‘Quantico’ Recap: Cutting the Head Off the Beast

Warning: The recap for “Yes,“ the Season 1 finale episode of Quantico contains storyline and character spoilers.

In which the big baddie goes down, we learn he may have had an assistant, and Alex if offered her next big opportunity to save the world.

Here, 21 things we learned in the Quantico Season 1 finale:

1. Liam has been playing the long game with hatching his massive plan to ruin the FBI. All the way back in July 2015, he met with Miranda and told her he’d been fired, with no pension, as he was being blamed by the FBI for what happened in Chicago. She feels sorry for him and offers him a job at Quantico. Then, in a plotting montage, he looks through the folders of the NATS at Quantico, makes special note of Alex, is given her dad’s FBI badge when she tells him she’s there to find out the truth about her father, places the bombs inside Grand Central, and carries an unconscious Alex to the Grand Central rubble and places her atop it, where she later wakes up and becomes the suspect in the terrorist attack.

2. Present, NYC timeline: Liam is holding a gun on Miranda, who’s already been shot. She asks him why he didn’t kill her yet. “I thought you’d enjoy watching it all burn down with me,” he says. “Are you ready?”

3. Past, Quantico, graduation day timeline: Everyone is getting their graduation photo taken and turning in their training uniforms, while Ryan and Alex cement their plans for that two-week beach sexcation they decided to take before each of them start new assignments. The bitterest woman in Bitterville, Shelby, calls Clayton Haas to complain about her ex, Caleb. She’s ticked off he landed such a great spot, in the San Diego field office, but Clayton — you know, Caleb’s dad — promises her Caleb will get a crappy desk that he’ll be chained to, for his whole career. As for everyone else, they’re given their last assignment before graduating: to “cut loose” at the local bar, as this is their last night of freedom before getting their firearms and starting their new jobs.

4. That same day, Liam lets slip to Alex that Ryan turned down his job in D.C., and has taken an assignment in Texas instead. Ryan had not told her that, and though she gives him the chance to at the bar that night, he doesn’t take it, which leads to a huge blow-up and break-up, and cancellation of the sexcation.

5. Most disturbingly, at the bar, Caleb and Brandon duet on a drunken karaoke performance of “You Are So Beautiful.” It was not.

6. Shelby, bitter party of one, also uses the “celebration” as an occasion to get more vengeance on Caleb. She sees Claire, and gives her an earful on some unpleasant truths about him. Shelby delivers news of her chat with his mama to Caleb the next day, as an explanation for why his parents will not be attending his graduation ceremony. His mother doesn’t want to be associated with his shenanigans, especially in an election year, she tells him. He wants to know why she did this, and she tells him it’s because she knows how much his parents being there meant to him, just like he knew how much getting her parents arrested meant to her.

7. Present, NYC timeline: Alex goes into the FBI office to learn that the nuke has been stolen, and that Miranda is the main suspect. Just as Simon offers to help — and Nimah chastises him because he helped build the nuke (under duress) — Liam comes walking in “to help,” and immediately announces that priority one is finding Miranda and stopping her before the bomb is detonated. “We will not fail!” he declares.

8. Alex is not convinced Miranda is the culprit… she doesn’t understand what Miranda’s motive could be. “To cut the head off the beast, and grow a new FBI in her image,” Liam says. “Her entire career, the FBI held her down, passed her over for promotion after promotion, just because she was a woman. They killed her son, then turned their back on her.”

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9. Ryan calls Alex and tells her he didn’t find Miranda at her apartment, but he did find a surveillance camera. In his mind, and Alex’s, that clears Miranda as The Voice, because why would she have a camera on herself?

10. Speaking of Miranda — she’s still alive, and tied up in Liam’s car in the parking garage of the FBI office. Just as she almost breaks free, Liam sees what she’s doing and takes away her cell phone. And just as he does that, Ryan comes into the parking garage and asks him what he’s doing. When Liam doesn’t answer, Ryan asks him to turn around. Liam does… and punches Ryan out.

11. Around this time, the Mystery Machine gang, er, Alex and company, prove Miranda isn’t The Voice by comparing where she was during calls from The Voice and determining she couldn’t have made some of them. Then Alex notices Liam is no longer in the office, so she puts two and two together and gets “Liam is The Voice!”

