'Quantico' Recap: Like a Boss

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

Boy, those Quantico writers love bombs, don’t they? Huge bombs, smaller but still massively destructive bombs, belt bombs, laptop bombs, plot bombs dropped liberally throughout the storyline… bombs, bombs, bombs!

Here, 18 things we learned in the “Clear” episode of Quantico:

1. The Voice, who called Alex in last week’s episode and led her to a meeting with bomb-strapped Natalie, now wants Alex to leave Natalie and await another call with further instructions. Who is this person who drugged Natalie? She doesn’t know… She thinks she was drugged, during which time The Voice or his or her minions gave Natalie her very un-chic bomb belt.

2. On the plus side, Natalie now believes Alex was right, that Elias Harper was just a puppet of the terrorist responsible for both the bombings, and “now we are, too.”

3. That next call from The Voice that Alex and Natalie were supposed to hang tight for? It comes just as Alex is starting her first day back at work in the FBI offices. Not only does The Voice want her and Natalie to swipe a file for him from the FBI servers, but this request is going to require that Alex and Natalie get their paws on a key card from Ryan, and the thumbprint of the new Special Agent in charge of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Who just happens to be ….

4. Hannah Wyland, Ryan’s ex-wife, the one who makes no secret of the fact that she does not like Alex. Yeah, that Hannah Wyland is now Alex’s boss, and Alex and Natalie have to steal a pass and a thumbprint, then come up with a way to use them to get into the FBI server room, so they can steal a confidential file and send it to a terrorist. They do: Natalie swipes the card when she’s guilting Ryan into ponying up cash to pay for lunch for Alex and Natalie, and Alex gets Hannah to pick up her phone, leaving a thumbprint on it. They also call in a bomb threat — yes, a bomb threat — so the building will be evacuated and Alex can sneak into the server room, where she steals the file. She and Natalie discover the file contains the complete schedules for the Presidential election candidates for the week ahead, which, obvs, is info a terrorist could wreak a whole ton of havoc with.

5. A few things it’s important to note here: Aren’t there cameras in the server room of an FBI building? So Alex would have been photographed entering, exiting, and stealing a file from, a server room, right? Also, Alex and Natalie emailed the file from an FBI computer to the terrorist… might that not be something an FBI computer would have a record of? And Natalie — up until the time that she and Alex get the file to The Voice, she is strapped with a live bomb. Alex distracted the security guard at the FBI building entrance to get Natalie in the building that day, but would it really be possible for a person with a live bomb strapped to their person to move around in an FBI building without being detected, as long as they make it past the guard desk? Because, frankly, we’ve seen people perusing the Hostess snack cake aisle at 7-11 draw more scrutiny than this bomb wearer got at the FBI office.

6. Once Alex and Natalie send the file, The Voice deactivates Nat’s bomb belt, and the duo sends him or her a worm, so they can trace where his or her computer is, and find him or her before he or she uses that info about the Presidential contenders’ schedules for evildoing. By him or her.

7. The (possibly fake) kidnapper of Shelby’s fake sister Samar is now demanding a $5 million ransom for Samar’s return. Caleb tells Shelby his dad will help investigate, and when he does, he concludes, Shelby is told, that this is another scam by Samar, to get another big payday from Shelby. Is it true? Or is Caleb lying about involving his father and/or the ransom being fake? How much do we suspect Caleb/Mark Raymond might be fibbing about at this point: so much that his nose might grow a little, or so much that his pants are sure to burst into flames at any moment now?

8. Drew Perales, the NFL vet who sued the league, reveals to Alex why he joined the FBI. His girlfriend, Alicia, was killed in the crossfire of a shootout between the Chicago PD and some armed gunmen. No one would take responsibility for her death (and the deaths of two others who were also killed in the crossfire) — not the Chicago PD, not the FBI, not other authorities involved — so, just as he tried to do with the NFL, he thought he would be able to get to the bottom of the investigation into his girlfriend’s death and make someone take responsibility for it. Twist alert: Alex did a little bit of Googling and found a crime scene photo of the Chicago shootout, and guess who was one of the FBI agents on the scene in 2014? Yup, Liam O’Connor!

9. Miranda tells one of her colleagues he would get in soooo much trouble if anyone ever found out he’s got a little somethin’ somethin’ going on with one of the trainees. So much trouble that even she, his ex-lover who’s not at all weirded out or made jealous by his fling, could get him out of. Who is this colleague Miranda suspects of hanky-panky? Yup, Liam O’Connor!

10. Raina suspects Nimah may be working with a terrorist group, because Nimah has been caught in lies to her family, and Raina found some suspicious chats on Nimah’s computer, and because Raina saw Nimah leaving the house of a suspicious-looking fellow. Worst of all, Raina must think her twin is a particularly dumb terrorist cohort, because wouldn’t you have to be if you were plotting to hook up with terrorists via a chat session and left that chat session open on your laptop?

11. Will Olsen appears to be crushing on Raina, when it’s revealed he has a photo of her taped to the bottom of his sock drawer, but it turns out to be far more interesting: the OCD trainee has photos of all his fellow NATs taped to the bottom of said sock drawer, and he just put a giant red X through Raina’s headshot. Hmmmm, whyyyy?

12. Alex and Natalie manage to track The Voice’s computer to an abandoned warehouse, but he or she is nowhere to be found. Well, at least they didn’t find him or her before the laptop started to melt, and then exploded. Natalie would seem to be quite dead… Luckily for Alex, she had just gone outside the building because her cell phone kept dropping a call.

13. Not so luckily for Alex, this may have been one bombing too many. After the explosion that we think killed Natalie, Alex just starts running, and she runs all the way to Ryan’s apartment. She arrives, panicked, asking him to help her. He asks if she wants him to take her somewhere, like a mental health facility, and she’s so freaked out she says yes. Just as he makes a call to arrange her voluntary commitment she receives a texted photo: it’s a photo of she and Ryan, taken just moments earlier. She starts looking around his apartment, and out the window, and without saying another word to him, she runs out of his home and down into the street. Her phone rings, and it’s The Voice, who tells her the next task she receives, she better follow the instructions to the letter.

14-18. Other things we learned, rapid fire style: Alex pushed Hannah’s button by asking her if she still loves Ryan; Alex’s new job is not agent-ing work, but clerical work for other agents; in the FBI training timeline, Natalie dropped out of training temporarily to deal with her custody battle; the NATs learn to use the Myers-Briggs personality assessments to help them find informants, and Will thinks Caleb is a Dynamo, like Donald Trump.

Quantico airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on ABC