Emma has taken Joey to a garage where she meets up with a follower by the name of Bo.  Emma asks for a little boys’ room, for Joey, and when Joey goes back to look for it, he hears a voice.  Squeezing though a door, the young boy finds a teenage girl, Dana,  locked in a cage.   Joey tells her that he’ll try to help her and then goes back to tell Emma about the girl.  Bo, who’s not very well wrapped, gets angry and tells them not go back there again, that the girl is none of their business.

Joe Carroll is having his “cruel and unusual” hearing and wants to be transferred out of the Virginia prison.  His attorney, Olivia, is showing the warden and other a video of Ryan Hardy breaking Joe’s fingers.  You’d think that she, of all people, would appreciate the irony of that.   Joe then speaks, thanking the warden for the opportunity to let everyone know about the injustices that have been inflicted upon him.  I think all of us can appreciate that irony, too.   Debra is trying to convince the warden that Joe should just stay put, but the Warden Montero tells her that it’s a done deal and Joe is being moved to Georgia.   In fact, he’s leaving now.  Before he leaves, though, Mike and Ryan stop by to wish him a safe journey.  Actually Ryan wants to know why Joe wants to go to Georgia and if there are friends there waiting for him.  Ryan also mentions Roderick and Joe just clams up.

Debra is in one of the FBI vehicles traveling with the transport van, and back at the Command Center, Ryan tells Mike that he thinks the warden may have been compromised.   They ask another agent to find out everything they can about the warden and his family, to see if there’s anything that will help them figure out what he might be up to.

Emma keeps asking Beau about Roderick, and whether he knows Joe.  Bo says that he’s never met him but that he’s a part of Joe’s club.  Club?  Really?  What self-respecting cult member calls it a club?   Beau realizes that Joey’s missing and starts running around to look for him.  Joey, in the meantime, has found a set of keys and lets Dana out of the cage.  She heads towards a back door and tells Joey to Follow her.  Joey makes a run for it, with Beau in hot pursuit and hides under a car.  It doesn’t take Bo long to find the kid and he pulls him out from under the vehicle.  He starts shaking and screaming at the bot, until Emma draws down on Bo.  He lets Joey go, but smacks Emma, sending her and the gun flying.  Just as it looks like he’s about to shoot her,  Charlie comes in, saves Emma and puts Dana back in her cage.   Charlie tells Emma that Bo is one of “those” who read Joe’s blog, like a cult troll,  and that he’s useful in only the most limited of ways.

Joe’s transport has hit the road and Mike has turned up some interesting information on Warden Montero.  The warden has a daughter who’s supposed to be at college, but hasn’t been seen in two days.  Her name is Dana.   Ryan and Mike pay a visit to the warden and let him know that they know about his daughter.  He tells them that they better not push him on this.    They’re not listening, of course.   It also comes to light that, among the items they were able to save from Charlie’s hideout, which was destroyed by the flashbang, is some surveillance video from the prison.  On the video is the transport van, the one that Joe is supposed to be in.  They realize that the warden hijacked the video and Charlie edited it to look like the same van at the moment of Joe’s departure from the prison sally port.  They call Debra and tell her to check inside the van for Joe.  She pulls over and, when the guards refuse to cooperate, she pulls her gun on theim, and they look inside to find that Joe isn’t there after all.  Ryan and Mike have learned that the warden decided to take the rest of the day off and find him leaving the prison.  When they open his trunk, expecting to find Joe, that’s empty, too.

Joe’s been riding around Virginia with his attorney as his getaway driver and provider of a very nice suit.   An agent at the Command Center has traced Olivia to the Richmond area and tells Ryan what street the two are on.  The FBI dispatcher gets a call from Olivia, per Joe’s request, and she wants to talk to Ryan.  When she gets Ryan on the phone, Joe instructs her to tell Ryan that he’s going to kill her and it’s all Ryan’s fault.  When she refuses, Joe strangles her, as Ryan is forced to listen.

Joe is talking to Charlie about Claire and wants to know why his Mom isn’t there to meet them.  That’s what Emma promised him.  Charlie tells him that he screwed up, that his Mom was supposed to be there but the bad guys got to her first.   Joey also wants to know if the girl, Dana,  is going to be okay and Charlie promises him that she will be.

Ryan and Mike finally find Olivia’s car, with her in it and, the poor attorney is, well, motion-less.   A bystander tells them that he saw a man run into a nearby building.  Ryan and Mike enter the building which is full of people eating lunch. 

Ryan spots Joe who has met up with a man named David.  When Joe sees Ryan, David whisks Joe away down a hallway, towards the stairs and elevator.  A woefully under-compensated security guard happens to enter the hallway, but he’s stabbed by a woman who then introduces herself to Joe as Louise.   Hot on their heels, Ryan stumbles across the guard’s body and races for the stairwell, but when he tries to open the door, David slams it on his arm and Ryan loses his gun.  This doesn’t stop Ryan, though,and he continues to chase after David.   While the two struggle, Joe appears and pulls a gun on Ryan.   Ryan tells him to go ahead and kill him, just end this whole thing here and now.  Joe is taken aback by Ryan’s suggestion.  He isn’t ready for any ending, yet.  As Joe explains to Ryan   “Really, you must admit it’s a quandary, hmm.  I so very much want you to live and see all that’s about to happen.  You see, as much as you’ve encountered up until this moment, I don’t know quite how to tell you this, but we have only just concluded the first part of our novel.  Yes, Ryan.  For nine long years, I have sat in my prison cell outlining this entire story in my mind.  I’ve meticulously planned all of it with a little help from my friends.  That’s a Beatles reference, by the way.  And I must say, it is very, very much going according to plan.”   Louise then comes down the stairs and tells Joe that they’re ready to leave.   David is left to hold Ryan there but, as soon as Joe walks away, Ryan tells David that he can’t do anything to him.  He can’t kill him because that would ruin everything that Joe just talked about.  David says that he’ll shoot Ryan in the leg.  Ryan tells him he better not miss and then wrests the gun away from David – and shoots him in the leg.   Joe and Louise are whisked away by helicopter as Ryan fires some worthless rounds at the chopper.

When Debra, other agents and paramedics arrive, Ryan tells her that he thinks it’s time to do things differently and wants to begin with David.  Debra, reluctantly, tells him that he has five minutes.  Now alone with the follower, Ryan inflicts a little more punishment on David’s already wounded leg until he gives up the location where Joey was being held.   The agents go to the garage and find that Bo, the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe, has been killed – by Charlie – and Dana is there in the cage, alive.  See, Charlie is a man of his word.   Dana tells them that Joey tried to help her.

Claire is being moved to a hopefully safe(r) house, now that Joe is running around loose – and she’s really not happy with Ryan.   Joe, however, is pulling up to a mansion, behind heavily guarded gates.  As he gets out the car, dozens of followers emerge from inside the house.  (So maybe Bo was right about the club thing.  These folks have to be paying dues because there’s no way Joe could afford this place on a professor’s salary.)  The first one to greet Joe at Casa de Carroll Cult Crazies is Emma.  After giving her a very warm hug, Joe spots Joey, who looks as terrified as he does confused.  Joe  walks over to the boy and bends over.  Joey says that he knows that Joe is his Dad.  Joe, all teary-eyed, responds that yes, he’s his Dad.

Now, where are Paul and Jake, and who the heck is Roderick?

Note: Fox announced on Monday that  The Following has been picked up for a second season.

Empress