12. Alex breaks into Liam’s NYC apartment to investigate and runs into his daughter. The daughter tells her Liam is in D.C. — she just talked to him an hour ago. Alex heads back to the FBI office and tells everyone her Liam theory, and that she thinks he’s going to blow up Quantico today, because it’s graduation day, and that will allow him to take out lots of agents, old and new.

13. So Alex and her crew head off to Quantico, where they split up to look for Liam and the bomb. They have to do it carefully, because if they try to evacuate everyone or alert Liam in any way, they’re afraid they’ll spook him into setting off the nuke. Caleb and Shelby hack into the Quantico servers, so they can access security cameras. Shelby is suddenly flirty, and tells Caleb she likes watching him work.

14. Alex and Raina find Ryan and Miranda, tied up in one of the dorms. Miranda’s still alive. Ryan and Alex then take off to find Liam, and Ryan tells Alex not to do anything stupid. “Let’s save the world and you can lecture me later,” she tells Ryan, before kissing him.

Related: Why ‘Quantico’ Was Priyanka Chopra’s First Choice for a TV Role (and She Read a Lot of Scripts)

15. Alex and Ryan find Liam one floor up, but he tells them they can’t find the nuke, and even if they do, they won’t be able to disarm it in time. He adds that he’s not ashamed of what he’s done, despite the hundreds of people who’ve died. “They died to save millions, to kill the cancer that is the FBI,” he says, “before it takes the whole country with it.” He tells Alex she was so busy during her training at Quantico, trying to get redemption for killing her father, that she didn’t even notice Liam was making her into a scapegoat. And then he sneaks up behind Ryan and holds a gun to his head. Alex runs into them, and Ryan tells her to take the shot at Liam. Alex is thinking about what to do, when Liam tells her that despite her confusion on the topic, her dad was a good man. He wanted to come clean about Omaha, but Clayton pressured him and Liam not to, as Clayton’s bosses pressured him. Liam said he was just out of Quantico himself at the time, and that was the first thing he saw: corruption, cowardice, and callousness towards the loss of life. That’s what his career became, covering up the mistakes made by others and himself, and getting promoted for it. He then pushes Ryan out of the way, and is about to shoot Alex…

16. … but she gets off a shot first. Ryan also shoots at Liam as he’s falling out of the way, and together, Alex and Ryan kill Liam.

17. And then they find the nuke on the seventh floor. But, as Liam promised, it’s too late to disarm it. Simon and the others are gathered around it fretting about what to do, and while Alex, Ryan, Shelby, Caleb, and the twins argue about options, Simon takes off with the nuke, gets in an SUV, and drives away. The gang runs out after him, but they’re too late. He calls them from his cell, and says the only way to save everyone else is to drive the bomb into a deep body of water. His friends remain on the phone with him, sobbing and thanking him for his selfless act, as he speeds over a bridge and purposefully drives his auto and the nuke into the river below. The nuke explodes.

18. At Simon’s memorial service, we learn Drew died; Will survived, but jokes he’ll be susceptible to cancer the rest of his life; Ryan is now working in D.C.; Miranda survived and is now the deputy director of the FBI; Miranda reinstates Shelby as an agent; Alex has not been reinstated, though Miranda says that’s on her to-do list; and Claire is the vice president of the United States.

19. Claire is also on Alex’s hit list, as Alex believes Claire was Liam’s co-conspirator. She says Claire’s medical records prove she never needed blood pressure medication, so why did The Voice//Liam have Alex swap them out of her purse? Claire pretends to be offended, and with Alex’s assurance that she’s not wearing a wire, she tells her she can’t prove any of what she’s saying, even if Claire did do it. Alex says she doesn’t have to prove it… and points out to Claire that Caleb was standing behind her the whole time, listening. “No matter where you are or what you do, all the souls of the lives that you cost will be watching you. And so will we,” Alex tells her.

20. Two weeks later: Alex’s friends are helping her pack. Without her FBI gig, she’s planning to move back home with her mother in Oakland. Ryan shows up with flowers, and they decide to go on that sexcation.

21. Two months later: Alex is back in Oakland, jogging, when she gets a cell call from Ryan. She doesn’t answer it, because just then, an SUV pulls beside her and a man tells her to get in. CIA honcho Keyes offers her a job. She wants to think about it, but he says the job offer expires the minute she gets out of the car. Just then, Ryan calls again, and we pan to him standing up against his car, appearing to be rather anxious to get in touch with Alex. Keyes asks, “So, are you gonna stay here, or are you ready for what comes next?”

(Photos: ABC/Phillippe Bosse)