Castle Recap: Esposito's Past Comes Back

Wow. This episode of Castle was definitely an on-the-edge of your seat kind of thing. So many Esposito revelations!

We start out with two security guards talking while they work. Just as they turn around to get another load out of the truck, they see a masked guy on a wire, headed for the ceiling! Before they can really react, the masked gunman kills one of the guards.

Cut to the loft where Caskett is celebrating the fact that Kate has moved back in. Kate wants to get Castle a cup of coffee, but Lucy the household AI robot already makes it for him. The little triangular robot is acting jealous of Kate and was the running joke throughout the episode. *shrugs* It was weird.

They get called down to the crime scene and Castle finds a strange gel on the ground that smells like Chanel No. 5. Esposito recognizes the M.O. from a case back in the day where the crew used a combination of gel and perfume to disable certain security systems. Only one member of the crew that boosted a boatload of gold coins was caught. Her name was Sonia and she's already served nine years of her sentence. Beckett goes out to the prison to talk with her and doesn't really get anywhere until she says that if Sonia doesn't cooperate, Beckett will go to her parole hearing in three months and mention that she could have helped find the security guard's killer, but didn't. Sonia starts talking and says she can help because she still has some connections and can find the partner in her old crew nicknamed Hammerhead. Of course they'd have to give her a furlough to do that and Beckett agrees.

Esposito is acting weird about the case and Sonia, so he finally confesses to the team that he used to be engaged to Sonia. When he found out she was a criminal, though, he was the one to arrest her. But, you know, he's over her, it's all in the past. Yeah, Uh huh. She walks in and Espo's mouth is hanging open (until Castle closes it for him.)  She has on the same clothes from her arrest and it takes Espo back to that day. He watches while they fit her with a new ankle bracelet that has all kinds of features on it. Of course, Ryan is going to go undercover with her, but she says no, he wouldn't fit in and suggests Esposito.

Esposito thinks he can handle it, but from the moment they get in the car together, sparks are flying. They're rehashing history and how his family felt about what happened, why he turned her in. It's intense. Castle and Ryan are following behind them in a car, unashamedly listening in. They head to a bar in Spanish Harlem, and try to chat up the bartender. He's not having any of it and Espo ends up playing five-fingered fillet (that knifing game where he goes back and forth between the fingers with a knife and gets faster and faster. It's scary! I saw it on Alias once, too.) Anyway, the bartender tells them Hammerhead's real name was Joey and his grandma has an apartment nearby. Sonia and Espo head there, and the door is open. Of course Sonia goes in first, (weird!) and they separate, looking through the rooms. A guy with a shotgun comes at them and Sonia runs away, leaving Espo to his own devices.

Are Castle and Ryan any help? Nope. They lost the signal, but finally do see Sonia running away. Espo takes care of the gunman and cuffs him to a radiator. They catch Sonia who says it was just instinct to run away from a gun. Uh huh.

They bring Joey in for questioning, but he's a legitimate chicken businessman now and has an alibi for the night of the murder. Even so, they don't need Sonia anymore and Espo asks if he can take her back to the prison. Beckett agrees. This isn't going to end well. Sonia's talking about how she didn't even get a decent meal or a hot shower for her trouble and so Esposito takes her to his mother's house where they're having a family dinner. Turns out he didn't tell anyone what happened, just that he lost her. His family is big and loud and sweet and his grandma slaps him upside the head and says don't let her get away again. They eat and have a great time. When dinner's over, Sonia talks about her tough childhood and wishing she would have made different choices. She talks about how lucky Espo is to have a great family. (I loved his family, too, and finding out more about him.) She asks if she can have that hot shower and he agrees. Of course, Ryan calls just after she goes in the bathroom and says that the burner phone the inside guy was using leads back to Sonia. She was in on it! When he rushes into the bathroom, she's gone out the window. Called it!

Ryan tries to help Esposito track her down before they have to tell Beckett, but Esposito gets a lead that the mastermind of the whole thing was actually Sonia's dad. He heads over to an address he gets for him, alone. Ryan is not happy and he stops everyone in the bullpen to help him figure out where Espo has gone. Of course Espo goes in, tells everyone that he figured out that Sonia's dad was holding her share of the gold coin heist and when she found out he'd had a stroke, she had to escape so she could get the location of the hidden gold before he died.  Once he tells everyone, he gets whacked over the head and dragged away to a warehouse.

Beckett and Castle are up to speed and they go to the address where Espo was. All they see now though, is a bloodstain on the carpet and a gold coin under the bed. Now they're frantically looking for any clue as to where they would take Espo and finally figure out the one place the dad would go once every three months was an out of the way warehouse. They all head over there.

Espo is there with the bartender he did the five-fingered fillet with. That guy has a gun on Espo and as soon as they get the gold coins, he's going to kill him. Espo knocks out the bartender and keeps talking to Sonia about what really happened the day he found out she was a criminal. He was going to give everything up and run away. But he couldn't, because he's a cop. She still has a gun on him, but she's listening. She wants to go away with him now, but he says if he was strong enough to stay true to who he was, she's strong enough to face what's to come. And that's about two more years added on to her sentence. The guys rush in, Espo's okay, Sonia's in cuffs. Sonia and Espo get one more elevator scene, though, where he promises to visit her this time. I don't know. Do we really want Espo with a criminal? I liked him with Lanie. They were smart and sassy and fun together. I guess we'll see.

We end with Kate changing Lucy the AI robot to Linus which takes Castle by surprise. Linus does not like to be touched and zaps Castle for his trouble. Three's a crowd, my friends. Even with AI.

What did you think? Did you watch?