Two hours of The Following can mean only one thing: Two hours of non-stop twists and turns. Check out our recap of The Following season 3, episodes 4 and 5.

‘The Following’ season 3, episode 4 recap

The episode begins with Daisy and Kyle spying on a young college couple, and soon turns tragic when they follow the guy and push him in front of a van.

Mark is definitely starting to doubt the allegiance of his cohorts, and does a little listening outside their door. They keep stressing that tonight is a “big night.”

Mendez calls Mike into her office to check in with him about where his head is in regards to the investigation into Mark Gray. He is quick to admit that he has a personal stake in this game, but he is determined not to let it affect his work. Ryan interrupts to tell them about a lead on the murderous couple. An anonymous tip line call named them Kyle and Daisy Locke from Ohio. Mendez insists Ryan take Max instead of Mike.

At the house in Ohio, Ryan and Max see nothing out of the ordinary. Ryan suggests that they might not keep evidence of their wrongdoings in the house, but they would want to keep things close by. In the woods just beyond the yard’s fence, Ryan and Max find a bunker which holds mannequins dressed in bloody clothing. Ryan and Max are interrupted by a young girl named Emily who is caring for Kyle and Daisy’s dog, Rachel, while they’re away.

Ryan and Max get the girl to call them with a false report of the dog getting hit by a car and breaking a leg. This gives Ryan and Max a chance to triangulate their position via the signal. He and Ryan trade a few barbs, but when Kyle tells Ryan that, “We’re gearing up to hit you where you live.” Ryan starts preparing for the worst and asks the FBI to alert all his relatives. Kyle highlighted Max as a potential target, but as she’s with him, she’s not his immediate concern.

Daisy brings cookies to a firefighter that she’s visited before, and he leaves the door unlocked, allowing Mark and Kyle to slip right in. They make quick work of slaughtering all the men in the firehouse. After a quick clean up, Daisy and Kyle take off. Mark leaves his fingerprint in blood on a picture of Ryan and Max with their firefighter family member.

“Heroes die while you lie.” is painted on the wall in blood. Mike points out that this murder, of the firemen, is going to do more than hurt Max and Ryan, due to their connection to the firehouse through his brother/her father. It’s going to affect the entire city.

Kyle and Daisy meet with their contact, Juliana, to insist that now that their identities are known, they want assurance of fake passports and money once the job is done. Juliana reminds them that “it has to look like a suicide.” Dun, dun, DUN!!

Max calls Mike to come over to help her through this loss. She knows that he understands how she feels. She kisses him and soon they’re ripping off each other’s clothes.

Mark gets excited when he sees the firehouse murders on the news, but when Kyle and Daisy leave minutes later, he’s unnerved. Luke comes out to remind Mark that he needs to figure out what they’re up to before it’s too late. He rifles through their belongings searching for some sort of proof that they’re working against him. He finds their monitor of the cameras hidden in Max’s apartment.

Meanwhile, the FBI manages to locate the young, murderous couple exiting the brownstone at 535 Wellington, and Mendez sends a team to the location.

Max wakes that morning next to Mike, and she instantly regrets her decision to sleep with him. He tries to keep cool and cavalier about everything, but he believes that they have something. Mark is watching the footage from Kyle and Daisy’s monitor, and learns that the FBI has found his safe house from the feed. Mark freaks out and runs immediately.

The FBI arrives at the house. While Ryan finds Mark’s mirror-twin, Max’s boyfriend, Tom, finds the proof of Max’s infidelity as she and Mike hook up at that exact moment. Mark manages to exit the building and flees the scene.

Daisy and Kyle follow the girlfriend of the kid they killed earlier into a college building. At that exact moment, Ryan and company discover that they will be hitting Townsend College next.

Daisy and Kyle let themselves into the girlfriend’s room, and they tell her they were with Reggie (her boyfriend) when he died.

