Castle 8.01 - "XY" - Six Degrees of Geek

Season 8 of Castle picks up with Beckett having passed the Captain’s exam and being torn between sticking with her career as a cop or taking up an offer to run for State Senate. With an abduction and a new mystery surrounding Beckett, this makes for an intense premiere! Find out what happens below.

***** SPOILERS BELOW *****

The episode starts with our first murder of the season; where a poor guy gets murdered by a woman who looks like she’s about to get hot and heavy with him, but severs his aorta instead. Cut to Castle holding a sparking (probably a fire hazard) cupcake for Beckett, which reads “Congratulations Captain Beckett!” It looks like Beckett has stuck to her guns and gone forward with being a captain and rejected the Senate offer. I can’t say this was really a surprise, but I’m happy for her anyways!

Castle has decided to keep doing PI work on the side and arrives at his PI office to find out he has a new, surprise “associate.” It turns out Alexis has been working PI cases for her dad on the side and didn’t tell him about it. Ryan and Esposito call Castle and tell him they can’t get hold of Beckett and invite him to come help with their newest case. On arriving at the scene, Castle finds a bracelet he gave Beckett that morning. The crew thinks she must have been abducted; her first day as Captain isn’t going too well.

Searching one of the apartments of the dead men at the crime scene, they find and arrest a woman named Haley Shifton (Toks Olagundoye) who apparently was investigating stolen identities for an insurance company and came across the group of men who were found dead. Following a lead, Castle and crew talk to a woman who says Beckett was there with a man, but she was the one in charge. It looks like Beckett is into some shady stuff at this point, but as always, I’m sure there’s some elaborate explanation for it all. Alexis, Haley and Castle decide to tackle the case together after Haley shows up at the PI office. Alexis figures out that the man Beckett is with is having a diabetic attack and she broke into an EMS vehicle and stole some insulin.

Haley says she has a lead on a storage locker rented by one of the group of identity thieves, so she and Castle head to check it out. While there, the woman who committed the murder at the beginning of the episode shows up and starts shooting at them. Alexis tracks the taxi Beckett and the mystery man got into from EMS video footage and finds out that Beckett visited Bracken (the man behind her mother’s murder!) in prison. Considering how powerful Bracken was, it isn’t too surprising that he has something to do with this new drama for Beckett.

Naturally, Castle goes to confront Bracken at the prison. Bracken spins the story and claims Beckett is the root of the problem; she was obsessed with her mother’s murder for 15+ years and she can’t be content just being “Mrs. Castle.” Castle gets himself abducted when leaving the prison, so things are looking pretty normal as far as things go on Castle. Castle’s abductors demand Beckett’s location, or they’ll kill him. But first, they start by having tarantula’s (so creepy) crawl on his face to try to pry him for information.

As he’s about to be shot, Castle breaks free of his restraints and makes a run for it. All those years of goofing off and trying to escape restraints seems to have paid off for him! Beckett saves Castle, but refuses to tell him what’s going on before she runs off again. After running ID on the guy Beckett has been with, the team finds out this all has something to do with Beckett’s brief time with the FBI. Her old partner and group has been killed, and it doesn’t look like a coincidence. The episode ends with the guy who abducted Castle closing in on Beckett with his reinforcements. We’ll have to wait until next week to find out what happens in the inevitable shootout!