'Quantico' Recap: 'You Find the Shortcuts, and Other People Pay the Price'

Warning: This recap for the “Closure" episode of Quantico contains spoilers.

AGAIN, in which we find out the identity of The Voice… for real, this time. We think.

Here, 20 things we learned in the “Closure” episode of Quantico:

1. We pick up where we left off last week: Alex drove through that wall and out of the parking garage, and now she’s driving Ryan’s truck around the streets of New York City. Drew’s voice is directing her, and as she tries to talk him out of whatever he has planned, he tells her to just keep driving, because if she stops, the nuke in the truck will detonate. She can’t even open a door or window in the truck, or he will detonate the bomb. Meanwhile, Alex calls Shelby and connects her into the call, so she can hear everything Drew is saying to Alex.

2. Because the nuke is in Ryan’s truck, and because of that manifesto Drew had Alex unknowingly plant on Ryan’s computer, Miranda has taken Ryan out of play and put him in the holding cell with Caleb.

3. In the Quantico timeline, the NATS are about to graduate, and Liam gives Alex her dad’s old FBI badge to celebrate. He says her dad would be proud of her, and he says he would be happy to work with her in the field now that she proved him wrong about her true motivation for joining the FBI.

4. Also in the Quantico timeline, Ryan tells Alex that he’s decided to take the job with Liam in D.C., which means he will be just three hours away from her in New York City, by train. “Great,” she says in her most flirty Alex way. “I hope you take it then.”

5. Caleb has been assigned to the San Diego field office; Iris still doesn’t have security clearance, so she doesn’t know where she’s going, until Caleb pulls some strings and has Mama Haas personally sign off on Iris’s clearance. Caleb also refers to Iris as “Spy-rus.”

6. Shelby gets a letter from her mom, and yells at Caleb, but he tells her he didn’t write that one. Later, Shelby talks to Clayton, who tells her a woman using one of her mom’s aliases landed in Montreal two days ago. He says she needs to be sure she wants to bring her parents to justice, because once she starts the pursuit, there’s no turning back. Should the FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR really be giving someone the choice of whether or not they want to bring fugitives to justice?!

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7. The twins’ handler tells them timelines have been sped up, and they have just 24 hours to get their lives in order before they have to begin trying to infiltrate the terrorist cell in Queens. Raina begins having serious doubts about whether or not she wants to continue, and after Ryan tells her she needs to have someone special, an “emotional anchor,” she can trust to talk to, she calls Simon. They meet at a diner, and she tells him she doesn’t know why she’s sticking with the FBI. He tells her to trust her instincts, and that catching terrorists for the FBI isn’t the only way to do good in the world. He says his company donates millions of dollars to charities, and that he could get her a job there. Raina seems to be leaning that way, until Nimah walks in and sees her with Simon. The sisters talk privately for a moment, and Raina admits to Nimah that she’s scared of the terrorist leader they’re going to have to live with for a long time. Nimah says she understands, and she doesn’t want Raina to do this for her. She wants Raina to do what’s best for her, and will support whatever decision she makes. Despite her concerns about the mission, and her obvious affection for Simon, Raina decides to stick with the FBI.

8. Shelby is in a super rude, downer mood, and Alex asks her when she went all “Kylo Ren.” Good one, Alex. Shelby then tells Alex what has happened with her parents, that they were only using her for more cash, and Caleb was forging letters from them to make her think they weren’t turds.

9. For their final assignment, the NATS are broken into groups and given a real terrorist attack from the past they must investigate, with access to the real files and evidence, and assistance from the actual agents who worked the cases when they happened. Alex asks to be assigned to Omaha, and Liam refuses because of her personal connection. Instead, Shelby gets assigned to Omaha, and Alex to 9/11. Can you see what’s coming? Yep, Alex and Shelby switch their access cards so Alex can look into her father’s actions in Omaha, and Shelby digs into 9/11 files, where she finds immunity agreement forms. Since Clayton told her she had to lure her parents out of hiding, she’s going to use the forms to create fake immunity documents and convince her parents to meet with her and sign them. Alex discovers that one week of her dad’s reports from the Omaha assignment are missing, so she goes to his handler at the time to ask where they are. With some prodding (a shockingly little amount, though), Fred Baxter tells her Liam and her dad were undercover in Omaha, trying to catch a right-wing militia in the act. “Sometimes the bad guys need a nudge… a push to do the thing you wanna catch them doing,” Baxter adds. “You might supply them with blueprints to the building, so they’d know where to park the trucks with the bombs.” He then burned her dad’s journal of the week “the tragedy” occurred, when the baddies with the bombs were successful before they could be caught and American service men and women, as well as children in daycare, died as a result. Baxter then admits to Alex that her dad and Liam were told to keep their mouths shut about what really happened.

10. Back to present day NYC. While Alex is still driving around the city, Drew is telling her how apathetic America is, that the country only cares about something and is propelled into action when there’s a crisis, so he’s going to give them one.