Ryan, Max, and Mike make their way to campus. Max figures out who they’re targeting, the girlfriend named Marisol Mason. Daisy and Kyle have the young girl tied up in her dorm room while they fabricate status updates to prove Marisol is just about to “kill herself.”

They’ve made a game out of her death, asking her to pick a color and a number from a cootie catcher to select her mode of death. It lands on jump off the roof, and they drag her upstairs. The FBI arrives before they could finish the task, and Ryan and Mike make it to the roof before the deed is done. Daisy forces Mike over the side of the building, and he dangles there as Ryan stumbles on Kyle continuing to move his next victim toward the side.

Meanwhile, Tom, Max’s boyfriend, hears Mike calling for help as he begins to panic. He stands over him for a second before reaching down to save him. Max shows up and helps.

Kyle stabs Marisol and tries to run. Ryan gets a shot in Kyle’s shoulder before the murderer escapes down a shoot. Ryan runs to help the girl, and Kyle takes off on foot. Kyle makes it to his and Daisy’s get away car parked nearby, but he’s not doing well. Kyle is dying in the front seat as she tries desperately to find someone to help. She calls Mark.

While Daisy’s panicking, Max finds the suicide note that Daisy left on Marisol’s facebook page. This leads them to figure out that her mother is Judge Wallace, the presiding judge in the Arthur Strauss murder trial which is scheduled to start the next day.

Ryan then postulates that this whole sequence of murders may have been concocted to help keep Strauss from being convicted. He is the one pulling all the strings!!

‘The Following’ season 3, episode 5 recap

Ryan gets a chance to chat with the Dr. Strauss on the bus to the courthouse. Strauss shares a menacing sentiment: “Truth is a tricky thing, Agent Hardy. You think it’s a weapon you can aim at me, but it’s just as likely to blow up in your face.”

Daisy begs Mark to go get her the medical supplies to save Kyle, and he leaves without ever actually saying what he’s doing. Just after he leaves, Kyle seems to be doing better. He’s not infected or dying, but they have to go meet Juliana. Mark has another breakdown on the sidewalk when he sees them leaving, and realizes they’ve been working their own agenda. He follows them.

Juliana gives Kyle and Daisy the keys to a van chock full of all the supplies they need to finish that day’s work, including U.S. Marshall’s passes.

Ryan briefs agents on the security for the courthouse, making sure to warn them all that while they may have thwarted Strauss’ plan A, he undoubtedly has a plan B already in place. He reminds them that Strauss is the father of serial killers, the man behind Joe Carroll and countless others.

Mark watches Juliana enter the courthouse, then sees Ryan being accosted by reporters as he tries to enter. He overhears a reporter talking about Strauss’ trial and his eyes grow wide in clarity.

We learn what Strauss’ newest play is. Daisy arrives to the control room of the agents protecting Carrie Cook before she’s moved for the trial. After the agent tells her where they’re keeping Carrie, the 11th floor, they kill the man.

In the courtroom, Ryan details what happened the day of Strauss’ arrest.

In the nearby hotel, Kyle and Daisy pretend that he is a Marshall that just apprehended her, the wanted fugitive, and shoot the hallway guard in the head. They then proceed to take his keycard into her room, and they enter.

The defense attorney is trying desperately to discredit Ryan’s account of what happened that day, and he uses an email supposedly written by Agent Jeff Clarke to do it. In the email, he calls Ryan “out of control”, and the defense attorney pairs that email with the bloody message from the murder scene at the firehouse to make Ryan out to be a liar.

The prosecutor announces that they cannot find their key witness, Carrie Cook, and the Defense proposes that this is merely a stall by the prosecution to give them time to save their case. The judge gives the prosecution 1 hour to find her before she declares the case closed.

Ryan makes it to Carrie’s hotel room to find it empty. There’s no sign of struggle, but Ryan smells bleach, then uses a blacklight to see blood residue on the rug at the foot of the bed. They found footage of a couple loading a laundry van and piece by piece they follow the van to a nearby navy yard where they found it burning, and what appears to be a body inside. They burned Carrie.

