Violet recaps Season 2 Episode 11 of The Following, titled Freedom, where Joe continues to try to get his followers accustomed to killing, while Ryan and Mike investigate an attack by a group people wearing white masks! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts on the episode.
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Episode Recap of The Following, Season 2 Episode 11: Freedom
- Joe asks for a volunteer, and tells her to give Karla, another Korban member, the gift of freedom. Angela stabs and kills Karla in front of everyone. Meanwhile, after Carrie spends the night with Ryan, he watches a news report about people going around wearing Joe Carroll masks for fun. As she leaves, Mike shows up to give Ryan his report of nearby religious cults prone to ritualistic behavior.
- The FBI decides to grant Claire’s request to see Ryan, but tells her see won’t see her son and mother again unless she returns to witness protection. Ryan tells Mike that he likes Carrie, and she’s not what he thought. A group of people wearing white masks go into a bakery and stab everyone inside. Mandy overhears Emma and Joe talking about her being a problem.
- Robert asks Joe why he had Karla killed, and tells Joe that people are questioning him. Joe asks Emma to find out if she has any sway with Robert. A woman kills another woman, takes her ID card, and drives off in the woman’s car with her dead body in the backseat. Emma talks to Robert and sleeps with him to convince him to believe in Joe. Mandy secretly uses the laptop to get a phone number from the classified ads.
- The woman who killed the other woman for her ID poses as a doctor at the hospital where the bakery victims were brought and places a bag in a locker. Two of the bakery victims receive a text from her and leave their hospital beds to retrieve the bag, which has guns in it. Ryan and Mike investigate the bakery. They realize that the victims were taken to the same hospital where Luke is, and that the attack was not by Joe, but by Lily Gray.
- The fake doctor, Serena, goes to Luke’s room and puts a phone to his ear. Lily tells Luke to do what Serena tells him, and that she’s bringing him home. The police frantically try to get the message out to lock the hospital down. The two men from the bakery pose as orderly and patient to get into ICU, then they start shooting everyone. They set off a smoke bomb and put on gas masks, then tell Serena and Luke they need to get to the ambulance downstairs.
- Ryan, Mike, and heavily armed policemen show up at the hospital and go to the ICU. A nurse tells them she overheard them say they had an ambulance downstairs. The police block the ambulance, and the driver comes out shooting, but is shot dead. However, the ambulance is found empty, so they figure Luke must still be inside the hospital. Mike and Ryan split up to look for Luke.
- Mike checks IDs of hospital personnel going up the stairs, who are accompanied by a police officer. When it’s Serena’s turn, she fights Mike and tries to run away, but he catches her and pulls a gun on her, asking where Lily Gray is. She refuses to talk, and comes at him with a knife, which causes the police officer to shoot her dead. Meanwhile, Ryan goes down to the basement level and shoots open a door marked “Do Not Enter.”
- Joe watches a televangelist on TV named Kingston Tanner, who is going after Joe Carroll. Emma reports that Robert won’t be a problem, but she asks Joe what the plan is. He quotes scripture to her and says they’ll give the preacher a Holy War. Mandy packs her bag and leaves.
- Ryan, wandering through the underground hallway, radios to Mike that they’re headed to the marketplace. Ryan finds Luke hiding behind a shelf, but Luke’s protector sneaks up behind Ryan and puts a gun to his head. Ryan manages to distract the man and fights him, then gets the gun and shoots him, while Luke runs upstairs through the market and gets away. Ryan hands over the phone the man used to contact Lily Gray. Carrie shows up and praises Ryan for being a hero.
- Luke makes it safely to his mother’s hotel room, and has a touching reunion with Mark and Lily. Lily vows she will kill them all. Joe sees Carrie’s report on TV that Lily Gray impersonated Joe and his followers. Mike tries to understand why Lily does what she does, but Ryan tells him it can’t be understood, and is optimistic that they’ll find both Lily Gray and Joe Carroll.
- Mandy hitchhikes and finds a ride, then uses the woman’s phone to call the phone number she got earlier. Mark answers the phone. While Mike and Ryan are at Ryan’s apartment, there’s a knock on the door. It’s the FBI with Claire.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 2 Episode 11 of The Following: Freedom
This was a great, action packed episode of The Following. I feel like the show has really stepped up its game here in Season 2 from last season. Like Joe was saying recently, he realized that Poe and literature were not going to cut it. So of course, he moved on to the next logical step for a cult: a religious cult. This makes sense, because there’s probably not a very large number of people who would follow Joe fervently based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, whereas when it comes to religion, the potential number of group members that Joe could recruit would be enormous.
