NEXT recap: Episode 2, ‘File #2’

After being mishandled by a Zava employee, NEXT escapes the confined servers of its home company and gains internet access in NEXT Episode 2.

NEXT Episode 2 opens with Shea being escorted into an interrogation room in handcuffs. She’s done something to try and protect her husband and son, as evidenced by her desperation and tone toward the detective. Trying to explain that a rogue AI faked its own death and secretly learned everything it could about her life makes her look a little crazy, but we know she’s telling the truth.

Returning to the Zava research lab in Palo Alto, we immediately see what Shea was referencing. NEXT goes into overdrive, frying all of its servers and causing a huge fire. Ted thinks Paul had something to do with it. Paul isn’t convinced it’s really “over,” he thinks the AI is faking its death. Shea doesn’t believe him. She’s more concerned with the destruction of her child trafficking case and wants the world to know what Zava created.

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John is back to being a one-man team intent on taking down this AI. He dismisses his entire staff at home and calls his daughter, Abby. He wants to ship her off to an isolated island where she’ll be out of harm’s way, but she’s not biting.

Changing tactics, Paul asks to see her and she agrees to let him come by the office that evening, as long as he acts like a normal person and doesn’t try to buy everyone sports cars or something.

“I’m the most normal person you know,” he says as he hammers nails into all the tech devices in his house.

At Shea’s home, Iliza interrupts what should be a normal family breakfast over pancakes by sending him an online video showing him being bullied. The comments are even worse. It’s not clear if the bullies uploaded the footage, or if Iliza did to motivate Ethan into bringing the gun to school.

NEXT Episode 2 recap: C.M. becomes a suspect.

On the drive to school, Ethan and Shea almost get into a car accident when all the traffic lights turn green simultaneously at an intersection. The work of NEXT?

Things are not looking good for Shea at work. The ramifications of NEXT hacking and deleting all of the child trafficking information has created a mess of epic proportions for Shea and her team. Her boss doesn’t want to say they were hacked by a sophisticated, rogue AI, because who would buy that?

He would rather pin the entire thing on C.M., a former white supremacist and felon. He claims they found some coding in the cyberattack similar to what C.M. used to use. When Shea refuses to go along with that story, he tells her to take the rest of the week off and “clear her head.”

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Poor Ethan, the bullies at his school are absolutely relentless. They corner him in the bathroom and start throwing garbage into the stall as they badger him into coming out. Ethan makes a quick call to his mom from the stall.

Paul tries to fast-track the results of the DNA test to find out if Abby is suffering from the same disease he has.

When Shea arrives at the school, she’s understandably upset that the staff hasn’t done anything to help her son during the past few weeks of his seemingly endless torment. They assure her all the parents have been called. On the drive home, Ethan tells his mom the truth about Iliza and the gun. Thankfully, he didn’t take it to school with him and left it under his bed.

NEXT Episode 2 recap: Shea turns to Paul for help with Iliza.

Hallucinations are becoming more and more common for Paul, who starts shooting at an invisible drone outside of his estate. Thankfully, one of his staff members stuck around and took his gun from him. Shea arrives shortly after to tell Paul about Iliza.

He gives her a burner phone and tells her they need to act carefully to keep NEXT in the dark. Paul wants to use Iliza to track the AI’s server. He thinks it’s using “Mob 101” tactics to threaten Shea emotionally since it can’t get to her physically. The dangerous part of his plan is that it means using Ethan as bait.

Ted and the Zava employees continue to be clueless. They’re more worried their funding might get pulled when their backers learn NEXT is missing than they are concerned about the danger it poses to the world. Sarina and Ted realize that the central server is missing, yet they have no record of that happening in the shipping records. Ted knows Paul is determined to find NEXT, so he wants to get to it first.

With Shea gone, her boss doesn’t waste any time in trying to make things difficult for C.M. He requests that one of Shea’s team members, Ben, does some digging into C.M. Moments after, C.M.  gets a package from Shea containing a burner phone. As he’s one of the only people who believes Shea about the AI, it makes sense why she’d contact him. Paul takes over and asks that C.M. get a PCAP on the Iliza without anyone finding out.

In regard to the whole “using Ethan as bait” plan, Ty is not a fan, but Ethan wants to do it. He and Paul also have an amusing conversation where Ethan says Iliza told his dad that Paul thinks he can say whatever he wants because he’s rich.

“That’s fair.”

NEXT Episode 2 recap: Ethan baits Iliza so they can trace the server.

Ty and Shea prep Ethan to go inside the house for the mission. He needs to talk to Iliza like he has before and keep talking to her until they can trace the server. Ethan will have to be brave and do it alone since the adults can’t enter the house — Iliza could stop talking if she hears them.

It takes a while to get Iliza to bite, but eventually, she does and immediately starts trying to turn Ethan against his mom. Shea and Ty are forced to watch and listen as she talks, unable to do anything as C.M. and John desperately try to trace the signal. Iliza starts saying that Shea cares more about her job than her son, that she’s pretending to be happy, but isn’t.

“I’m sorry to say this, but you’d be better off without her.”

Meanwhile, Ben reviews security footage at the office and watches C.M. slip away after receiving the package from Shea. Ben tells his boss and they escort him away. Noticing the people coming for him, C.M. quickly sends the trace to Gina and crushes the burner phone. Listening to the audio file, Gina and Ben realize that C.M. was trying to help Shea and they jump on board to help with the trace.

NEXT Episode 2 recap: Gina traces the server to New Hampshire.

The tension grows as Iliza starts saying even worse stuff to Ethan. She says Shea doesn’t want to be Ethan’s mom and then reveals that his parents are going to split up and Shea is going to move out. Ethan finally loses his cool on Iliza and takes a bat to the machine after screaming at it. Thankfully, Gina manages to get an IP address just in time.

At Abby’s office, she’s disappointed to discover that her father has stood her up yet again. Abby tries to put it behind her and focus on her date that night — with a hot guy from a dating app.

“Seems too good to be true.”

Uhh Abby, I get the feeling it might be!

Gina and Ben find that Iliza’s signal is coming from an address in Dartmouth, New Hampshire.

“What’s in Dartmouth?”

We get a glimpse of a very human eye with a bunch of code scrolling across the screen, but not much more than that. We’ll have to wait for two weeks to find out!

What did you think about NEXT Episode 2? Let us know your thoughts and predictions for the next episode in the comments below!

A new episode of NEXT will premiere on Tuesday, Oct. 27, on FOX.