Season 2, Episode 10:
An Unexpected Return
With Frank missing from the school dance, Joe and the gang must race against time to locate his whereabouts and stop the Shadow Man from completing his ultimate plan.This episode contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: George's consciousness meets Frank's within the Crystal and asks how old he is, suggesting "22? 23?" before Frank corrects that he's 16. Rohan Campbell himself was 22-23 while filming Season 1.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Frank begs Munder not to go through with removing his consciousness and replacing it with Aaron's, citing I Have a Family.
- The Bad Guy Wins: The Greater-Scope Villain being the bad guy in question. It's confirmed that, ever since George saw Frank in the past via the Eye's Intangible Time Travel and presumably learned from the Eye who he was, he faked his death 25 years ago and stored his consciousness in the Crystal to wait for the Eye to bring Frank there to him, with the explicit intention to do a Grand Theft Me on his great-grandson and switch places with him. As we see in the denouement, he's pulled this off successfully (thanks to Munder's unwitting help), at least for now.
- Batman Gambit: George is uploaded into Frank's body and sees that the other kids were knocked unconscious in the Sleep Room explosion and Munder is the first person to wake up. He then pretends to be Aaron for long enough to get Adrian to set him free before revealing the ruse.
- Big Brother Instinct: Or rather, twin- or younger-sibling instinct this time:
- Adrian Munder's whole motive for everything he's done has been to try to bring back his twin brother, Aaron, whose consciousness has been locked inside the Crystal ever since the failed Project Midnight experiment.
- Trudy knocks Olivia out with a brick when she thinks the latter is about to shoot Fenton. It's an Unwanted Rescue, though, since Fenton insists Olivia wasn't actually going for her gun and he was planning to interrogate her, and now has to wait until she wakes up.
- Joe and his friends arrive in the Sleep Room to find that Munder has already started the Project Midnight treatment on Frank, and promptly rushes the man and tries to punch him, though considering Munder's a grown adult, Joe just gets bodied against the wall for his trouble.
- Big "NO!": Munder gives one when the heroes arrive and tackle him to the ground just before the transfer from the Crystal is complete.
- Bookends: The first time Frank encountered Young George as his projection of the Eye, he first saw elderly George before the camera created a Match Cut as it moved behind Frank's back. Now, when the Eye/Young George turns on him, a similar Match Cut happens with the camera moving the opposite direction, turning back into the older George...only this time, he's the real thing, rather than a vision.
- Brick Joke: A couple in the denouement:
- Phil shows Dennis the version of his film that he completed for him while the latter was sick. It includes a voiceover from Phil of a passage from the same Demon Day poem that he wouldn't stop quoting at his friends, to their exasperation, in "A Disappearance".
- After Chet's and Belinda's first attempt to get milkshakes together at Wilt's in "A Disappearance" was interrupted, Chet finally brings her one. Despite her skepticism that it can live up to the hype at this point, once she tries it, Belinda can't deny that she's indeed impressed.
- Cassandra Truth: As teenagers, Adrian pleaded with Aaron not to participate in Project Midnight—which he was doing because they offered him the chance to join the Circle—saying they were just using him. Aaron refused to listen to his brother, and suffered A Fate Worse Than Death for it when his consciousness was forcibly removed from his body, which was rendered permanently catatonic, and stranded in the Crystal.
- Caught on Tape: Chet and Belinda confront Angela in the Chamber of the Eye and get her to mention killing Mack, then reveal they have Brian and Deputy Riley listening in. Though they admit that this is a just a bonus on top of all the other evidence they have on her.
- The Cavalry Arrives Late: Joe, Callie, Chet, and Belinda arrive at Rosegrave and rush to the Sleep Room to try to rescue Frank from the Shadow Man, with Phil, Biff, Jesse, and Riley not far behind. Unfortunately, they don't get there in time; Frank's consciousness has already been put into the Crystal by then, and though they seemingly do manage to bring him back, the ending reveals that it was George's mind that got uploaded into his body instead, and Frank himself is still stuck inside the Crystal, unbeknownst to everyone else.