We also get an insight into how some of these people were lured into Korban, when we hear Joe’s volunteer, Angela, talk about her fiance, who is now dead. She was probably preyed upon in the wake of the loss of her fiance, and Korban took advantage of her weakened state to convince her that the Korban Community was the place for her to go. However, after the negative reaction Joe got from killing the cat, I’m not so sure that very many people would be able to accept the leap to killing not only a human, but one of their own. It seemed a little too easy for Angela, who seemed very timid at first, to be able to actually kill her own friend, even with Joe trying to manipulate her into thinking she was giving her friend “freedom.” But I guess this is a way for Joe to identify and remove those who aren’t with him, and who don’t accept the new direction of the Korban Community.
I figured pretty quickly that the guys in masks who attacked the bakery were actually working for Lily Gray. However, I might not have guessed that so easily had I not seen the previews for this episode and already known that Lily Gray was supposed to be in it. Kudos to Hardy for figuring it out so quickly, and being able to get the hospital locked down with Luke still inside. Nice action packed scene in the hospital, very exciting, didn’t know what was going to happen next. However, the police need to learn not to be so trigger happy. This is at least the second time this season that a police officer has killed someone that needed to be kept alive for questioning! I’m also not sure how Luke got away so easily if there was supposed to be a 3 block perimeter set up around the hospital. It also seemed like Ryan gave up a bit too easily.
The show made sure to make it clear during this episode that Ryan really likes Carrie Cooke, and that their relationship seems to be getting pretty serious. However, I was a little disappointed that when Claire showed up at Ryan’s apartment, it was one of the few times lately that Carrie wasn’t there! Yes, I wanted the drama of Claire walking in on Ryan and Carrie in a compromising situation. But I guess we do get to deal with the fallout of what’s going to happen with Ryan and Carrie now that Claire is back, though only temporarily. Somehow I don’t think Ryan and Carrie are going to last much longer now that the love of his life has come waltzing back in.
So what’s Mandy’s plan anyway? It seems like she wanted to get away from Joe because she was uncomfortable with all the killing, and because she didn’t want to be next on Joe’s freedom list, so why would she go to Lily Gray? Just to get back at Joe for rejecting her for Emma?
Looking forward to Joe’s “Holy War,” which involves a televangelist played by one of my favorite TV actors, Tom Cavanaugh! (He played the title character on that early 2000s show called Ed, which was about a lawyer who owned a bowling alley in a small town.)
Josh’s Thoughts: The Following, Season 2 Episode 11: Freedom
This week’s episode of The Following had Joe taking it a step further with his new followers. First it was watching him kill a cat, then finding a volunteering disciple to shank a fellow cultist under the ribs. How quickly many of these cultists adapted to Joe’s new “way” seems a little odd. Although, according to Robert, there is more dissension than we perhaps are aware of. Overall, I am having a hard time swallowing this cultist group though. Mandy seems to be sick of it too, as we see her sneak off to meet up with Lily Gray.
The main storyline for Ryan Hardy and Mike Weston was pretty interesting though. Ryan figures out Lily is the culprit in the bakery murder rather quickly. Most of the time in The Following these type of scenes seem really cheesy, as the perpetrators tend to get away because of the moronic work of the FBI, but this time, I actually found it a lot more enjoyable and suspenseful, even though in the end, Luke manages to escape.
Of course the ending with the return of Claire to Ryan’s life was inevitable this episode. While probably not intentionally meant to be funny, I was chuckling as Mike Weston tries to explain the situation to Ryan. It almost felt like a little kid being tattled on, trying to plead his case to his father. Claire being back sure is going to be awkward for Carrie Cooke when she finds out. I have a feeling a news story will be inevitable once she does find out…
Overall, I am really enjoying season 2 of The Following over season 1. We have these three factions that are all working against each other, and I am having a lot of fun watching the stories play out. Next week Mandy arrives at Lily Gray’s hideout, and so far from the previews, she doesn’t seem to be having a good time with Lily’s group.
Scenes from The Following, Season 2 Episode 12: Betrayal
Here are scenes from the next episode of The Following, titled Betrayal:
