The team is back in action, tracking down the man who killed the MK Ultra scientists. It seems that leaders of Red Flag have also begun to go missing, and he is their best lead to finding out what happened. They find him stalking a junkie couple looking to pawn some stolen jewelry. He wants that jewelry, and is willing to kill for it. Things get complicated, however, when Rosen reveals that the girl with the stolen jewelry is his own daughter, Danielle.

[Be warned, this recap is of the season finale, so there will be spoilers for major plot points ahead.]

Rosen and Danielle have been estranged for years. She is an Alpha with the ability to transmit emotions to other people. She has been living as a junkie trying to suppress her ability for years. Bringing her in, it’s clear that she and Rosen have many unresolved issues. But the bigger issue is what did Isaac, the Alpha assassin, want with her jewelry.

Bill, in what feels like an overly quick fix to his collapse last week, states that the infarction he had actually normalized him so that he is now in control of his ability to amp up again. Determined more than ever to do his job again, he has Gary go back into Rosen’s cloud drive to scour the MK Ultra files to find out who this Stanton Parrish is. Gary finds that he was a scientist who worked on MK Ultra, who was also an Alpha who wrote a manifesto on how Alphas would one day take over the world. His manifesto has been considered to be Red Flag’s playbook. He has also been dead for thirty years.

Gary is called to a meeting with Anna, and he tells her what he has discovered about Parrish, and Anna very nervously tells him to stop looking into it, but Gary notices that she talks about Parrish in the present tense, which leads him to believe that she’s withholding some information about him still being alive. Taking this information, and using facial recognition software, Gary soon discovers that Parrish has been around since the Civil War. He is an immortal Alpha, and the true leader of Red Flag.

Meanwhile, Rachel uses her ability to find out what is so special about this piece of jewelry that Danielle has. She figures out that, when the jewels are stacked together in just the right way, they become a jump drive. On the drive is a location and a time, along with a quote from Parrish’s book. Rosen believes that this is an invite to a meeting of all the heads of Red Flag, and that Parrish will be there. With this information, Agent Sullivan sets up a major infiltration to take care of Red Flag once and for all.

As they prepare to go in, Rosen starts to get suspicious that this is all a setup. Rachel, using her ability to listen in on the meeting, hears that the heads of Red Flag are discussing going public. Rosen believes that his team and the DOD were manipulated by Parrish to go in and eliminate these heads of Red Flag for him – to do his own dirty work in keeping them from going public. Sullivan doesn’t seem to care, and just wants to take advantage of the opportunity to take down Red Flag.

What begins as a suppression operation with tear gas quickly turns into a firefight and massacre when the Red Flag leaders start fighting back. Rosen’s team goes in, and there are some very intense Alpha-on-Alpha fights. In the end, the majority of Red Flag is wiped out, including Anna. Gary is incensed by this, and the rest of the team are more disillusioned than ever and truly wondering if they are on the right side of this fight. Even Rosen is beginning to seriously question their role in the Alpha phenomenon.

In the end, Sullivan congratulates Rosen on what is essentially a win for the DOD, and extends to him an invitation to speak to a Congressional committee about how to better equip his team to deal with the Alpha phenomenon in the future. As he readies himself to go to Washington, Rosen suddenly comes face to face with Parrish. Parrish thanks him for stopping Red Flag from going public. For the time being, keeping the Alpha phenomenon secret is part of his agenda, and he attempts to convince Rosen that they are working toward the same purpose. Rosen won’t have any part of it.

The episode ends with Rosen going to Washington to attend a closed-door meeting to discuss Alphas. Sneaking in a hidden camera, and with Gary’s help, he begins to speak about the potential of Alphas, and his speech is broadcast all over the world. He has just done what Parrish was hoping to avoid: making Alphas public. Rosen is quickly arrested, but not before the damage is done. We also see, at the very end, that Parrish not only set up Rosen’s team at the Red Flag meeting, but that he is also working with Danielle.

‘Alphas’ was a show that started off pretty unimpressively, I must admit, but it has grown by leaps and bounds over this eleven-episode season. The characters have grown into their own entities, and the story has progressed in a fashion that made me eager to see more. With only a few exceptions, this show has failed to disappoint in living up to its potential. While I do feel that Bill’s complications were quickly glossed over and too easily fixed, each character has their own ability that has brought something unique and useful to the table each and every time. And if their abilities aren’t that useful – primarily in the case of Nina – it tends to be made up for in well fleshed-out character progression.

For a first season, to stumble but find its feet and then take off in a sprint in only eleven episodes is a very impressive feat. With Rosen changing the game so immensely, we have an excellent hook for the next season, and I personally cannot wait to see where they take this next year.

If you missed last week’s episode read our ‘Alphas: The Unusual Suspects’ recap to catch up.