Poor Espo really can’t catch a break, can he? 

But more on that later. Let’s recap this week’s Castle, “Heartbreaker”:

Our cold open features two security guards in a warehouse hauling money from a truck to a high security room. When they enter the room, a dark-clad figure abseils from the ceiling, picks up the bags, and winches their way up. One of the security guards leaves to get the bags and is shot by the propelling perpetrator.

At the scene, Castle, now happily and openly reunited with Beckett, joins the crew as they investigate. He gets a whiff of One Direction body spray and sees it dripping from the ceiling with gelatin. Esposito blanches at this revelation and brings the guys back to the precinct to explain.

10 years previously, Espo arrested a woman named Sonia Ruiz, who was part of a criminal gang who robbed coins from an antique auction. Their MO was to disable security units using a potent concoction of 80% gelatin, 20% perfume. Beckett visits her in prison, and he says she didn’t know the other crew member’s names, as they all went by shark nicknames and “the Great White”, their leader, died three years ago.

Beckett arranges for her to be temporarily released to assist with the investigation. 

Javi has to fess up: they were kind of involved. 

And by kind of involved, he means engaged.

Damn, son.

It turns out Javi was the one who arrested her 10 years ago after he realised she was a crook. So there might be a little … tension.

Sonia says Jimmy, the Great White Shark, used to frequent a bar in Spanish Harlem, so she and Javi should go to blend in.

Javi plays a game of five finger fillet, while Castle and Ryan hack his phone and listen with the barman who tells him the name of one of Jimmy’s accomplices.

They go to his apartment, where Javi is held at gunpoint and Sonia runs. Javi disables the gunman, cuffs him to a radiator and catches Sonia on the street. She is sent back to the prison, and Javi offers to drive. He makes a stop off at his family’s house, who don’t know she was in prison. They have a home-cooked meal, and Sonia asks Javi to join her in the shower. He declines, reluctantly. He then gets a call from Ryan: the victim was in on the heist, and his burner phone had calls to Sonia’s prison. She was in on it.

And she escaped through the bathroom window.

Javi searches who else visited her and finds one log: her father.

He turns up at the apartment where her father is bed-ridden and realises he was the Great White Shark and knew where her gold was. Javi is smacked from behind by a shotgun by her accomplice, kidnapped in a van and taken to the warehouse where the coins were hidden.

Sonia’s partner-in-crime tries to kill Javi, and she pulls a gun on him. He asks why he shouldn’t kill Javi, and she says because she loves him.

Espo knocks him out and tells Sonia he has to arrest her, but, if he could make it up the stairs ten years before and arrest the love of his life, then she could make it through what was coming.

The guys turn up. Javi is suspended for a week without pay, and he agrees to visit Sonia in prison.

It’s a little weird he never told Ryan he was engaged, but whatever.

Also, in the B-Story, Lucy gets jealous of Kate moving in with Rick, as the CPU had Rick all to herself for a while.

At the end of the episode, Beckett reprograms the CPU, so Lucy becomes Linus.

Nice Peanuts reference, writers.

I’ll miss Aubrey Plaza’s Lucy, but Seth Green as Linus should be interesting.