'Quantico' Recap: Get a Clue

SPOILER ALERT: The recap for the “Clue" episode of Quantico contains storyline and character spoilers.

In which viewers get a filler episode, in terms of storyline advancement, but with a few character bombshells thrown in, because… Quantico.

Here, 11 things we learned in “Clue”:

1. Despite her displeasure with the methods Alex has employed to go about her investigation into the identity of The Voice, Hannah decides she believes Alex is telling the truth about the terrorist conspiracy, and agrees to assist Alex and Simon in trying to ferret out who The Voice may be.

2. Roomies Caleb and Will have been doin’ a lot of talking, with Caleb spilling everything to Will about Mark Raymond and the cult: Caleb joined Systemics (a.k.a. barely-veiled Scientology) with his BFF, Ross Edwards. Caleb’s dad pulled him out within a few months, but when Ross tried to leave, too, but “they” wouldn’t allow it. Caleb never heard from Ross again; “he just disappeared,” Caleb says. Now, Caleb wants to try to get Ross out — if he’s still alive, he adds — but he can’t meet with the new leader of the cult, because he would recognize him. But Will is Will-ing (sorry, not sorry) to help, because — wait for it — his sister died in a car accident when Will was nine. She could have been saved with a blood transfusion, but his dad, a Christian Scientist, wouldn’t sign off on the transfusion. “Let’s just say I’m not fond of institutions who harm the people who believe in them,” Will says. “And I’m not scared of them, either.” Just so this is a fair exchange of secrets, Will shows Caleb his creepy bottom-of-the-drawer lineup of headshots of the other NATS and Quantico instructors. #Bromancebrewing

3. Shelby is acting kookier than usual, understandably, because she’s freaking about finding out her parents are still alive. And instead of talking about it, she’s just trying to get her frisky on with Caleb. But when Liam puts the NATS through a training exercise that revolves around them trying to stop a simulated terrorist attack on an airplane, Shelby loses the little bit of cool she’s hanging onto, especially when the NATS fail time and time again to figure out how they’d successfully stop the terrorists. “Sometimes the only answer is that there is no answer,” Liam says. “Sometimes the plane just has to go down.”

4. Alex and Shelby bond when Alex finds out Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt are still alive. Shelby says she’s been living with their deaths for 15 years, thinking about how they died, talking to survivors, and now that she knows it was all a lie, she’s crushed. Who leaves a teenage daughter without saying goodbye, she wonders. What could she have done that was so bad? Alex says maybe she’s assuming things that aren’t true — maybe they were protecting her somehow. She tells Shelby to investigate more, because she deserves to know the truth, just like how Alex finally learned the truth about her father.

5. Raina ‘fesses up to her sister that the reason she didn’t go home for the holidays is that she was with Simon instead. Later, Raina (we think) calls Simon and tells him she can’t see him that weekend, but maybe can see him again sometime in the future. Nimah (we think) is sitting nearby when she makes the Dear Simon call.

6. Miranda’s FBI bosses aren’t happy about her son’s involvement with the terrorist attack on campus last week, obvs. She tells them she was the one responsible for Raina’s mission to infiltrate the terrorists, and then she’s put on leave. Liam asks Ryan to come back to campus while Miranda’s gone, but we don’t find out his answer yet.

7. At the FBI offices in New York, in the present timeline, Hannah and Alex find out Claire Haas has changed her plans, and will give a speech at Columbia University that night. They realize that means The Voice and his or her associates have moved up their plans, so they decide to stay close with Claire throughout the day. The threats that only they know about lead Hannah to act in a way Claire considers overzealous, so she asks Hannah to be taken off her detail. But Hannah and Alex show up at the auditorium where the Columbia speech is happening, and The Voice — who knows Hannah is working with Alex now — instructs Alex to take an envelope to the venue and tape it to the bottom of an assigned seat. Meantime, Simon has figured out what’s inside the envelope: a component chip that will knock out all the power in the surrounding area. He calls Alex and tells her about it, just before… the lights go out, and chaos ensues as Claire takes the stage to deliver her address.

Alex and Hannah rush the stage, and Hannah fires her gun, as the women believe The Voice and company are trying to kill Claire. Instead, Hannah gets arrested, by the FBI, for firing her weapon.

8. While they’re waiting for Claire’s speech to begin/Claire to possibly be assassinated — i.e., obviously the time for girl chat — Hannah tells Alex she misjudged her, and that she was really being protective of Ryan, especially after what she did to him. What did she do to her ex-husband? She fell in love with someone else — a female co-worker. She assumed Ryan would never forgive her when he found out, but instead, he was kind and supportive, she says. And that’s why she has vowed to spend the rest of her life looking out for him (i.e. why she hated Alex).

9. Sadly, it may not matter that Hannah now approves of Alex, because Ryan is furious with Ms. Parrish. He arrived at the auditorium in time to see her put something under a seat, and when he asks her about, she shares nothing. And when Hannah is arrested — and then suspended — he approaches Alex again and demands that she tells him how she is involved. She tells him Hannah accidentally discharged her weapon, but he suspects something worse: he thinks Alex set Hannah up, because she though Hannah was investigating what she was really up to. “You set her up to take the fall,” Ryan tells Alex. “You’re not in the clear now. Because I will do whatever it takes to catch you.”

10. Hannah doesn’t blame Alex for anything. In fact, she doesn’t rat Alex out to her superiors, because, as she tells Alex, she was in a room, being yelled at by a bunch of FBI agents, any one of whom could be The Voice. So she’s remaining mum about Alex and Simon and The Voice, and she tells Alex it’s now up to her to unravel the conspiracy. She asks just one thing: that Alex not drag Ryan into the mess. Alex says she won’t, but now that he’s declared himself her adversary, not sure how long she’ll be able to keep that promise.

11. The Voice calls Alex, and she tells him/her Hannah has been suspended, so there’s no need to hurt anyone else for her involvement. The Voice is surprisingly chill, and tells Alex he’s going to miss her, as they’re almost done. All that’s left is her final mission, and The Voice says he/she will be in touch about it soon. Alex wonders why T.V. isn’t angry she failed, and Simon says maybe they didn’t. Maybe the situation with Claire Haas was a smokescreen to divert attention away from what The Voice and company were really doing… Simon has a police report from that very night, which covers a robbery at Columbia’s most secure lab. And that lab — gasp — is located under the auditorium where Claire was to give her speech. Simon doesn’t know yet if anything was stolen from the lab, but he says the report will be updated overnight. He and Alex discuss how Miranda always told them there are no coincidences, and Alex concludes that “this is the first real clue” they’ve gotten about The Voice and The Conspiracy. We have to agree that they didn’t really seem to have a clue up until this moment.

Quantico airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on ABC