- Character Death: The final scene shows Gloria Estabrook, already in the hospital after having a stroke in "The Doctor's Orders", flatlining after being visited there by her father George in her grandson Frank's body, apparently due to shock. Season 3 opens with her funeral.
- Continuity Snarl: The episode's denouement is supposed to take place only a few days after the rest of it, as implied by a few conversations and confirmed in the next season, and Callie mentions that the case throughout the season took place over roughly just two weeks. However, there are a couple of details that don't make much sense unless far more time has passed at least over the course of the season's second half:
- School is now apparently out for the summer now despite none of the other characters mentioning that it was coming up soon. What's more, the math doesn't quite add up for what time of the year it is; the first season ended not too far into the new school year (almost certainly no later than early-mid October) and the second season's events started six months after, so probably no later than late April; if it's been only two weeks since then, that would put the ending of this episode sometime in mid-May at the latest, probably sooner, which is too early for K-12 school to be done. It's clearly just an excuse for the plot of Season 3 not needing to worry about the Hardys and friends being bogged down by school.
- Even though he was still nonverbal the last time we saw him and clearly had a good way to go in his mental recovery, Dennis has now gotten so much better that he's almost completely back to normal in what's supposed to be about a week later, able to go back to school and have normal conversations and banter with Phil.
- Despite having had a literal hole blown in the wall just a week and a half ago of in-universe time, Wilt's Deli has now somehow been fully repaired; all the arcade games that were on the wall that got blown up are now replaced, and there's not even so much as any lingering explosion burns on the wall at all, let alone any parts of it being sectioned off. The whole place looks like absolutely nothing ever happened to it, and it would certainly take far longer in real life to repair that kind of damage to a building in under two weeks.
- Creepy Basement: Munder's doubles as a Secret Room hidden behind the back of his wardrobe. It's where he was keeping his catatonic brother Aaron, and also creating a Sleep Room setup to restart Project Midnight, though he was forced to abandon the entire house after pulling a Twin Switch with Aaron when Joe, Phil, and Lucy came there to confront him. He has to take Frank to the original Sleep Room at Rosegrave instead.
- Cruel Twist Ending / Cliffhanger: Initially, when Frank meets George in the Crystal and the latter tries to hijack his body, the former appears to fight him off and successfully come back. However, the ending scene where "Frank" visits Gloria reveals that George was in control the whole time thanks to having stolen the Eye's power from his great-grandson, who was now not strong enough to leave, and succeeded in taking Frank's body, leaving his mind stuck in the Crystal.
- Distressed Dude: Frank spends most of this episode held prisoner in the Sleep Room by the Shadow Man, Adrian Munder, who intends to transfer Frank's consciousness into the Crystal and replace it with his twin brother Aaron's, whom he believes to be locked in there. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it's George who takes over the body instead, leaving Frank as this even more when he's trapped in the Crystal too.
- Empty Shell: This briefly happens to Frank's body when his mind is downloaded into the Crystal, but unfortunately for him, George Estabrook was waiting for this and takes the chance to hijack it for himself.
- Evil All Along: In contrast to what the first season implied, George never really did go through a Heel–Face Turn. With guidance from the Eye, he only pretended to want to change his ways in order to fool Ahmed and Sergei, letting them believe they'd succeeded in having him killed while actually putting his mind inside the Crystal and waiting there for decades to switch places with his own great-grandson.
- Evil Plan: The gang figures out Munder's by finding his Creepy Basement and the Project Midnight-esque setup, which acts as a "Eureka!" Moment: he wants to restart Project Midnight to put his twin brother's consciousness, which he thinks is stuck in the Crystal, into Frank's body.
- Faking the Dead: George let everyone, including his daughter, believe that his partners successfully had him killed when they sabotaged his plane 20 years ago after he tried to flee with his piece of the Eye. He was never really on the plane to begin with, and actually downloaded his consciousness into the Crystal as a way to prolong his life until he could later hijack Frank's body.
- Faux Affably Evil: George Estabrook seems genuinely glad to meet Frank in the realm of the Crystal, stating he's been looking forward to it ever since seeing him on the beach many years before thanks to the Eye's Stable Time Loop. This hasn't stopped him from planning for decades, since before faking his death, to steal his own great-grandson's body and trap his mind inside the Crystal. As soon as he touches Frank and takes the Eye from him, George drops the grandfatherly act and turns colder, just seeming rather smugly amused when Frank tries to resist.
- Flashback:
- Adrian has one to his Start of Darkness: the day his twin, Aaron, took part in Project Midnight after Adrian couldn't convince him not to, was rendered catatonic when it failed, and subsequently hospitalized for good, while Adrian had to leave Rosegrave for his own safety.
- The same flashback Gloria had in "Eye to Eye" of the day George left is shown again when Frank witnesses it himself while inside the Crystal, but continues farther this time and greatly re-contextualizes the whole scene, thus doubling as Once More, with Clarity.
- Grand Theft Me: This was George's master plan all along: fake his death, download his consciousness into the Crystal, and wait for the Eye to bring Frank there many years later so George can steal his body and leave him stranded there. Unfortunately, he succeeds.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The biggest twist of the season is that George Estabrook was this all along, and by extension, the Eye as well, which is ultimately loyal to George as its original user (or one of them, anyway). The Eye caused a vision of Frank to travel across time and appear to George before he "died", and by thus learning of his great-grandson's existence, George formulated a plan to dodge his enemies and extend his life by faking his death, storing his consciousness in the Crystal, and waiting for Frank to appear there so he could resurrect himself as a much younger man by stealing his body. The Downer Ending of the season reveals that he's succeeded.
- I Have a Family: Played for Drama. Munder's motivation for his actions as the Shadow Man is to try to revive his brother by uploading his mind from the Crystal into another body. As he prepares to do this to Frank, which would leave his mind locked inside the Crystal instead, Frank desperately begs him not to go through with it by stating that he, too, has a brother and is a brother himself, but his pleas fall on deaf ears.
- I Lied:
- Combined with I Did What I Had to Do, which Joe states word-for-word. He convinces Frank to finally put the Eye's power back in the relic by assuring him that they can still continue to use it. After Frank returns the power, collapses, and wakes up in the hospital, Joe tells him that Brian has the relic and plans to make sure it won't ever see the light of day again. Joe justifies the lie by saying that he had to save Frank from the Eye as well as Munder, and wanted his brother back. Frank accepts this and thanks him....except it's not actually Frank, but George.
- And then it turns out that the part about giving the Eye to Brian was also a lie, and Joe actually keeps and hides it.
- Olivia tells Fenton that she never actually had information about who ordered Laura's death, and only claimed she did to draw him into a trap so she could frame him for the murders she committed.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: After the gang rescues Frank (later revealed to really be George), Joe makes him return the Eye to the relic. He reluctantly does, and Joe says, "See, guys? Wasn't so bad."...and then "Frank" has a Heroic RRoD and faints from the strain of expelling the power.
- Irony: A fairly tragic example. Joe was worried about Frank telling their friends he has the Eye because "What if someone slips up?" in keeping the secret. He realizes that Munder found out about it and took Frank because Joe himself slipped up by discussing it with Phil after they seemingly found Munder catatonic at his house, while the real Adrian was hiding nearby and heard him (not that Joe had any possible way of knowing this).
- It's All My Fault: Joe feels this way when he realizes Munder took Frank because he found out about him having the power of the Eye via hearing Joe talk about it to Phil, though Callie, Biff, and Phil comfort him by saying Munder would have eventually found out anyway (which is likely true), and Joe and co coming to his house to confront him in "A Midnight Scare" messed up his original plan and forced him to improvise.
- Let's Split Up, Gang!: Once the friends realize Frank is missing, Callie and the three younger kids go to Munder's house to see if they missed anything there earlier, while Chet and Belinda go after Angela to get her tracker, knowing they can use it to find Frank if he has another vision.