Ryan realizes that the fire hasn’t been burning long, so Daisy and Kyle must be close. The couple is wandering out of the woods when Ryan finds them. They run into a warehouse nearby, and Kyle helps her over the fence. He is too weak to make it over himself, and he tells her to run. She doesn’t want to, but she does. Kyle pulls out a knife and threatens Ryan. He is then forced to put four bullets into the kid to put him down.

Ryan calls the prosecutor to make sure she tells the judge in time to keep the case open, but he’s about 20 minutes too late, and Strauss has been released.

Mendez calls Ryan, Max, and Mike into her office. The email from Clarke is on their server like it’s been there all along, but even she doesn’t seem to believe its veracity. She lets them know that the Department of Justice is opening an official investigation into the three of them based on the events of the trial that day. She has been told by Director Franklin to suspend them on sight, but she is giving them time to connect Daisy to Strauss.

Juliana is being followed and she’s aware of it. She uses her pass code to enter a secure building, and tries to get into the elevator before Mark Gray can get to her. He breaks the door and enters the building, but misses the elevator. Juliana runs down the hallway to her door, but drops her keys and finds herself in Mark’s clutches.

At Ryan’s place, Mike comes up with a lead: Juliana is the go-between. Little do they know that Mark has her bound in her apartment. He plays with a hot iron to scare her into giving him what he needs. She tells him that Daisy and Kyle were Strauss’ students, and that Andrew thought Mark would make the perfect patsy for the entire series of killings.

She is no killer, but just the messenger. She begs Mark for mercy, but he is more interested in making a statement than anything else. He knows that Ryan Hardy is on his way, but to “kill two birds with one stone” he needs her to tell him where Strauss is. Ryan, Max, and Mike make it to Juliana’s apartment, but not in time to save her. They believe Strauss is covering his tracks.

Daisy makes it back to Strauss, and she blames him for Kyle’s death. She tries to stab him. He gives her a choice: he can either kill her and she can be reunited with Kyle in the afterlife, or she can leave the country with him. She chooses life.

Mike discovers directions to Strauss’ location on Juliana’s laptop (thanks Mark!), and they hightail it down there to stop their charges from escaping. They stop them, and Strauss promises that all Ryan’s loved ones will die if he goes back to prison. Ryan doesn’t know it, but Mark is nearby with a sniper rifle. He focuses it on Mike, and Ryan dives to save him. He does. Phew.

Mike volunteers to chase down Mark after he takes off running, but Ryan sends Mike and Max after Strauss and goes after Mark himself. Ryan misses Mark, but Mike and Max apprehend Strauss. They get him in cuffs, but then Mike sees Mark escaping. He goes after him, leaving Max to put Strauss in the car. Daisy appears with a pipe and bashes Max numerous times with it before un-cuffing Strauss and escaping.

Mike chases Mark to a stairwell entrance to a ship, and he shoots Mark in the leg. Mark struggles to keep moving, and Mike gives chase. With nowhere left to run, Mark gets on his knees as instructed. Mike wants to kill Mark just as he did Lily Gray. Ryan reminds Mike that he’s a good man and that this isn’t what any of them want for him. Ryan tells him: “You shoot him, and his pain stops. You let him live, and it never ends.”

As they are both distracted, Mark leaps from the ship into the water and escapes. Ryan gets a phone call, and we next see Mike and Ryan watching Max being rushed into the ER. They have a bit of a shouting match over who was in the right tonight. Mike reminds Ryan that if this had been them hunting Joe Carroll, Ryan would have done exactly what Mike just did. Mike leaves the hospital.

Ryan waits and finds out that while Max has a concussion and other injuries, she should make a full recovery. Ryan gets a moment of clarity in Gwen’s arms and knows that he has to go and visit Joe Carroll. He’s the only man that can give him insight into Strauss’ mind. Joe calmly says, “What took you so long?”