A “kitchen-sink” murder of electrocution, torture, and a knife through the throat leads Castle and Beckett to a suspect (Joshua Gomez, “Chuck” guest stars as Simon Doyle) who says he is a time traveler here to stop cataclysmic events in the future from happening. Is he a deluded grisly killer or is he telling the truth? We find out after the jump,…SPOILER ALERT FOR THIS EPISODE AND SEASON 26 OF CASTLE…

****SPOILERS BELOW****

When something happens or is said that is so delicious for Castle to utter words [slowly whispering into Beckett’s ear],….”This just became my favorite case.”…I can’t help but feel the same way. In my opinion we also got a treat of guest actors of  the aforementioned Mr. Gomez and Tim Russ (Stat Trek: Voyager, Sym-Bionic Titan).

After the title sequence we see the “time traveler,” Castle and Beckett try and suss out what is going on. Unfortunately for Beckett, “Simon Doyle” is on point with his need to be released, answering every question to the corrupting encouragement of Castle and the growing annoyance of Beckett, shown by her ever increasing eyebrow crinkle during the interrogation. I even liked how Simon handled the question I had in my mind of the time travel “Butterfly Effect” theory. Turns out Simon is a “Temporal Anthropologist,” studying significant events in human history, but someone (he says the real killer) had broken into their labs, jumped back in time and is trying to disrupt the future. If successful, billions would/could die.

Time of death alibis out Simon (“12:58”) as he was still being held for a psyche evaluation until 4am. Lipstick on the victim’s neck leads us to a bar and a working girl hired to get the victim’s keys. That traces back to the call girl’s handler and a guy named “Ward” who was trying to get the victim’s (Shana Taylor) keys so he could find the address of Tim Russ’ character, a theoretical physicist. Ward wants to track down a kid who was inspired by Tim Russ’ character at a conference earlier. This Ward guy wants to take out this kid because he supposedly will create new forms of energy in the future and Ward and his group think that is a violation of nature.

Caskett and crew work out where this Paul Deschile is and take out the baddie just before he could hurt him.

I think it was important that this episode never really showed that the time travel thread couldn’t be real, with a nice touch of the coffee stained letter by Beckett which then matches the photo of the letter that was taken off the perpetrator Ward (already showing the identical coffee stain Beckett just made). Not to be outdone, Castle races to give Simon back his futuristic gizmo that he left at Beckett’s desk, and as Castle rounds the corner of the precinct hallway just a few feet behind Simon, the hallway is empty and Simon has been “recalled.”

My favorite bit though, as a parting reflection, is the teaser for season 26 of Castle, Senator Beckett and three baby Castles. The Dr. Horrible and Firefly franchises will have to work around the shooting schedule.

Next week we get more Martha as Alexis and Pi venture off to their new place, and Castle and his mother visit for a house warming that will be interesting:

To catch this episode and/or the earlier episodes for this season,  click here at the ABC’s website or app: http://abc.go.com/shows/castle

What did you think of the this episode? Did you think it was going another way? What did you like most? Let us know in the comments.