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Game-Changing Reveals, a Stunning Kidnapping —Everything That Happened on The Irrational Finale
The Irrational's Alec Mercer may have unraveled the mystery of who was behind the church bombing that left him badly burned, but it looks like he'll have to solve a new mystery next season.
One mystery was solved, but another is just beginning on the shocking finale of The Irrational.
With the help of his girlfriend, Rose Dinshaw (Karen David), Alec Mercer (Jesse L. Martin) and his FBI agent ex-wife, Marisa (Maahra Hill), finally exposed the mastermind behind the deadly church bombing.
Mathias was revealed to be none other than Marisa’s respected boss at the FBI, Bob Caswith (Garry Chalk), the head of intelligence. It turned out the church bombing, which claimed the lives of 13 people in 2002, had simply been a clever ruse for Congressional candidate Kevin Sanford (James Tupper) to avoid a political scandal after one of his staffers died in his arms two days earlier.
The surprising reveal ended the two decade-long investigation into what authorities long believed had been a hate-motivated crime.
But just as soon as the mystery was wrapped up, another began in the final moments of the finale as Rose was kidnapped by two men and thrown into a black van.
What happened on The Irrational finale?
Episode 11 began with the emotional funeral of FBI agent Jace Richards (Brian King), Marisa’s love interest who had been helping her track down the mastermind behind the bombing.
RELATED: Everything We Know About The Irrational Season 2
Although Marisa, Jace, and Alec had previously discarded a theory that Sanford could be behind the bombing, Marisa told Alec at the funeral she just couldn’t shake the idea that he was somehow involved. The bomb had gone off just after one of Sanford’s campaign events at the historically Black church and Jace had been looking into whether one of Sanford’s staffers on the cleanup crew had been the real target of the bombing just before he was shot to death.
“Well, if he’s hiding something, we’ll find out what it is,” Alec promised her.
Sanford had three staffers working on clean up the night of the bombing, but only one survived, a man named Roger Silmar. Silmar disappeared shortly after the bombing, but with Rose’s help, they learned that he was now working as a covert CIA agent.
After tracking Silmar down, he revealed that just two nights before the bombing, Sanford had held a campaign event on a yacht. At the event, Silmar noticed Sanford — a notorious womanizer — following campaign aide Natalie Price into a back room. He followed the pair and discovered Sanford holding Natalie, who appeared passed out and was foaming at the mouth.
Sanford later assured him she “took too many Percocets but he gave her CPR and she was OK.” Yet, just two days later, Natalie had been one of the victims in the bombing.
Alec and Marisa realized Natalie likely died on the yacht and the bombing was just a cover to explain her death and keep any scandal away from Sanford. Still, they had to find out who Sanford’s accomplice had been.
During one of Sanford’s campaign events, they finally got the answer they needed when Alec’s trusty research assistants Phoebe (Molly Kunz) and Rizwan (Arash DeMaxi) snuck into the senator’s office and discovered a photo of him with his war buddies. They learned Sanford received a Purple Heart after storming an enemy machine gun nest and leading his men to safety.
Marisa noticed her boss, Bob Caswith, was in the photo and the team finally learned that he had been operating for years as “Mathias,” using his connections within the FBI to find someone to make the bomb (Wes Banning) and another to plant it (Peter Shelby). Bob then terrorized both men for years, forcing Wes (Ben Cotton) to take the fall for the bombing by threatening to hurt his daughter, Dahlia.
“It all makes sense now, how Mathias manipulated Wes Banning for all those years, how he found Wes’ daughter,” a stunned Marisa remarked. “Jace — Jace wouldn’t have thought twice about letting Bob in. He trusted him. I trusted him. The Bob I knew was an honorable man. He put his work first. How could he murder a fellow agent?”
Alec said Bob likely felt he “was repaying his debt to Sanford,” for saving his life in the war all those years earlier, when he agreed to arrange the bombing.
“His loyalty was a higher order moral obligation,” he explained.
Marisa and Alec confronted Bob outside the now rebuilt church. But just as they convinced Bob to lower his gun and to “make a better choice” he was shot by Sanford. Sanford claimed he was trying to save Alec and Marisa from Bob, who he insisted had acted alone all those years earlier out of a twisted sense of loyalty.
The truth, however, was exposed after Alec confronted Sanford just before his press conference to announce his run for president. Viewers learned that on the night of the yacht fundraiser, Sanford slipped something into Natalie’s drink to loosen her up, not realizing she had an allergy to opioids.
“How could I know that it was going to kill her?” he said.
Sanford believed he could still put the incident behind him, until Alec revealed that his tech-wiz sister Kylie (Travina Springer) had turned Sanford’s microphone on early, transmitting their entire conversation to the room of reporters waiting nearby for the press conference.
With the truth finally out, Sanford was forced to suspend his campaign and became the subject of an investigation into his connection to the bombing and Natalie’s death.
What happens to Rose on The Irrational finale?
The case was finally solved more than two decades after Alec was badly burned in the blast. While it didn’t change what happened to him, Alec and Marisa agreed it felt “righted” now that they know the truth.
The case had once brought them together and sparked their romance decades earlier. With it closed, Marisa asked her ex-husband what it meant for their relationship.
“I guess we are friends,” he said. “Unique friends.”
“OK, I can live with that,” she replied.
Marisa, who was still grieving for Jace, asked Alec if they wanted to get carryout together, but Alec already had plans with Rose. As Marisa left the apartment, it looked like Alec was finally ready to move on as he removed his wedding ring.
The story then jumped to six weeks later and viewers saw Rose, a former MI-6 agent and corporate fixer, talking on the phone to Alec as she was heading to her car.
“I’ll see you tonight, Alec,” she said, before hanging up the phone.
As she got to her car, she noticed that she had a flat tire. A tow truck driver approached her and offered to patch the tire, but just as he bent down to take a look at the tire another man came up behind her. She tried to throw a punch at her assailant, but the tow truck driver pulled out a gun, revealing he wasn’t the man he was pretending to be.
“Freeze, Rose,” he said.
Outnumbered, Rose held up her hands, as the two men pulled a black bag over her head and shoved her into a black van. The van drove off as the screen faded to black.
What happens to Phoebe, Rizwan, and Kylie on The Irrational?
Rose’s kidnapping surely left fans on the edge of their seat, but it wasn’t the only drama to play out after the bombing was solved.
Phoebe decided during the finale to leave Alec’s team to take a research apprenticeship with Professor Rachel Myers.
As she explained to Rizwan earlier in the episode, the bombing that destroyed their office in Episode 10 and the team’s close calls throughout the season as they tracked down criminals, has proved to be too much for her mental health.
“I think, and my therapist agrees, I need something more predictable, stable, like a regular office where people sit behind desks all day and talk about what movie they saw over the weekend,” she said.
Phoebe was nervous to share her decision with Alec, but it turned out he had been the one to recommend her for the position after noticing she might need a “break.”
“I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to influence your decision,” he told her.
In one of the final scenes, Phoebe was seen nervously walking into Professor Myers office to start the new position. Will it be the last we see of her? Or will she return to her former team to help them track down Rose’s kidnapper?
Phoebe isn’t the only one to be embarking on a new career. Kylie has been hired as an independent contractor with the FBI’s cyber department and is looking forward to using her “superpowers for the good”, rather than helping “greedy corporations.”
We can’t wait to see Kylie in action at the FBI next season.
