For those viewers who love Hayley, this week’s CASTLE was a good one. Focusing on her past and the people she knew in her MI6 days, as well as exploring an intriguing mystery that puts Hayley on the FBI’s most wanted list, is a classic CASTLE episode.
The episode begins with Hayley doing a favor for an old spy buddy where she and a new spy break into an office to download some basic spy-wear to catch a cheating husband. While in the office, they see a businessman and a “lady friend” come up for some midnight fun. As soon as the software downloads, Hayley leaves the building, but the next day the police are called in to find the body of the spy that Hayley broke into the building with. At first Hayley hides her involvement in the case, pretending to contaminate evidence to ensure that there is an explanation for her fingerprints and taking calls from her spy friend in secret. Eventually, however, Alexis finds out something is wrong when she walks in on Hayley trying to leave town. Our favorite British spy then confesses everything about that night in the office building to Beckett.
It turns out that the thumb drive they downloaded was not basic spy-wear but a virus that took out half of Manchester’s power source. This is seen as an act of terror, and when Hayley’s long time friend who set up this operation is killed (with Hayley receiving $10,000 in her bank account) it is clear she is meant to be the fall-guy. The team tries to do some investigating while Hayley hides in Castle’s office from an FBI arrest warrant, and they interview the businessman and the woman he was with. It turns out they were hired and coerced to ensure that Hayley was set up.
This leads Hayley and the team to her ex-partner — one who died (apparently) a few years ago after a mission for MI6 went bad, and immediately after Hayley left the Queen’s service. However, he is not dead after all and after evading Alexis and Castle, Hayley goes to meet with him. He has been tortured and confesses to the murders of the two men Hayley broke into the energy office with. Not only that, but when Hayley refuses to jump into his plan of retiring on the money he gave her, he knocks her out and puts a knife to her throat, ready to kill her.
Enter Castle and the team as they tracked the two, knowing the warehouse was an old hideout for them back in the day. Hayley knows the shortcuts her ex-partner will take so she takes off after him with a gun. She catches up to him, they square off, and she pleads one last time for him to come in peacefully. He refuses and — lunging at her — she has no choice but to pull the trigger.
Although killing her partner was an emotional hit, the end of the episode provides hope as Hayley shares a drink with — as she described to her partner right before he tried to kill her — a “family”. Alexis and Castle have given Hayley a home and while Espo, Ryan and Beckett (who didn’t feature prominently in this episode at all) go out for beers, it looks like everyone is happy. This happiness is continued in the Castle home as Rick reveals a refurbished motorcycle he got for Kate, to assuage a misdeed he committed in a dream she had the night before. They exchange ideas about going on a cross-country bike trip and then retreat blissfully to the bedroom.
An all new CASTLE will air April 25 on ABC at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT!