Editor’s Note: The below recap contains spoilers for Watson Episode 12.The first half of Watson’s two-part season finale is the first time that the series has delivered on some truly top-notch writing. It’s a shame that it’s taken this long for an episode to feel like a tight, well-crafted hour of television. Episode 12 is the culmination of a handful of plotlines that have been left dangling throughout the series, namely: the return of Moriarty (Randall Park), Lubbock (Inga Schlingmann) and Stephens (Peter Mark Kendall) admitting their feelings for each other, Derian’s (Eve Harlow) blackmail plot, and — unsurprisingly — the lipstick switcheroo from last week’s episode, the latter of which serves as the driving force behind the episode’s central plotline.
The episode opens similarly to previous weeks, with Lubbock attending to a patient who has been asleep for over fourteen hours, while the Crofts investigate the patient’s subbasement, looking for clues about his illness. They discover an old bomb shelter with a fridge that is a breeding ground for a thriving colony of black mold. Adam (Kendall) isn’t wearing the appropriate PPE during the investigation and gets a face full of black mold spores. Later that evening, Stephens and his new girlfriend Nell join Adam and Lauren (Amanda Crew) for a double date, and the twins wax and wane about passing for each other (something that Stephens isn’t particularly fond of) when they were children. While discussing how they used to trick everyone every Halloween, Adam repeats himself, and both Lauren and Stephens take immediate notice of the momentary lapse.
The next day, Mary (Rochelle Aytes) arrives at the clinic to celebrate, and Stephens is still openly watching his twin for any more curious symptoms. Watson (Morris Chestnut) reveals the reason for the celebration. The Holmes Clinic has been building a library of DNA samples taken from all of their patients over the years, which has enabled them to create an active database of human mutations for continued research. Watson tells the interns that the news will break later that week, and he’s ensured that each of them has been credited on the project, as they all helped him create something that will put the clinic on the map as the leading source of research into the rarest genetic mutations. Watson expresses concern about the fact that Shinwell (Ritchie Coster) is AWOL, but his concern is interrupted by the appearance of Moriarty, posing as a patient. Derian is quick to offer to treat their headache-ridden patient, making up an excuse about turning him away being a liability, and Watson falls for it.
Inside the patient room, Moriarty issues Derian with her first task. He wants her to find Watson’s viral vector and destroy the cultures he has been growing by introducing some foreign substance into the Petri dishes they’re growing in. Derian recognizes that this won’t be her sole job for Moriarty, and he confirms that assumption, all the while promising her that working for him means she’ll be “free.” He sees the true potential inside her, and he wants to liberate the parts of her that she’s restraining by working for Watson.
The Crofts Pay the Price for Shinwell’s Misdeeds
Adam’s condition takes a sudden turn for the worse, and Watson and Stephens find him freaking out at the nurse’s station, acting confused and hyperfixated on a poor nurse’s purse. Watson has him immediately admitted, and because of his previous history with addiction, the first thing they do is order a toxicology report. Stephens is insistent that it has something to do with black mold exposure, but that isn’t the case. Everyone from Watson to Derian thinks it’s a relapse, and unfortunately, when Stephens goes to talk to his twin, Adam admits that he did relapse. Lauren had her wisdom teeth removed, and she forgot to take her hydrocodone with her when she went away for the weekend, and he took six pills in two days. However, both twins are confident that what he’s facing isn’t connected to his relapse. Luckily, Watson is willing to rule out other factors while they wait for the toxicology report, and he gets the interns to investigate the black mold exposure and other potential underlying causes.
In the midst of all of this, Lubbock confronts Derian about her “cloudy” demeanor, and Derian brushes it off, assuring her that everything is fine. Lubbock isn’t convinced, and with good reason. While everyone works toward solving Adam’s medical mystery, Derian sneaks off into Watson’s lab to sabotage the cultures, but not before recording — and deleting — a schmaltzy message to Lubbock about how guilty she feels, and how hard she tried to be a better person. The message and its subsequent deletion doesn’t feel like as much of a surprise as the series wants it to feel like, considering Derian has been a dark horse the entire season. She doesn’t really care what anyone else thinks or feels, so why would her words be genuine? If anything, the deleted message makes her feel even more like a performative sociopath, and it’s just another aspect of her frustratingly confusing arc.
Stephen’s attempt to conceal Adam’s relapse is foiled by Mary, who goes straight to Watson with the toxicology report that reveals drugs in his system. While she has to treat it as a case of workplace intoxication, both of them recognize that there’s something far more dire happening with Adam. And he’s not the only one. Before they can unravel his mystery, Stephens finds himself afflicted and wandering into the OR, acting confused and absent-minded. Watson and the team immediately begin running through all the twins’ symptoms and their potential causes, and they discover that their brains are changing at a rapid pace. Watson also issues a dire warning that if they don’t find the underlying cause of their symptoms, the twins will face cascading brain damage and eventually death. Watson ends up in an elevator with Moriarty, blissfully unaware that yet again he’s in the presence of his greatest foe. Moriarty even ominously tells Watson that he’s a “big fan” of his work, but he’s too caught up in the case to give the exchange a second thought.
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Eventually, the team discovers that the twins have an extreme case of Herpes Simplex, which they attempt to treat with antivirals, but it doesn’t work. Their symptoms continue to increase and worsen, and after Derian runs sequencing on the virus, they discover that the twins have a strain of herpes that was genetically engineered. Right around the moment this revelation hits, Shinwell makes his grand return to admit to everything he has been doing for Moriarty and to shed light on the situation. The clinic made the bioengineered virus that is killing the twins, because Moriarty has been using their research to create deadly concoctions that target specific people by way of their DNA. Watson is horrified that his confidant has been working against him, but he seems somewhat allayed by the fact that Shinwell was doing it to protect his loved ones. Shinwell explains that Adam was the target, and Stephens is simply collateral damage, and he expresses his regret about how everything played out.
Shinwell departs the clinic, and it’s revealed that he has some sort of wound to his neck, but the episode doesn’t offer any answers about that. Instead, the focus remains on trying to save the twins. Watson tells the interns and Mary that they are all in danger and urges them to tender their resignations and leave before it’s too late. He explains that their genetic work is in the hands of an evil man, and that Moriarty has the tools to bioengineer viruses to kill all of them. Watson wants them to make an informed choice and leave, but Lubbock, Mary, and — surprisingly — Derian make it clear that they aren’t going to leave his side. Derian takes the opportunity to make the situation about herself by asking Mary to reconsider firing her, and given the situation, Mary offers to put her on probationary status, which Derian takes as a win.
Things Take a Turn for Stephens and Sasha
Adam’s condition continues to deteriorate, and he eventually falls into a coma while the brothers are discussing their views on life and the afterlife. It’s a pretty traumatic experience for Stephens, but Lubbock arrives shortly to soften the blow with a pair of cards that Lauren sent for the twins. She brings them to Stephens sans-PPE, which amuses him. It’s not like she could catch anything that was bioengineered for the twins, after all. Stephens tells Lubbock that he always assumed that they had plenty of time to become whatever they were going to become, confirming the speculation that the series was edging them towards a relationship. He had hoped that they would eventually find the right moment, and Lubbock admits that she felt the same thing and had hoped they would get together. She sits at his bedside and holds his hand, content for this to be their moment.
Lubbock heads back to the clinic, and Watson reveals that he has figured out how they might be able to save the twins. It’s a risky procedure that relies upon the viral vectors he has been cultivating in the lab, but it’s the first bit of good news they’ve had all episode. Yet that good news is short-lived. When Lubbock returns to Stephens’ room to tell him the update, she finds that he has slipped into a coma like Adam. Things take another turn once they start cultivating the samples in the lab. It turns out the Petri dishes that Moriarty had Derian sabotage are the precise Petri dishes they need to save the twins’ lives. Derian’s expression is pretty unreadable during the discovery, and it’s hard to tell if she’ll ever fess up to what she’s done. While Watson is able to salvage parts of the cultures, it’s only enough for a single dose of the cure, which means they will have to decide between which twin will live and which twin will die — and that’s the sobering note that the episode leaves viewers on with the episode’s cliffhanger.
Will Lubbock be forced to decide the fate of her could-be lover, so soon after discovering that they both have feelings for each other? Will Derian own up to what she did, or will she maintain her newfound good standing? We will have to wait until the season finale next week to see if Watson can stick the landing after a shaky freshman season.
