From everything that we saw in last week’s Pilot, some entity has a plan of world domination and is using children as the means to further that plan, all of it masked as a sort of “game” with this “Drill” as the gamemaster. Even though we all know that this game is just a hoax, if you step back and look at what is really going on, it really is similar to a game of chess. We don’t know yet who or what is behind this entire scheme, but whatever it is, each child has a specific task that in effect positions a certain piece on the chessboard. Once the children have completed their tasks, all of the pieces will be in place, and the only thing left is the final step. In this case, it’s likely an attack or some chain reaction of disasters. In tonight’s episode, the next 2 pieces are put in place.

So far from the Pilot, we know of 2 pieces that have already been strategically put in place. The 1st one is the boy who caused the explosion and who was killed at Westing Industrial Designs. We don’t know yet what the purpose of that explosion is, but it will be revealed next week, trust me. The 2nd chess piece is little Abby Fortson. At first, Abby’s task doesn’t make sense. She caused her mother to fall from a tree house, but what exactly does that accomplish? Well, we find out tonight that because her Mom is in critical condition and will likely not make it, this has forced her Dad to take a leave of absence from work. And, we should recall that Abby’s Dad is the Head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Again, I have seen next week’s episode and this turns out to be pretty important.

This week, the focus is on Minx Lawrence (Kylie Rogers) Sean Bennigan (Milo Ventimiglia), who will be responsible for positioning the next 2 pieces on the board. Minx’s game actually began last week when she logged into her father’s restricted DoD account, and yes, folks, there’s a fallout for that. Before you know it, the feds have swarmed Wes Lawrence’s home with a search warrant and are more or less accusing him of treason or possibly terrorism. Of course, Wes knows he didn’t do it, and so, he naturally blames his wife which doesn’t help their already strained marriage. Finally, Minx comes forward and admits it was her. This causes the agents to back off, but for some strange reason her parents don’t question her further about why she did it and possibly *who* asked her to do it. If they had, Wes would probably have learned about Drill and made the connection to Claire’s case. This will turn out to be one of the big things that bothered me about this episode.

Minx’s next task is to simply print out what she had downloaded but because her Dad is home now, doing it from her house wouldn’t be such a good idea. So, what does she do? She begins to think like Drill and enlists her friend, Tonya, to do it for her, and just like Drill, under the pretense that it’s a game. Drill is totally into what Minx has done, and even gives Tonya a quick demonstration by speaking to her through Minx’s board game (which is the scene in one of the promos for the episode). Okay, Minx has almost completed her part, so who’s next?

The next person up is the entity’s sole adult pawn, Sean Bennigan. He finally escaped from the hospital in the last episode, but being in there cost him valuable time. So, in this episode he has to kick into overdrive to make sure he stays on what appears to be a kind of schedule. He picks up a backpack full of supplies which is left by God knows who, and he also pretends to have an appointment with Dr. Benavidez (Catalina Denis) in order to find out her schedule. It appears he is now pulling her into his plan, because he steals her wallet and keys, which not only causes her to be delayed at the hospital but it gives him access to her home. He showers, changes his clothes, and also ransacks her house for a gun, which he does find. After all, if you’re going to kidnap somebody, you probably should have a gun. And, this is exactly what he does. In the final moments of the episode and after Dr. Benavidez gets another key for her car, Sean pulls the gun on her and has officially taken his 1st hostage.

You may be wondering what Claire (Lily Rabe) may be doing all this time. Well, not much except getting herself into trouble. We know how she had been holding back releasing the sketch because of her suspicions that it may be her husband. Her partner, Rollins (Derek Webster), finally gets fed up and demands answers, which forces Claire to tell the truth. Of course, he’s less than thrilled because this man now has a big headstart all because of Claire and her possible personal connections.

But, even after this, Claire continues working the case, which leads her to where Sean was last seem — Dr. Benavidez’s home. She doesn’t find much with the exception of the symbol he drew on the bathroom floor. It faintly looks like a ship’s anchor, and it’s not until the final scenes of the episode that we learn what it really means. Minx’s friend, Tonya, does come through and prints the documents on the flash drive. Of course, Minx doesn’t understand them, but they appear to be some kind of schematics. And, at the very bottom of the page is the logo for company who owns the schematics which turns out to be that very same symbol. How much you wanna bet that Sean Bennigan and his hostage is heading for this company right now.

All in all, I thought this was a very good episode. The writing is just fantastic with clues places strategically in each episode that provide a tad bit more information but not enough to give us a definite answer of what in the heck is going on. A good example is Drill causing Harper’s Mom to wake up briefly. Obviously a human being couldn’t do something like that, and so we are left with the possibilities of either some kind of supernatural entity or an extraterrestrial being. The revelation of why Harper caused her Mom to fall out of the treehouse is another big one. It was to pull her father away from his work which means that this scheme may involve nuclear power in some way. And, let us not forget the little boy in the desert who witnessed the fireball falling from the sky but who was terrified at what emerged from the wreckage. Score another one for the alien theory. All great clues and introduced at perfect times.

However, a few things are bugging me. In my eyes, Drill seems almost like a God. He can restore a boy’s hearing, which supposedly was not possible in Henry’s case. He can bring someone back from the brink of death like he did with Harper’s Mom. He can do all this, but can’t do something like hack into a DoD server? Instead, he had to get Minx to do it for him. I guess I don’t fully understand. This is not necessarily a negative statement about the show, and as I said in my Advance Review last week, how this series is ultimately graded will in part be due to what the mystery ultimately turns out to be. In other words, this may all make sense once we find out exactly what we’re dealing with.

Tune in next week as the game continues…

The Whispers airs on Mondays at 10/9c on ABC.

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