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We are two episodes into Season 7 and, while Rick Castle has been found, more or less unharmed, the reason(s) and person(s) behind his disappearance are still a mystery. At the end of “Montreal” we are left pondering several questions:
What event in Hollander Woods when he was 11 prompted Rick’s career choice? Way back in Season 2 , Episode 6 – “Vampire Weekend” Beckett asks Castle what caused his fascination with crime and murder. His answer: the unsolved murder of a young boy. But after a moment he laughs and tells her he made up the story – “It’s what I do!”
But what if part of that story has some basis in fact? We know from his own admission in “Montreal” that something in those woods did indeed shape his future and he has chosen to forget it. What if, at the age of eleven he saw the mutilated body of a murder victim and ran away in fear for his life and his writing became a way of exorcising that memory.
How large a part did Rick actually play in his own disappearance? His car was in fact run off the road prior to his planned wedding. Was it staged? We do not actually see the collision, although evidence at the scene indicates that Castle was dragged from the car, presumably unconscious.
Was he a willing participant from the outset? That seems unlikely. Why go through the charade of preparing for the ceremony only to vanish minutes before?
Where was he for those two months? We know at some point he was in Montreal. But the other clues Lainie discovers point in many directions.
He was exposed to Dengue Fever, since he now carries the antibodies. That points to somewhere tropical or the African continent. Or might he have been injected with the fever on purpose, a red herring?
He had a healing bullet wound on his body, indicating he was grazed but not seriously wounded. Did he fight back or try to escape?
The dinghy he is found in has fresh bullet holes. Are all these clues true or fabrications, more red herrings to send us and Castle into all different directions?
Who is the FakeHenryJenkins? And what is he still doing in the abandoned building in Montreal when Castle attempts to reconstruct those lost two months? Is he following Castle?
What about the memory cards to Kate, Martha and Alexis? How was he able to record them and place them in the safety deposit box? And when?
In his message to Kate he implies that he is in grave danger and possibly dead. This does not sound like someone who decided to just “drop off the grid”.
And why would Castle ask to have his memory erased? And why do we believe FakeHenryJenkins in the first place? This individual likely had something to do with Castle’s disappearance from the start.
There are many unanswered questions to this new mythology the series and its characters are exploring. We will watch each episode with renewed curiosity in how the clues laid out in “Driven” move us toward unearthing a solution to this latest mystery.
In my mind I still keep coming back to the fact that he is still being “surveilled” – FakeHenry just happens to be in the abandoned building when Rick returns? I find that suspicious and too coincidental!
I recall an earlier Castle episode (Season 4, Ep. 22 – “Undead Again”) where a character manipulates another’s actions by dosing him with scopolamine – a drug that allows suggestible behavior (in this case murder) and wipes all memory of it.
Could that be a possible answer to the past two months? Why should we believe FakeHenry that Castle asked to have his memory erased?
If we dismiss the idea that all of this was some plan by Castle, it seems more likely the amnesia was part of a plot to discredit Castle’s character, to cause doubt in his closet friends and colleagues. He was allowed to live for a reason and, although showrunners and producers have indicated that this is a new “Big Bad” – a brand new mythology – it has all the earmarks of 3XK, who takes more satisfaction in the preparation than the ultimate act.
Time will tell!