You Recap: The Spy Who Loved Me
It’s time to put some pieces together, baby! Like any great liar, Bronte told Joe a partly true story. Here in the recap, we are going to cover the WHOLE truth and then judge accordingly.
I was really hoping that the person from Joe’s past who would get him once and for all would be the balcony sprite herself, Jenna Ortega. But she probably got too famous and expensive for that — good for her! So instead, we are going with somebody Beck-adjacent, who is exactly who “Bronte” turns out to be.
Back when I was power-ranking Pretty Little Liars, I was constantly railing against those girls for speaking to the cops without a lawyer. Considering how frequently they found themselves entangled in murders, disappearances, etc., it seemed like they (and/or their parents) ought to have been keeping one on retainer. So it brought me back, watching Bronte explain this semi-self-incriminating situation to a police officer without an attorney in her corner. Did anyone else spend the whole episode waiting for that to blow up in her face?
Here’s her side of the story: Louise Flannery (of course, her real name is also a literary allusion) was a student in the writing class for which Beck was the teacher’s assistant. Beck was the only one who really believed in Louise’s writing. Beck was also the one who told Louise that Ibsen wasn’t even a real feminist — it’s her argument Louise cites when she was flirting with Joe in the season premiere — and gave her a copy of Jane Eyre. Extremely funny for me because I finally read Jane Eyre this year for the first time, and I HATED it. (Spoiler alert if you, like me, managed to make it this far without knowing what happens in this book from 1847.) The novel’s “romantic” ending has this unbearably boring tragedy-orphan marrying her ancient employer — basically the first man she’s ever met?! — who had literally locked his first wife in the attic. That Louise was moved deeply by this book — where our male hero is all, “No, I HAD to lock my wife in the attic, I am VERY normal, but she was psycho!” and Jane’s take is (paraphrasing only slightly), “I understand you completely, we are the most in love two people have ever been and will ever be!!!!!!!” — is perhaps the biggest tell that Louise is going to accidentally fall in love with Joe.
Also, not to be a bitch, but if she was going for a believable fake name and this was her source material, wouldn’t she just name herself Jane? Or Charlotte?
Anyway! Louise dropped out of the writing program to go back to Ohio, care for her dying mother, and work at that dental office. While at home in Ohio, Louise saw the news of Beck’s death. She read Beck’s memoir over and over; she could tell that Beck did not write some of the book. Online, she connected with some other true-crime freaks who also had questions about Beck’s murder, allegedly committed by her therapist, Dr. Nicky. Bronte joins forces with Dom (the girl from the reading) and Phoenix, who’ve both “been wronged by the justice system,” and Clayton, who is Dr. Nicky’s son!
Clayton figured out that Joe was seeing Dr. Nicky under an alias, so he knew Beck and Joe were having serious problems. This Scooby Gang solves the mystery: Beck was killed by her boyfriend, Joe! Then Louise’s mom died and so, apparently, did Joe. BUT the group saw the article about Joe being alive after all, married to Kate and living in New York, and they decided it was time to act. Dom, Phoenix, and Clayton wanted to move slowly and stick to the edges of Joe’s life, but Louise couldn’t wait. And that’s where we met her: breaking into the bookstore, taking on a fake identity, and commencing the most high-stakes catfish of her life.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but the part where Louise lost me was when she reported on the human aquarium but claimed to find no there there because it was just full of books. When will someone from law enforcement go check out the cage?! WHY WAS IT NOT SUSPICIOUS TO HER THAT IT LOCKED FROM THE OUTSIDE?
Louise told her friends she could make Joe fall in love with her. Clayton helped make the story airtight by “expanding Bronte’s world.” Together, they built out the ruse, but then Louise fell in love. Whoops!
Louise trusts the guy who she KNOWS is suspicious as hell and did all these murders? I’m sorry, but how dumb can you be?! It does help that Clayton is a violent guy — Joe’s intervention, Louise insisted, just proves that Joe “will defend a woman when someone is hurting her” because she has drunk her own broken-bird Kool-Aid.
The group had an accusation presentation all planned, but Louise got cold feet. At the diner, she told Dom the whole thing was off because she was “naïve” about Joe and was losing her real self. Wow, this is just like The Little Drummer Girl. The theater of the real, baby! Despite being confident they had the right guy, Dom let it go because Louise didn’t feel safe. But Clayton had gone rogue, posting to his Insta Stories to make Joe think Bronte had ghosted him. Dom encouraged Louise to go to the beach house anyway, and we all know how that turned out.
After tasing Joe, Louise called Dom in a panic. Fun fact: Dom is the one who had Clayton’s gun. Clayton, in Louise’s incredulous words, “was convinced that Joe is this guy who kills all the women he falls in love with.” Louise, in a grand idiot plot tradition, not only rejects this premise despite staggering evidence but also believes that she alone can fix him. She is, understandably, horrified that Clayton is willing to risk her life to prove his point. Then again, she was also willing to risk her life to prove her point. The gang wanted to stay on the fringes! Breaking into the bookstore and dating Joe was your idea, Louise!
As we all know, Clayton showed up unannounced — he accused Louise of being “a fucking Manson girl” and latching on “like a goddamn tourist” — and Joe did the rest. Louise tells the cop that this means Joe was acting in self-defense. He only killed Clayton to save her! I know this is the wrong reaction, but I am going to kill this girl myself, I swear to GOD.
What does this all mean for Joe? He gets booked at the police station, where he ruminates on how everything he shared with Bronte was a sham, and then released from said police station, thanks to Kate’s resources. I genuinely don’t know why Kate didn’t just let him stay in prison. She’s already decided he’s a murderer, she wants to keep Henry safe, and he went out and murdered someone on live — take the win! Joe decides that Bronte is a “snake,” which does not really portend well for her survival.
Joe gets home so he and Kate can have a screaming match. It is very satisfying to hear her scream him out for being “obvious and pathetic” and for killing her sister. Joe’s defense that Reagan was evil and that, technically, Maddie did it is childish and absurd, and Kate is unmoved. Finally, she thinks clearly enough to surround herself with security and remove Henry to a safe location that Joe doesn’t know about. “Henry had good dads, and taking him from them was one of the worst things I have ever helped you do.” YES, I have been SAYING this!
The papers Joe signed at the police station had a temporary custody agreement — Kate, correctly, assumed Joe would be too caught up in his own deal even to read the pages — which means he has already declared himself unfit to parent. She also tells him off for only seeing their son as an extension of himself; Joe has never cared about another person. Sad! Kate reminds Joe that all their power and money is hers, and he can only access those resources if he obeys her.
With nowhere left to go, Joe returns to the bookstore apartment, where he uncovers a camera hidden in a book — a camera connected to Louise/Bronte’s phone. Those two just can’t quit each other, can they?