The spy games continued in both timelines on Quantico season 2, episode 3, “Stescalade.”
If there’s one thing we learned in Quantico season 1, it’s to not trust anybody. So far, the same rule applies to season 2. While Alex and Ryan struggle to decide who’s the least trustworthy recruit at the Farm, Alex might be taking her orders from all the wrong people as she tries to free the hostages in present day.
The Farm
It looks like whenever Alex and Ryan aren’t taking part in their extremely immersive lessons at the Farm, they’re meeting with their handlers to discuss what happened in those lessons. Alex, Ryan, Shelby and Nimah all trying to stop the AIC in its tracks might be the closest thing we get to the whole gang working together for a while, and for now, I’ll take it!
Miranda instructed the two handlers to better utilize their personal relationships with their handl-ees, so these scenes are bound to get even more intense as the mission develops further. Their first job as a group was to figure where to plant a bug to gain some intel, just like they had to do at Quantico. Alex and Ryan immediately pinpointed Léon and Dayana as potential targets for the surveillance.
The recruits were told that their assignment was to retrieve a red envelope from an office building, but instead, they were blindfolded and dropped in the middle of a forest with their partner! Being the quick thinking individuals that they are, Alex and Ryan wasted no time in beginning their mission to gain information on their subjects.
All Ryan managed to get out of Dayana was that she’s terrified, but Alex got Léon to completely open up about his prison experience. After spending the day with their targets, Alex and Ryan both believed theirs to be innocent. They agreed to bug Harry instead, but after both Nimah and Shelby delivered some tough love speeches, Ryan flipped back to Léon.
Of course, Shelby’s words to Alex about her being a “sucker for a good looking guy who pulls out the tears” weren’t completely false, but I think they were wrong to completely dismiss her instincts. She’s always had good ones, and she’s never been one to let her compassion overshadow her judgement. I found it a little insulting that they ignored her assessment simply because there was a cute boy involved.
Also, Harry is definitely shady. He was asking way too many questions about the things that the NATs went through with Liam and he clearly knows too much already. Not to mention, he’s now meeting with Will Olsen! Tell me your heart didn’t skip a beat when you saw his innocent face and when he threw out that textbook Will stat…I dare you. Whatever Harry’s up to, he’d better leave sweet little Will out of it. Maybe Will’s last blonde bromance will come to his rescue!
One thing I did appreciate about this plot line was how Alex and Ryan resolved it between them. Yes, I would’ve liked Alex to stand up for herself more, but in the end, I’m just glad there wasn’t a tumultuous break up scene because of the issue. These two already seem so much more stable and mature than in Quantico season 1. That being said, based on what we know about the future, that might not last too much longer.
In the end, it didn’t matter who they decided to bug, because somebody beat them to it. As Miranda said, it’s possible that the AIC is suspicious of them, but the bug could also just be part of a lesson, or it could be part of Miranda’s work as a double agent.
No matter how sketchy the recruits are, Owen Hall remains the most suspicious character yet. Now that his own daughter is turning against him, it looks like he’s got a lot of Liam O’Connor in him. He could definitely be the one in charge of the AIC, but then there’s the question of who Lydia was talking to at the end of Quantico season 2, episode 3.
The hostage situation
The hostage drama was spread out over two different locations on Quantico season 2, episode 3. The first, was in the small room where some of the hostages (including all of the characters we know) were moved to.
When we caught up with Ryan and Raina in the shuffle, Raina was still trying to figure out exactly why she wasn’t killed for the marking stunt that she pulled. The fact that she’s acting as translator is one reason, but it’s definitely not enough to spare her life, especially since the AIC doesn’t even really need her to translate since they can speak english anyway.
Miranda’s allegiance was called into question after the last episode, and things look even worse for her now. Following the tip that she gave about Alex being in the building, the AIC began to hunt for her. All the while, Miranda was still giving Alex advice about what intel to gather from the inside.
Super spy Alex Parrish managed to find the AIC’s uniforms and promptly suited up to infiltrate the hostage situation. At the same time, her former boy toy was hatching an extremely flawed plan to unmask a terrorist.
Luckily, his plan to pick a fight with Harry didn’t catastrophically fail in one of the many ways that it could have, and Harry’s, “just got it,” was just adorable enough to warrant the scene. Unfortunately, the “terrorist” that Ryan ended up unmasking was none other than Alex. These two just can’t get it right.
The fact that the terrorist took Alex away to kill her all but proves that Miranda is on the wrong side of this one. Unless, of course, the red-headed Farm instructor wasn’t actually going to kill Alex and she just suicide-pilled her for nothing. Uh oh. Either way, dropping her body through the roof with the post-it note was, without a doubt, the most badass move of all time.
Things at the Bureau were just as tense as they were in the actual hostage cell. One thumb drive and two computers later, the Bureau finally has a hard copy of Shelby’s in-depth analysis on the potential AIC operatives, much to Miranda’s dismay.
As much as they’re painting Miranda to be bad and Shelby to be innocent right now, I don’t trust either of these women at the moment. There’s more than meets the eye going on here, and I can’t wait until next week to find out more.