- Love Makes You Evil: Adrian Munder is utterly twisted by his grief over his beloved twin brother being rendered catatonic in Project Midnight, and the lengths he's been willing to go in trying to bring him back are far beyond the pale: abducting and damaging the mind of an innocent student (Dennis); blowing up an unrelated store (which critically injured the chief of police) so he could break into a house; murdering a doctor previously involved in Project Midnight because she knew who he was; and kidnapping another innocent student (Frank) with the intent of permanently removing his soul from his body and trapping it inside a crystal forever to replace it with his brother's soul.
- Mama Bear: Jesse and Riley arrive at the Sleep Room to find Munder throttling Frank*, her girlfriend's nephew, and furiously shouts at Munder to get off him and tries to pull him away as Riley snaps on the handcuffs.
- "Not So Different" Remark: From the hero instead of the villain. Munder explains to Frank that love is his true motive for what he's doing, his love for his twin brother who was taken away from him in Project Midnight, and as he describes it, Frank is obviously thinking about his mom:Munder: Aching, painful, mourning love that comes with missing someone so much that you would do anything to bring them back [never ends]. Can you understand that?
Frank: More than anything. - Once More, with Clarity:
- Once the gang finds Munder's Creepy Basement and all the proof therein that he's the Shadow Man, several previous snippets from throughout the season are replayed to clearly show Munder in the Shadow Man disguise, plus him covertly watching Joe and co in class as himself.
- The Flashback of George's final conversation with Gloria is replayed, but then continues further than it did originally, greatly changing the context. The first time, it appeared that George was basically disinheriting Gloria because of her hunger for power while he had turned over a new leaf, and that she ratted him out to his partners in retaliation. Instead, it's revealed that this was part of George's plan all along, and he trusted Gloria to help him see it through, while promising to see her again, giving her a more affectionate goodbye, and having a package containing the Crystal sent to her, implying before it's confirmed a moment later that George himself has been inside the Crystal ever since.
- As Frank and George fight inside the Crystal's realm, it looks like Frank is successfully able to fend off his great-grandfather, grab the realm's facsimile of the Crystal on the chandelier, and return to the real world, as we see his eyes move there to indicate he's woken up. And then in the final scene, it's confirmed after increasingly heavy hinting that this is actually George, and we see the rest of what happened: without the Eye's power, Frank was unable to leave the Crystal, and George, who stole the power from him, got out instead and has now body-snatched Frank while leaving his mind behind, stuck in the Crystal presumably forever unless and until someone else saves him.
- Out-Gambitted: The first part of Munder's plot—kidnapping Frank and downloading his mind into the Crystal—works perfectly, but then the person he brings back out is not who he expected. The Eye explicitly tells Frank inside the Crystal that Adrian's plan was never going to work, and he "thinks exactly what he's supposed think"; George counted on someone doing just what Munder's done so he could take Frank's body instead.
- Pet the Dog: Despite Dr. Burelli having experimented on kids in the first place, she is genuinely remorseful in the Flashback when the second trial of Project Midnight goes wrong and Aaron ends up catatonic, telling Adrian that she wouldn't ever hurt him even if Stratemeyer would because she's a doctor and that would go against her oath, and urging him to accept the payoff for his silence to keep himself safe.
- Post-Victory Collapse: Played with, as it's not directly due to the victory. After being rescued, Frank* puts the Eye back in the relic at Joe's insistence. Apparently, forcing out its power causes a huge energy drain and Heroic RRoD, and he passes out within seconds.
- Rage Breaking Point: "Frank" (actually George) gives Munder a Hope Spot by pretending to be Aaron after the transfer is complete long enough for him to release him, then reveals the lie, and coldly, almost mockingly shuts down Adrian's attempted denial by asking if he sees someone who loves him in his eyes. Adrian doesn't say a word, but just starts strangling "Frank" until Jesse and Riley arrive.
- Rapid-Fire "No!": Frank does this as George escapes the Crystal realm to take over his body, leaving him behind and stuck there.