11. Shelby, with Drew and Alex live on her phone (unbeknownst to Drew), goes to Claire Haas’s campaign bus to tell her what’s going on. Claire’s campaign manager doesn’t want to give Shelby access — you know, since she’s Claire’s late husband’s mistress — but Shelby convinces her, and moments later, she and Claire are walking into the FBI offices. Shelby shares her live phone conference call with Alex and Drew, and Claire tells Miranda she knows Alex isn’t a terrorist. Mama Haas demands that Miranda release Caleb. Ryan and Raina are exonerated and released as well, and Miranda puts them all to work trying to track down Drew. Miranda and Claire also agree to try to keep the situation as quiet as possible, but that plan’s done in when the local news airs a report with footage of Ryan’s truck and the bomb inside it. Claire gives a press conference then, saying she’s suspending her campaign so she can fully assist the FBI. Alex is still driving around, and when she tries yet again to talk Drew out of his plan, he tells her to forget it. “Welcome to the end,” he says.

12. Raina tells Miranda she has a plan that may lead them to Drew. It involves the possibility that he’s using a landline instead of a cell phone, and that they will be able to trace it. While Raina and Caleb work on that, Miranda heads to the elevators. Ryan’s surprised she’s leaving in the middle of the crisis, but she says she’s just going upstairs for a quick meeting. Why, then, does he see the elevator going downstairs?

13. Caleb and Raina narrow Drew’s location down to a warehouse on the west side of Manhattan, and Ryan takes a squad and heads to the building …

14. … and Drew is there… with Simon! They’re both waking up, after being drugged. Their hands are tied, and they’re tied to chairs. Nearby, a laptop is playing the phone call between Drew and Alex, and Drew points out that it’s not him on the call; it’s the handiwork of The Voice, now making a fake Drew voice so Alex and the FBI think Drew is the big bad terrorist. As Simon and Drew try to free themselves, they notice that the door out of the room has a trip wire that will blow the room if it’s touched. Drew tells Simon to break his thumb so he can slip out of the ropes he’s tied up with, and when they’re free, Simon goes out the window. Drew is trying to get through to someone via the laptop and phone in the room, just as Ryan and his men break through the door and set off the bomb. Ryan and his men are okay, but Drew’s status remains unknown. Outside, Simon sees Alex, finally stopped in the truck, and, after the FBI has secured the vehicle, Simon tries to convince her to get out. She’s afraid the truck will explode, but her friend convinces her to open the door.

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15. In the Quantico timeline, Caleb goes to Mama Wyatt’s hotel room and warns her that Shelby is coming to set her up for capture by the FBI. He wants to spare Shelby having to live with putting her parents away. Alex, Ryan, and Liam also try to stop Shelby, not only from regrets about turning her parents in, but from getting into legal trouble herself for creating fake immunity agreement documents. They’re unaware she is working with Clayton Haas, but she’s still so angry at her pal Alex for interfering that she tells Alex that for the rest of her life she’s going to regret that she even met Alex.

16. Ryan bursts into Liam’s office and demands to know what really happened in Omaha. Liam shares pretty much the same story Ted, er, Fred Baxter told Alex, that Liam and Alex’s dad had fed blueprints to the militia, which then carried out their bomb attack with that info. Liam then goes into how “they” — the same “they” who told Ryan what to say after Chicago — told him and Alex’s dad what to say. “You fall in line, or they zero you out,” Liam says. “The guilt sent Michael down a spiral. I held on to the top of the bottle with one hand, while he drowned at the bottom of it.” Ryan then tells Liam he’s not taking the job in D.C. “I thought Chicago was a mistake,” Ryan says. “But it was a pattern. You find the shortcuts and other people pay the price.” Ryan says he wants to strike out on his own, away from Liam, who tells him he’s making a mistake. “Maybe,” Ryan says. “But it’ll be mine for a change.”

17. Ryan goes to Alex’s dorm room, where she’s crying after her fight with Shelby. She says she came to Quantico with few friends, and it looks like she’ll leave the same way. Ryan says that for all the talk of partnerships and teamwork at Quantico, they don’t tell you that being an agent is actually pretty lonely. But Alex has a temporary cure for that: she says they each have two weeks before they start their new jobs, so why don’t they run away together, somewhere completely off the grid, and “really get to know each other”? She apologizes then for interrupting him with whatever he came to her room to tell her, but he smiles and says, “It can wait.”

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18. Back to the NYC present: Claire is giving another press conference, with Alex at her side. She declares Alex a hero, and says the bomb threat is no more. At the FBI offices, Simon is telling everyone the whole bomb threat was just “theater,” designed to create a scare. Just then, everyone gets the same alert on their phones: “Bureau Wide Alert. Nuclear bomb from today’s event in NYC now reported as missing.” They all panic, and say Miranda is the only one in the office who would even know where the bomb had been taken. And, oh yeah, where is Miranda?

19. Miranda is inside an apartment, with her gun drawn, staring at computer monitors and finding a set of blueprints inside a desk drawer. The monitors show surveillance of several people, including Alex, Ryan, Shelby, Miranda, Drew, and the FBI offices. Miranda hears someone enter the room behind her, and she says, “I got suspicious when I saw footage of Alex leaked from inside the FBI building. Only a few people could have accessed it. I should have known…” and she turns around quickly and fires at someone, who fires back and hits her. She falls to the ground, bleeding, but looks up from the ground to ask her attacker, “Why are you doing this?”

20. Her attacker — Liam! — responds: “To make things right.”

Quantico airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on ABC.

(Photos: Philippe Bosse/ABC)