Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 15.

For a show that usually gives us a glimpse into the future — which is to say, gives us a view of the murderer long before the police realize who did it — Elsbeth sure has been playing around with its howcatchem format a lot this season, hasn’t it? Yeah, it keeps things fresh by breaking out of the usual pattern of things, but this is officially the second episode in a row that falls more in the “whodunnit” camp, even if the list of suspects is considerably shorter than it would be on another crime show in that format. Regardless, we’ve got a lot to talk about, including whether or not psychic powers are real, as well as a much-anticipated and much-deserved change in the precinct’s status quo! So let’s get to it.

A Psychic Helps a Grieving Widow in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 15

The episode opens with Phyllis (Jill Eikenberry), a widow who has gone to visit Marilyn Gladwell (Tracey Ullman), a medium who connects her with her late husband George. Marilyn is the only one who seems to listen to Phyllis, given that her stepson Tim (Max Jenkins) is avoiding her and constantly going out, using her driver on top of it. Marilyn connects with George, and tells Phyllis that he’s advising her to vote to sell his business at the upcoming board meeting next week. Phyllis takes this seriously, even though that doesn’t sound like George, but it’s then that Tim arrives, and he doesn’t believe a word of it. He asks Phyllis to wait in the car, and uses his alone time with Marilyn to tell her to stay away from his stepmother, as he’s done with her taking advantage of her and taking his father’s money in the process.

Back at their place, Tim tells Marilyn that Butterwell, his father’s snack food company, is important to him, and there’s no way George would want them to sell to Snackerdoodle, their biggest competitor. He also orders her not to see Marilyn anymore, then leaves for an appointment. The appointment turns out to be a first date from a dating app, but when he arrives at the appointed location in Central Park, his date blocks him. A rustling in the bushes catches his attention, and moments later, he’s shot in the chest with an arrow and dragged off.

A day and a half later, Phyllis heads to the police station, where she tells Elsbeth (Carrie Preston), Officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson) and Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) that the last time she saw him was 36 hours earlier, when he left for an online date. While they initially suggest that maybe the reason he hasn’t been home or used the family car is because he’s still with his date, Phyllis is positive something is wrong. Marilyn arrives in a flurry to support Phyllis, and she’s introduced to everyone as a psychic and Marilyn’s friend. Wagner takes this as his cue to leave, but before he does Marilyn stops him and asks if a blue station wagon means anything to him. He pauses just a touch too long to be convincing but ultimately tells her that it doesn’t, and he leaves. Phyllis tells Elsbeth and Blanke that Marilyn can help them find Tim, and while they initially refuse, she insists and they humor her. They take Marilyn with them, and she leads them partway through the Central Park before telling them her third eye is too clouded to continue. Luckily where the third eye fails, nature takes over, and a flying murder of crows leads them right to Tim.

Back at the precinct, Wagner tells them this is officially a homicide investigation now. Blanke asks Wagner which detective she should hand her crime scene notes off to, and he tells her that she is the acting detective on this case, as she’s being promoted effective immediately. Elsbeth excitedly congratulates her and tells her she even went back to buy the suit Blanke bought before realizing she wasn’t getting promoted anytime soon, and can now give it to her as a congratulations gift. With that out of the way, Detective Blanke gives Wagner and Lt. Connor (Daniel K. Isaac) her report. She suggests it might be a case of “wrong place, wrong time” as there’s a group of vigilante rat hunters that kill rats in the park with bows and arrows, but adds that it’s worth them getting Marilyn’s alibi too, given how close she got them to the body. It’s at this point that she and Elsbeth realize the lone hiccup that comes with her promotion: they can’t necessarily head out on cases together anymore. They’re forced to split up as Blanke goes to talk to Parks & Rec about the rat hunters, and Elsbeth goes to get the alibi, this time with a new uniformed officer with her, Officer Niki Reynolds (b).

At Marilyn’s office, Elsbeth tries to engage Reynolds in conversation, but they aren’t super receptive to her overtures. Not rude, exactly, but also unsure why Elsbeth is asking so many personal questions. Instead, Elsbeth turns her attention to Marilyn’s assistant Regan (Kate Rigg), who assures her she’s just there to take care of the admin, but believes Marilyn is truly a psychic. She gets permission to send them in to Marilyn’s office, and they go, bumping into Phyllis as she leaves. Elsbeth starts with her usual process of asking questions that will draw a suspect into conversation but, because this was not communicated to Reynolds by anyone before they left the precinct, they jump in with more straightforward policing questions, outright asking Marilyn for her alibi. She tells them that she was channeling for a client over the phone, and asks Regan to give them the name and number. With Reynolds outside, Elsbeth asks if she can give her any insight into the case. Initially, Marilyn says no, but when Elsbeth plays the Phyllis card, she agrees to do a little check-in with the spirits to see what she can hear. But when Reynolds returns, and their police radio starts going off, Marilyn claims there’s too much interference for her to channel.

In the interrogation room, Blanke speaks to the co-founders of the Rodent Death Society, whose mandate is a little strange, as they believe rats to be a plague, but are otherwise concerned about the environment — I like rodents, so I admit I may be biased. They insist they couldn’t have killed Tim as all their arrows are blunted, and wouldn’t be able to pierce anything, let alone a human chest. They do, however, tell Blanke that they have a couple of trail cams set up in the area where he was killed, and offer to provide her with the footage to see if it helps. While they wait on that, Blanke shows Elsbeth the arrowhead that killed Tim, and she notes that it looks old, and very sharp. Blanke says they’re just waiting to see if their weapons specialist recognizes it. Elsbeth also tells her that Marilyn’s alibi checked out, as the client confirmed they spoke to Marilyn on Tuesday night, and given that she only uses a landline, she would have had to be in her office.

Elsbeth Links the Victim to a Fake Dating Profile in Season 2 Episode 15

With those leads now dead ends, they turn their attention to Tim, and realize they should check his dating profile for more insight into why he’d be in that part of Central Park anyway. Blanke realizes she can’t join Elsbeth in looking into it, as she has reports to write up, but sends Reynolds in instead to look through it with Elsbeth, which Elsbeth does not look thrilled about. As she and Reynolds comb through it, they note that Tim used the same opening line, about how his Aunt Bitsy had just died, with everyone he spoke to. While they comb through the profiles, Elsbeth tries again to engage Reynolds in conversation, this time about their dating life, but they tell her that they don’t talk about their personal life at work. They do find a breakthrough though, looking through the considerable number of profiles that blocked Tim. Kristy Brown, the woman he was supposed to meet that night, has a profile that Elsbeth notes looks like it was designed specifically to appeal to Tim, and Reynolds realizes that all her pictures are of someone else, meaning Kristy Brown isn’t a real person.

The next day Elsbeth, and a very stylish Blanke, head over to Phyllis’s place to ask her more about Tim. She tells them that he moved back to the city after he got divorced and had to shut down his production company in LA because his movies were wildly unpopular. His ex-wife got everything in the divorce, meaning Tim was looking to return to the family business to build himself back up, but Phyllis says that George told her he wants her to sell the company. When they ask how that’s possible, given that George is dead, she tells them that Marilyn connects them for him to advise her on many matters. When they ask her about the cost of having a psychic on call, Phyllis says Tim had the same concern and ordered her to stop seeing Marilyn.

The pair of them head to Marilyn’s next, and she tells them that Tim only wanted his stepmother to stay away because he wanted to keep the company and didn’t want Phyllis to sell, but she reiterates that it’s what George wants. When Elsbeth and Blanke share a cynical look, Marilyn takes their hands to prove she’s the real deal and zeroes in on Elsbeth, saying the spirit around her is glad she’s still wearing the earrings she gave her, and brings up memories of a young Elsbeth playing dress up in her grandmothers closet, with the clothes sounding an awful lot like the clothes Elsbeth wears now. Unsurprising, as Marilyn says Elsbeth loved her grandmother the most of all. It’s when she uses her childhood nickname “Ellie” that Elsbeth breaks into tears, definitely a believer in Marilyn’s abilities now. While Elsbeth gathers herself, Blanke asks Marilyn where she’s from as her accent is hard to place, but she tells her that she’s from all over, though Europe originally. They leave, but not before Blanke asks Marilyn if she can have one of the crystals from her table.

Elsbeth and Blanke Hit Many Dead Ends in Season 2 Episode 15

At the precinct once again, Elsbeth is still rattled from the reading when Blanke arrives and tells her that the arrowhead was traced to a hardware store in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania. Luckily, the store is still in business, so they video call the Wikes, who own the store, and Mr. Wike tells them that they sold thousands of those arrows, but they were discontinued in the ’60s for being too dangerous. Blanke asks if they know of any Gladwells living in the area, but Mrs. Wike says that there aren’t any. A dead end yet again. They catch up with Reynolds, who is going through the trail cam footage. They tell Elsbeth and Blanke that they aren’t seeing anything or anyone, no matter how often they backtrack, but Elsbeth notes that one of the bushes looks like it’s moving unnaturally. She tells Blanke to meet her at the crime scene in an hour for them to see why she’s so excited.

Meanwhile, Connor finds Wagner in his office while looking to get some paperwork signed. Once that’s done, he asks Wagner if he needs to talk, as he seems to not be himself, and offers a sympathetic ear. Wagner tells him that Marilyn got to him too. He tells him about an old case from the ’90s, where a killer stalked and murdered college boys in Queens. He says he was working the vigil for the first two victims when he saw someone in the crowd smoking, and a scuffle ensued when he wouldn’t put his cigarette out. Wagner says he and his partner tailed the smoker to the parking lot, where he drove off in a blue station wagon, and they lost track of him. The third victim, Scotty, was killed a week later, and the killer was brought in shortly after that, having been stopped for a broken tail light in his blue station wagon. Wagner blames himself for not following his hunch during the vigil, saying if he had, then Scotty would still be alive. Connor assures him that their work is never as easy as it seems in retrospect, and before he leaves tells Wagner that he believes those who are gone can still communicate with those left behind.

At the crime scene, Elsbeth sneaks up on Kaya wearing a gilly suit, the type of camouflage suit worn by hunters looking to blend into the brush. Her father, she explains, wore one during duck hunting season, which is why she recognized it. This would also account for the moving bush, though why she couldn’t just explain this to them at the precinct, I’ll never know. Where does one even find a gilly suit in Manhattan? They return to the precinct, though, as a new person of interest has emerged: Regan, Marilyn’s assistant. Blanke tells Elsbeth that she doesn’t think Marilyn’s story lines up, as some of the words she says sounds like a Pennsylvania accent to her, so she took the crystal to get Marilyn’s prints, but got a hit on Regan’s instead, as she was arrested previously for shoplifting.

They ask Regan how she knows Marilyn, and she says she used to babysit her growing up, adding that she’s from a small town in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania, and invented the European backstory to give some legitimacy to her business, as no one wants to talk to a psychic from rural Pennsylvania. Regan says that Marilyn was born Mary Lou Grunderson, and once pressed by Blanke admits that Marilyn wasn’t the one on the phone on Tuesday night, she was, as she sometimes does phone readings for new clients, meaning Marilyn no longer has an alibi. They catch Wagner up on the details of the case, and he commends them for their work, but Blanke credits Reynolds with the dating profile discovery. Wagner is initially glad to see that Reynolds and Elsbeth are getting along, but Elsbeth’s annoyance finally bursts out, as she doesn’t understand why Reynolds doesn’t want to open up and be friends with her. Blanke moves past that and suggests that Marilyn’s motive was financial, as Tim wanted Phyllis to stop seeing her, but Wagner tells them there must be something more, as finding a wealthy, gullible client in Marilyn’s line of work isn’t particularly hard.

Elsbeth Catches Marilyn in a Lie in Season 2 Episode 15

Elsbeth heads back to Marilyn’s office for an after-hours appointment, delivering her mail for her as well as she arrives. They sit down for their session, and Elsbeth asks her to connect her to Tim, but Marilyn says she still can’t connect to him. Elsbeth asks if she could instead ask George if Tim knew anyone from Pennsylvania, and Marilyn realizes the jig is up and drops the accent. To her, all she did was reinvent herself for a better life, not unlike Elsbeth, and she asks her to leave unless she would seriously like her to channel someone. Elsbeth gets up to go, but not before noting that she saw one of the letters she brought in was from Snackerdoodle and addressed to “investors.” And there’s that financial motive. Elsbeth and Blanke confer with Ava Mornay (Tina Benko), who tells them that Butterwell and Snackerdoodle have been in competition for years, but Snackerdoodle is doing better thanks to stronger management and lately they’ve been trying to buy out Butterwell. Ava tells them that both George and Mr. Finch, the Snackerdoodle CEO are recently deceased, and the buyout attempt is being called the “battle of the widows.” She adds that Mrs. Finch is also an eccentric, and Elsbeth asks if its possible she would go see a psychic.

At Marilyn’s, Phyllis tells her that Tim came to her in a dream, screaming at her not to sell the company. Between that and George, she feels torn, and asks if Marilyn can connect her with a third person in the family to break the tie. Marilyn agrees, and says she’s channeling someone named Bitsy, whom Phyllis confirms is George’s sister. She says Bitsy is telling Phyllis to sell the company, and that’s all Blanke needs to arrest Marilyn, as Bitsy wasn’t a real person, but rather a character from old Butterwell ads. Tim used the name “Aunt Bitsy” on the dating apps as a pick-up line, and the only way Marilyn would know about it is if she set up the date with Tim. Add that to the fact that Marilyn, or rather Mary Lou, was a championship archer as a child, and that’s enough to charge her.

At the precinct, Elsbeth and Reynolds wait to watch Marilyn’s interrogation but are interrupted by a text from Elsbeth’s dog walker. When she explains as much to Reynolds, they light up, telling Elsbeth they love dogs and want to work with the K-9 unit, but the transfers are hard to come by. She shows Reynolds a picture of Gonzo and invites Reynolds to join them on a walk, since their building doesn’t allow pets. Reynolds agrees, and leaves, the two of them a lot more cheerful having found some common ground. In the interrogation room, Wagner approaches Marilyn and asks her for some clarity regarding the blue station wagon. Specifically, he wants to know if Scotty blames him for what happened. Marilyn tries to channel but says she’s not getting anything, which in this case indicates that the deceased is at peace and has moved on, and she suggests Wagner does the same. He’s about to leave when Marilyn has a more visceral reaction to something, warning that Elsbeth needs to be careful, and that she sees images of blood, water, silence, and a figure in a dark robe. Are we headed towards a bloody finale involving Judge Crawford (Michael Emerson)? Looks like it.

New episodes of Elsbeth Season 2 premiere Thursdays on CBS.