- Retcon: Olivia, when warning Fenton of what's to come if he doesn't let her finish what she started, tells him about something her mother Anya told his sons last year, quoting it as "The ground you walk on is cursed, and if you're not careful, your lives will be, too." Frank also said something to this effect to Callie back in "A Clue on Film". Except, Anya never said anything to the Hardys about their lives being cursed; she only said that the "evil" her father and the original three Circle founders discovered in the mine "cursed this town, and it curses it still!" What's more, she never said anything to Joe at all, having only interacted with Frank, Callie, Chet, and Gloria onscreen.
- The Reveal:
- The motivation of the Shadow Man, a.k.a. Adrian Munder, is to bring his brother back by uploading Aaron's consciousness into Frank's body.
- George Estabrook turns out to have been Evil All Along and the Greater-Scope Villain of the series so far. He didn't die when his plane crashed into the ocean, because he wasn't on it to begin with (though his piece of the Eye was); his consciousness had already been put into the Crystal, awaiting the opportunity to load himself into Frank's body as his new host. The final Wham Lines of the season show that he succeeded.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Joe realizes that it was the Shadow Man, not Angela, who kidnapped Frank because, if she was tracking the Eye, she should have traced it to the Chamber where Frank had his vision, so the fact that she showed up to the school instead means that she's actually tracking the Crystal's energy signature—which the Shadow Man has with him—just like on the day of the bombing, and therefore there's a connection between the Eye and the Crystal. In fact, Frank was having more visions of Young George since arriving at the school, so Angela really could have just tracked the Eye there as usual, but Joe doesn't know this, and everything he deduced is correct.
- Season Finale: Of Season 2. Notably, unlike the previous one, this finale has a huge Cliffhanger Downer Ending, since it was written from the start as a Two-Part Trilogy with Season 3.
- Secret Room: The gang deduces that, if Munder could overhear Joe talking quietly to Phil about Frank having the Eye, he must have been very close, and find a door in the back of his wardrobe leading to a Creepy Basement. This was originally where Munder was preparing to revive Project Midnight, but since he couldn't go back to his house after Aaron was found, he has to improvise and takes Frank to the real Sleep Room instead.
- Sequel Hook: Seasons 2 and 3 are a Two-Part Trilogy, and this episode ends in a Cliffhanger and leaves open some plot points from this season to be resolved in the next one.
- The person who returns Biff's call to her birth mother Abigail Owens is the latter's daughter, meaning that Biff has biological siblings.
- JB is last seen opening up and looking at McFarlane's scroll he stole from the Hardys in his car.
- On a related note, when trying to convince Fenton to let her go and work with her, Olivia reveals that the Eye is only the beginning, and there are other powerful relics out there as well that she's working to gather together with a partner, whom she claims won't be corrupted by them like the Circle was; these additional MacGuffins include the Crystal, JB's scroll, the scrolls Trudy now has, and presumably more.
- Despite Joe telling "Frank" (actually George) that he gave the Eye, now returned to the relic, over to Brian to make sure it "never sees the light of day again", it's later shown that Joe secretly kept it, for unclear reasons, unbeknownst to everyone else.
- A woman in a black hooded coat shows up in the warehouse where Fenton has captured Olivia and is holding her prisoner. The woman removes her hood, revealing herself to be Laura Hardy (or someone borrowing her appearance).
- Coupled with Cruel Twist Ending: George did succeed after all in his plan to transfer his mind into Frank's body, essentially resurrecting himself under the guise of his own great-grandson, with Frank's consciousness still stuck inside the Crystal.
- She Knows Too Much: Munder admits that this is the reason he killed Dr. Burelli: not out of revenge specifically, but because she knew who he (the Shadow Man) really was and would have ruined his plan to save Aaron, so from his perspective, she had to die.
- Shipper on Deck: Phil's reaction to finding out Joe was just dancing with Lucy is "Nice, man! What song?" before Biff tells him now's not the time.
- Something Only They Would Say: In George's final goodbye to Gloria in the Flashback where he promises to see her again someday, he calls her "my darling daughter." In the final scene, where he visits her at the hospital in Frank's body, George again addresses her as this to prove it's really him instead of Frank.
