Castle

Tonight’s the night! Castle’s explosive two-parter comes to a close tonight, but it all starts in the ocean.

As you may recall (as if you could forget), Beckett’s car was pushed by a mysterious SUV into the deep blue at the end of last ep. Our twosome don’t seem too vexed at first, but then they discover the windows won’t open, so they start scrambling to find something that will break glass — with no such luck. And to make matters worse, Beckett’s belt is stuck! Aaaand her knife is in the trunk. Awesome.

Slowly, water starts seeping in. Castle tries to find Beckett’s gun, but his seat belt gets stuck too. As the car plummets deeper and deeper into the ocean, it looks like Castle’s not going to make it. And as the car fills up, Beckett’s hand goes limp.

But then! We see bullets coming through the glass. Castle found the gun and saved the day! Huzzah! Afterward, Beckett’s warming up on the dock, and Castle shows up with coffee. What a better way to celebrate their survival than with a good ol’ Cup o’ Joe?

And then — Sophia shows up. But of course. She whisks them away in a black car. Sophia calls Rick a “reckless, immature, self-centered jackass” — and that’s when we learn Sophia and Rick definitely have a past.

“This is real life, Rick, not one of your damn books. And when things go wrong, you can’t rewrite the ending like you did with us,” she says. Uh-oh. Obvi, Beckett didn’t miss that one, and Rick has no choice but to admit that he slept with her. Oops!

So, Sophia kicks them off the case, but as Beckett points out: She still has a murder — er, three, actually — to solve.

Turns out, Blakely’s body never arrived. Later, Rick comes home to find SOPHIA TURNER IN HIS BED. Yeah. That really happened. One might think the sassy CIA agent is there on business, but when she starts asking questions about Clara Strike, we’re not so sure. Sophia asks if they’re going after Gage. Of course she knows! Girl's in the CIA. She also knows that Rick’s investigating Johanna Beckett’s murder. And she’s got Blakely’s bank information at her disposal. Is there anything this girl doesn’t know?

The next day, Castle presents the evidence to Beckett, who has a hard time believing Sophia was at Castle’s house only to talk shop. (Yeah, girl. Us too.) She also doesn’t want to take it at first, but this is Beckett, so of course she gives in.

Meanwhile, Espo and Ryan are still trying to figure out WTF their partners are up to. While out canvassing the park for clues on Blakely, they run into a man who knows him (by another name, obvi), and directs them to a man Blakely was spending a lot of time with/playing chess with named Yanni.

Yanni says they often talked economic theory. This leads the team to Blakely’s pad, where they find something cuh-razy: an entire room full of Blakely’s research and prediction of a WWIII. "What kind of an outcome was this linchpin supposed to created?" Beckett asks. "The end of our country as we know it," Castle responds.

In a split second, Caskett discovers that the linchpin is a young Asian girl, but before they can act on that info, Gage breaks in, throws a bomb into the center of the room and tells them to run. Turns out, Gage isn’t the bad guy. He hoards Castle and Beckett into his van and speeds away. When he stops the car, he says they’re somewhere safe, but he won’t give answers. He wants to know who the target is, but before they can answer, Sophia and her team of CIA agents break down the van door. Always savin’ the day, that girl!

Then, Sophia bursts their bubble: Gage wasn’t the good guy, and they think he has a partner. Also, Blakely’s research all burned up after the bomb went off. Sophia interrogates Gage,  who insists someone else is setting him up — and the guy is CIA. Could Beckett and Castle be the ones getting played? Then, someone shoots Gage without anybody knowing! How could it be?

And then it gets real intense! The CIA are able to figure out that it was somebody inside the unit who shot Gage: a man named Martin who had been working alongside the foursome all along. Cue our jaws dropping! Quickly, Martin grabs a hostage, points a gun to her head, and tries to ride the elevator out of the building. The team shuts down the elevator, and when it re-opens, Martin’s hostage is there, but he’s nowhere to be found. To quote Kanye West, "This sh*t cray.”

Martin’s gone, but there’s still hope to find the linchpin without him. Although they can’t find the girl's face in their database, Castle suggests running the mountains in the background to narrow down where she’s from. Castle’s a genius! (And Sophia thinks so, too. Gag.)

It’s gonna be a long night, so Castle heads to get the ladies coffee. Beckett asks Sophia if she likes Castle, to which she responds, “I did.” She explains her relationship with Castle was built on tension, and once the tension was gone, they weren’t left with much. “Sometimes I wish we had never slept together,” she admits.

We kind of want to punch her at this point. We all know this is going to go right to Beckett’s head!

But fugheddabout all that, there’s still a linchpin to find! Turns out, the girl in the photo is the daughter of prominent Chinese businessman Xiang Gang Hong, who has strong ties to the finance minister, who was also very supportive of China’s decision to purchase U.S. debt. And if his daughter were killed in a botched assassination attempt, and the Chinese chased it to the U.S., it would basically cause World War III. And that’s not all: Xiang just touched down in the U.S. — with his daughter. Uh oh!

With the clock ticking, the team tries to stop whoever from killing the linchpin. Except that’s not it at all! Sophia Turner was the traitor — and the one after the linchpin — the whole time!

In fact, she’s not even an American! And it’s not just Sophia who has secrets: Sophia says Castle didn’t gain special access to the CIA for his charm. What the heck does that mean? Before she can spill the beans (or kill Castle and Beckett), Gage shoots Sophia from behind. Then, Beckett single-handedly stops Sophia’s partner from taking out the linchpin — by ramming into him. What a bunch of heroes!

Castle and Beckett share an adorable moment at the very end, where Castle compliments the heck out of the detective darling, and where they both decide that they don’t know if they saved the world, but they do know they saved a little girl's life.

“And that’s enough for me,” Beckett says. Too. Cute.