By Guest Contributor: Lakshmi Gandhi (@LakshmiGandhi)
Lakshmi’s recaps for “Quantico” episodes 1-7 can be found here and for episode 8 onward here, including her recap of the show’s most recent episode. Her recaps appear on Reappropriate every Monday morning! As with reading any recaps, please be wary of spoilers.
Creator Joshua Safran tweeted that Sunday’s episode (appropriately titled ‘Turn’) was pivotal, and show promos hinted at another death. For viewers who tend to get anxious while watching (like yours truly) these weren’t good signs.
What was a good sign, however, was this week’s fantastic performance by Yasmine Al Massri (who plays the twins Nimah and Raina), made even more poignant because of its shocking timeliness. For the past few episodes we’ve known that Raina has had a secret, and last night, we finally learned how deeply that secret was buried.
It turns out that Raina’s big rebellious moment led her to secretly infiltrate the terrorist cell that supposedly kidnapped Charlie. While we learned last week that Raina was working undercover on something, what wasn’t known was that she had gone completely rogue and that even Miranda had been completely out of the loop until Raina confided in her. (Side note: why doesn’t anyone on this show ever ask for help until it’s almost too late?)
Anyways, when Raina returns to the terrorist cell, she finds that everything has been wiped clean — which means that the terrorists were ready to attack. Miranda urges her leave immediately and to get Charlie and to bring him back to the Quantico campus to ensure that he’s safe. Raina promises to do so.
But — there’s always a but! — Raina and Charlie never make it to Quantico’s security checkpoint. That’s because armed gunmen opened fire at the gate, killing all of the security personnel nearby. As Raina quickly pulls away, Charlie decided that a confession of sorts was in order.
https://twitter.com/YahooTV/status/714278017837572096
Charlie confirms what Miranda and many others had suspected: he was never kidnapped by the terrorists. Instead, he had gone with them willingly. It quickly got much worse: Charlie then tells Raina that he had assisted in the planning of the attack currently happening on the Quantico campus. He had provided them with descriptions of entrances, floor plans and more. Charlie says that he began to have his doubts about the plan, but had been modestly reassured by the terrorists’ promise not to harm Miranda, his mother.
(Raina rightly points out that there was no reason to believe these promises, and that Miranda had been stabbed earlier this season.)
Once the lockdown is lifted, Nimah and Liam fortuitously drive Miranda back to her house, where Raina and Charlie are waiting inside. That’s when things got interesting. As Miranda furiously berates Charlie, Raina wisely decides it’s time for her to go home. She doesn’t make it out of the door, however. It turns out that one of the terrorists had survived the Quantico attack and had come to Miranda’s home in search of Charlie. He swiftly points a gun at Raina and orders her back in the living room. Thinking quickly, Raina calls Nimah in order to ensure that she hears what is happens so that Liam can call for backup.
As he aims his weapon at Raina, the gunman proclaims his allegiance to Islam. But Raina isn’t having it. “You are not a Muslim,” she snaps. “The Quran does not teach you to hate.”
Raina: I know the Quran does not teach you to hate.
Me: I love you, Raina. #Quantico pic.twitter.com/UWKeRL6Zt2— ??TV Fanatic?? (@TvKhaleesi) March 28, 2016
It was a beautiful, powerful moment and proves once again that Raina Amin is the most interesting Muslim character on television today.
https://twitter.com/emilyisanelf/status/714302276844830720
Raina is then almost shot for defending herself and her faith, before the gunman turns the gun on Charlie instead. For a few horrible moments it seemed like the terrorist had convinced Charlie to shoot his mother, and I quietly railed against the show for killing off two strong women of color in a row.
But, I soon learned I should have had more faith in this show. It was revealed to be the terrorist who had been shot dead — and in all honesty, it happened so quickly that I’m not quite sure who did it. Charlie then expresses terror that he’ll be arrested and jailed forever, and so he refuses to let either Miranda or Raina leave the house.
As all of this is happening, Liam surrounds the house with armed agent. Miranda knows that if Charlie will be killed on sight if he attempts to leave without surrendering. So Miranda does what seems reasonable to her at the time: She shoots Charlie in the shoulder so that he is out of the FBI’s line of sight. It doesn’t quite work however: Charlie is shot in his other shoulder by an agent firing from the front lawn.
When we last see Charlie, he’s in surgery and his prognosis isn’t clear. Will Charlie survive? Given all of the scary signs we mentioned at the beginning of this recap, it’s not looking good.
Phew. That was A LOT. Here are the other moments that stood out this episode:
Alex has a trendy Williamsburg apartment: While Alex is certainly busy with trying to find the real terrorist, she obviously had time to find and decorate a really nice Brooklyn apartment.
Aww… Alex has a Nataraja statue in her Williamsburg apartment. Nice touch, @QuanticoWriters! #Quantico
— Lakshmi Gandhi (@LakshmiGandhi) March 28, 2016
Simon is super macabre: Looks like Simon is sort of back to his old self. He promises Alex that he’ll be able to crack the code and figure out who is behind the mysterious phone calls that are terrorizing her. “I’m here,” he assures her. “I can’t make the same mistake twice, can I?” That was in reference to the bombing that killed a bunch of people. Note to Simon: Maybe now’s not the time?
Shelby’s parents aren’t really dead: Shelby’s backstory gets more confusing by the day. Remember Shelby’s Middle Eastern fake half-sister? (Of course you remember, they refuse to stop talking about her!) It turns out that the con artist was employed by Shelby’s parents, who faked their deaths. So when Shelby was sending money to the woman she thought was her sibling, she was actually sending it to her parents, who were in effect stealing from themselves.
Also, Shelby’s mother is Kelly Rutherford: While Shelby grows a spine this episode and declares that both her fake sister and her parents will remain dead to her, it’s looking like things won’t be that simple. Gossip Girl’s Kelly Rutherford was just announced to be Quantico’s newest cast member. (Eagle-eyed viewers probably recognized her in the brief shot of Shelby holding a photo of her magically-still-alive family.)
Scared you’re going to be fired? Save your boss from being shot. That was basically our takeaway from how Drew ended up rescuing Liam, and what Liam’s subsequent reaction was.
Hannah is on the right side of history, after all. Aside from being Ryan’s ex-wife, Hannah has been Alex’s nemesis from the beginning. But in last night’s weirdly perfect, weirdly hilarious last scene ,she decides that Alex was telling the truth the whole time and joins forces with Alex and Simon. The way she asked the pair to ‘please tell me — did I just poison the next vice president of the United States?’ has endeared her to us forever, or for until the next episode at least.
This is Quantico, after all.
Lakshmi Gandhi is a journalist and pop culture writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in Metro New York, NBC Asian America and NPR’s Code Switch blog, among other sites. She likes it when readers tweet her @LakshmiGandhi with their thoughts on Asian American issues and romance novels.
Learn more about Reappropriate’s guest contributor program and submit your own writing here.