- Spanner in the Works: Once George hijacks Frank's body and impersonates him, Joe insists he return the Eye to the relic as the real Frank previously promised to do, and George, knowing there's no way around it without blowing his cover, reluctantly does. This is crucial for any hope of rescuing Frank in the future, since that wouldn't be possible if George still has the Eye.note
- Tap on the Head: Trudy knocks Olivia unconscious by hitting her in the head with a brick, and she's out cold for at least several minutes. She wakes up none the worse for wear except being slightly groggy at first.
- Unwitting Pawn: It was heavily hinted before, and is now confirmed, that the Eye was using Frank as one all along: seemingly being helpful by giving him visions and insight that were vital in solving the case, while actually acting as The Corruptor to him to drive him away from his loved ones who would be able to reel him in, all for the purpose of allowing George to resurrect himself by stealing Frank's body.
- Wham Episode: Probably the biggest of the whole series so far. Adrian Munder tries to revive his brother Aaron by putting his consciousness into Frank's body, transferring Frank's mind into the Crystal in the process. There, Frank learns that George Estabrook didn't really die in the plane crash that seemingly killed him; instead, he put his mind into the Crystal so he could wait there for Frank (whom he'd seen on the beach thanks to a time-travel vision given to him by the Eye) and steal his body himself, though Frank is apparently able to stop him. Fenton learns that Olivia was lying about knowing who ordered Laura's death, but she reveals that there are other magical relics out there besides the Eye, and other forces trying to gather them. Fenton is then left stunned when Laura shows up there. Frank still hasn't recovered from his experience with the Eye and breaks up with Callie for no apparent reason, and the very ending of the episode reveals why: thanks to the Eye, George succeeded in his plan to transfer his consciousness into Frank's body, meaning that he's essentially come back to life, while the real Frank is still trapped in the Crystal. And in the final moment of the episode, Gloria Estabrook, a major character in the series who's already mute and bedridden in the hospital after a stroke, flatlines and dies from shock after seeing her father revived and masquerading as her grandson.
- Wham Line:
- First when the Eye, in the form of Young George, turns on Frank just before the real George appears before him in the Crystal's realm:Young George/The Eye: Our time is done together, Frank. The Eye's loyalty has always been with its original master.
- And then, when George reveals he's going to take Frank's body and leave his mind stranded in the Crystal:George: The transfer's about to begin. And then I'll be free. The Eye has shown me the path, Francis. This is all part of it. I truly wish there was another way.
- In "Frank's" visit to Gloria, many viewers will guess just based on his reaction and facial expressions as soon as he sees her that he's not really Frank, but rather George in his body. And then as soon as he starts speaking with a fairly different cadence than Frank normally uses and says "Our plan worked", it's obvious this is the case even before he fully confirms it by calling Gloria "my darling daughter."
- First when the Eye, in the form of Young George, turns on Frank just before the real George appears before him in the Crystal's realm:
- Wham Shot: While Fenton is holding Olivia prisoner after capturing her, a woman in a hood arrives, and Fenton demands that she turn around and reveal her face. She does so...and it's apparently Laura Hardy.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
- Frank asks why Munder didn't just kill Dennis when the latter started to get his memory back, instead of wiping it again. Munder scoffs at this, insisting that he's "not a monster" and doesn't take killing someone lightly. When Frank points out that he murdered Burelli, he answers that she couldn't live because she knew his identity, but Munder saw another option for Dennis without having to murder him, and took it.
- In the Flashback, young Adrian asks Dr. Burelli, who urges him to leave Rosegrave after Project Midnight fails because He Knows Too Much, why she doesn't just kill him. She states that Stratemeyer themselves would be just fine with doing this, but as a doctor, she wouldn't ever purposely take a life, and stresses that what happened to Aaron was an accident.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Angela outright states that this is why she murdered Mack. Too bad for her, Belinda and Chet are wearing a wire, and Deputy Riley and Brian hear the whole confession.
