On Quantico Season 2 Episode 3 “Stescalade”, Alex manages to infiltrate the terrorist cell, Ryan almost blew Alex’s cover and it seems like Shelby is on to Miranda.

At the Farm

Ryan and Alex are meeting with their handlers (Nima and Shelby) and trying to decide which one of the recruits will most likely be recruited by the nefarious CIA (AIC as called by Ryan and Alex). The couple have gotten nowhere in realizing who’s a threat and who isn’t. They however narrow the most-likely-to-be-recruited to León and Dayana. Nimah and Shelby need the super couple to pick one person as they have just one bug so they urge them to get the recruits to open up.

The following day, Owen is trying to teach the recruits a new skill – assessment. They are to pay attention to their surroundings no matter the situation and so far the only one not failing badly at the test is new recruit is Dayana and Leigh - who Alex says reminds her of Shelby because she’s a rich kid who has her own business and has planned four Kardashian weddings – the last tidbit was revealed too Alex by Dayana who now seems to be in control and has a little dirt on everyone. She was also able to reveal information about León who apparently went to prison.

After the test, the recruits are asked to team up and get ready for an assignment. While waiting outside for transportation, they all get blindfolded, put in a van and dropped in the middle of the forest. In the forest, Alex tries to get more info on León in a rather obvious way and after he threatens her, he finally revealed that he was in prison and had ended up there on purpose because he was trying to prove that the Mexican cartel used the prison as their base of operations. Alex is obviously very moved by this and all her doubts about the man seem to dissipate.

Ryan leaves his partner Harry (who’s asking far too many questions about Alex) and goes to join Dayana whose partner (Sebastian) left her. Ryan wants to know how Dayana was able to get León to talk and unknowingly reveals to Dayana that he and Alex are pretty chummy. The super couple clearly knows not how to be spies. Ryan is unable to get much out of Dayana other than she has friends in high places that give her dirt on recruits, doesn’t like the outdoors and is scared of heights. Some of those revelations were obviously lies as thirty seconds later; she’s seen crossing a fallen tree used to bridge a pretty deep ditch.

Harry teams up with Leigh and they get to the farm first – 4 hours after they were dropped. Hall is not pleased; he believes if they had kept to their training, they should have been back in 20 minutes. He’s also disappointed that no one noticed that they were being watched. Except Leigh who thought she saw about six cameras in the tree – only they were over 20.

Thus concludes another failed test at the Farm. One would think that Ryan would not suck as badly as the rest seeing as he’s trained at Quantico not once but twice.

The handlers (Nimah and Shelby) meet with Miranda who tells them to manipulate their operatives and not be their friends. The handlers take Miranda’s teachings to heart when they meet with the couple. Nimah convinces Ryan to go against the couple’s joint decision to bug Harry rather than Dayana and León and Shelby tells Alex that she’s a sucker for a pretty boy with a sad story. That last part is quite true.


They decide to bug Leon’s room but when Nimah and Shelby try to listen in, they hear interference – the room had already been bugged by someone else. But who? Maybe that was Leon planted in the picture frame? Or the AIC is aware that Ryan and Alex are digging as the handlers suspect.



Lydia has been trying to get a hold of someone called Lucas and is finally able to speak to him by cloning his wife’s cell. Lucas however is unwilling to share information with Lydia but gives a rather odd advice “don’t lose sight of the forest just because you’re in the weeds”. Lydia later hears her father say the same words Lucas said to her to the recruits. She then figures her father is the reason she’s at the Farm training clueless recruits and not in the field betraying and killing people. She says some hurtful words to her father and goes out to make a call and says to the person on the other line “I’m in. Tell me what I do next”.

Uh oh.

Meanwhile Harry meets a guy at the bar and the guy is none other than Will Olsen. Harry buys him a drink and introduces himself as Julian. Looks like Harry is the new Caleb

Present day.

At the FBI headquarters, Shelby tells Miranda she thinks the AIC is behind the terrorist attack and when Miranda agrees; Shelby reveals she wrote a report on their failed attempt to infiltrate the CIA sub cell and Miranda is displeased but asks to see the report which Shelby says is on her home computer. Shelby gives the file to Miranda on a flash drive and the second Miranda connects it to her system, her system crashes and IT guys rush into the place. She then tells Shelby to bring her home computer. Shelby does and that too miraculously crashes. Shelby then says she has found a single copy of the file and has given to someone else to distribute. Miranda tries to act cool at that information but is clearly freaking out.

Miranda gives Alex a list of all the impossible things she has to accomplish and the latter is determined to succeed. Alex finds one of the terrorist’s suits and puts it on. As the hostages are being transferred to a different building, Ryan voices his plan to get into a fight with Harry and when one of the terrorist tries to break up the fight, take off his/her mask. Everything goes according to Ryan’s crazy plan except for the fact that it’s Alex (in terrorist ensemble) who attempts to break up the fight. Ryan almost takes off Alex mask (and chokes her) when she utters his name mid-choke.

What a couple!

Alex gets taken away and so does Ryan. Alex is about to be shot by a masked woman when she resists and gets into a fight. She discovers that the masked woman is one of the officials from the Farm and kills her with poison she found in the suit after asking “why are you doing this”. Seconds later, the woman is thrown from the roof to where the hostages are with the words “2 down” taped to her body. We then see Alex walking away in slow motion.

Favorite quotes

Shelby to Alex “Alex you are a sucker for a good looking guy who pulls off the tears"


León to Alex “You know what happens when you push someone and you push and you push, and they're tired and they're frustrated and they've done time in prison? Maybe you just push a little too much, maybe they don't like it, maybe they snap"