- Title: The Following – Chapter Two
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With serial killer Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) in custody, newly reinstated FBI Agent Ryan Hardy’a (Kevin Bacon) work is just beginning as one of Carroll’s disciples (Steve Monroe) commits his first triple homicide and three others (Valorie Curry, Nico Tortorella, Adan Canto) have kidnapped Carroll’s young son (Kyle Catlett) in an effort to force his ex-wife (Natalie Zea), and Ryan’s former lover, to visit the killer in prison.
With the help of cyber-forensics expert (Chinasa Ogbuagu), Weston (Shawn Ashmore) is able to find the real identities of all three members of the cult who abducted the boy. Discovering Emma’s (Curry) true identity leads Ryan to an Edgar Allen Poe shrine where he and the newly assigned cult-expert Agent Parker (Annie Parisse) discover that Carroll is using the work of Poe as a religion to create his own cult of serial killers.
The show continues to fill-in blanks of the past including flashbacks of Ryan and Claire’s (Zea) affair and Joe Carroll’s first meeting Emma, later cultivating her into a disciple through her visits to talk with him in prison, and pushing her into killing her mother (Kate Hodge) whose body Weston finds walled up in Emma’s old home.
“Chapter Two” picks up from where the “Pilot” left off with a genius and nearly infalible Carroll in prison but still in control. Ryan does manage to suprise his nemesis when he is able to capture Jordy (Monroe), who had been sent to to kill Claire, without killing him. This, mixed with the growing disharmony between the three kidnappers, shows some early cracks in the serial killer’s master plan, but the introduction of yet another disciple (who burns a man alive on a street corner while wearing a rubber Edgar Allen Poe mask) means the man behind bars has plenty of other cards to play.