a lot).

But now Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has the internet convinced it predicted the recent US intervention in Venezuela, which has resulted in the deposition and 'capture' of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The particular clip is from Season 2 (2019) of the Prime Video fictional action series, where CIA analyst Jack Ryan (John Krasinski) gave a lecture to students and quizzed them on which country is the "most major threat on the world stage."

He went on to highlight how Venezuela has "the largest oil deposit in the world", along with gold with "more than all the mines in Africa combined."

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“The fact is that Venezuela is arguably the single greatest resource of oil and minerals on the planet,” Ryan explained. “So why is this country in the midst of one of the greatest humanitarian crises in modern history?”

The Latin country's fictitious leader, President Nicholas Reyes, was introduced, who Ryan said “has crippled the national economy by half” and “has raised the poverty rate by almost 400%.”

The CIA analyst then noted how other countries like Yemen and Iraq have faced economic collapse, but the major difference with Venezuela is the fact that it is “within 30-minute range from the US of next-gen nuclear missiles.”

At the time, Venezuela's culture minister, Ernesto Villegas, accused the TV series of promoting an invasion of the South American nation, calling it "Crass war propaganda disguised as entertainment," in a Twitter post.

During the season, viewers saw Ryan and the Venezuelan CIA Station Chief fly a helicopter into the Presidential Palace to remove the fictional president - similar to what happened in real life over the weekend.

However, where the show and real life diverge is that after exposing the corrupt fictional President, the opposition wins the election, whereas in real life, the Venezuelan president was removed and 'caught' by U.S. special forces.

Following these events, President Trump said in a press conference on Saturday that the U.S. would "run" Venezuela temporarily during the transition, and "get the oil flowing."

In light of the decision from US President Donald Trump to bomb Venezuela and ‘capture’ its president, Nicolás Maduro, the scene from Jack Ryan has resurfaced and been making the rounds on social media.

What has the show's co-creator said?

Since the show parallels with real life have become a topic of discussion, Jack Ryan co-creator Carlton Cuse, who made the series with Graham Roland, has given his thoughts on this subject.

“What always surprises you as a storyteller is how often real-world events catch up to fiction,” Cuse told Deadline. “The goal of that season wasn’t prophecy — it was plausibility. When you ground a story in real geopolitical dynamics, reality has a way of making it rhyme.

He noted how he and Roland "weren't making a statement" but rather were "telling a fictional character-driven thriller rooted in Venezuela’s long-standing strategic relevance."

"Our job was to make the situation feel credible. We approached Venezuela as a country where democratic ideals, economic reality, and geopolitical interests have been in tension for a long time — and where choices are never simple.”

With this in mind, Cuse elaborated that "the season came from our desire to tell a fictional story about the forces at play, not from imagining an outcome."

Elsewhere from Indy100, Trump’s 2023 speech on Venezuela: ‘We would have gotten that oil’, and Trump ridiculed over tiny detail in Venezuela ‘situation room’.

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