(Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Follower Season 2 Episode 2 “Ontological Shock.”)

When Colter (Justin Hartley) goes missing while searching for a missing person, his team turns to his brother Russell (Jensen Ackles) for help – and the episode adds to the Follower mystery surrounding their father. (And yes, just like his first episode, there are plenty of moments that remind us of Ackles Supernatural.)

Colter’s newest client becomes concerned after her father, Scott (Steven Culp), who is obsessed with government conspiracies, goes missing after claiming he was being followed. He also harassed an astrophysics professor whose husband had taken out a restraining order against him. But at least one of the calls lasted ten minutes. The professor, Blair (April Parker Shaw), says Scott had interesting ideas; they were talking about UAPs (unidentified abnormal phenomena, similar to UFOs), but there is a stigma, especially in academia. She is clearly afraid of something when Colter talks to her, but doesn’t want to talk about it.

Colter goes to the last known location of Scott’s car and finds it, but then his call to Bobby (Eric Graise) is disconnected. Numbers appear on his phone screen (the same thing happened to Scott before), and then there’s a light above him…

When there’s no word from Colter for twelve hours, Reenie (Fiona Rene) turns to Plan B, even though Velma (Abby McEnany) warns he won’t be happy. But where is Colter? In some government facility, tied to a bed, after breaching a secure DOD facility. The man who held him claims that the land Colter was on was filled with unexploded ordinates. He then watches from the security room as Colter frees himself from his restraints; he tells another man to have his fun while he calls. They’re still on schedule, the first man says… as someone sneaks up behind him: Russell. Colter’s brother then finds him, and the two go outside.

Russell was cleaning up a mess nearby, he shares, so he made a few phone calls. (Colter asks if Russell and Reenie are phone buddies, and his brother says she keeps dodging his dinner invitations, even though he thinks this rescue might get him a date.) Russell also claims to have some UAPs know’. “O brother, what things have I seen? I would blow your hair back, that’s all I’m going to say,” he says. He even suggests that aliens could have taken Scott, remembering their father showing them the lights in the sky and him pointing to the spaceship on Colter’s pajamas. Colter doesn’t remember that.

Colter believes he was let go on purpose; the ‘escape’ was too easy. Those holding him want him to find Scott for them. Russell smashes Colter’s phone (throwing away the SIM card isn’t gentle enough) and checks the back of his brother’s neck. There’s a tracker in him, and Russell takes it out. Colter puts it in his phone and throws it in a field.

Sergei Bachlakov/CBS

Colter and Russell then go to Blair, who reluctantly talks: they think the numbers that appeared on Scott’s and then Colter’s phones are a form of communication and have tried to decode the messages. They turn out to be the coordinates, and as Colter and Russell go to them to see if Scott is there, Blair packs up to leave town, but is stopped by the man who took Colter. (Her body is later found, made to look like a suicide.)

Once near the location, Colter throws away Russell’s phone while Reenie calls; Whoever follows can follow her signal, and then theirs. The brothers separated because there was an announcement of a wave in ten minutes. Russell encounters the man who took Colter, and he reveals that he knows about the Shaws, including their father. “You have a long family history of getting in the way of the government,” he says. “What, you think I don’t know who you are?”

Russell tells him he knows what’s going on at the location: they sent a cosmic Morse code and someone answered, right? And the landing pad there is for an alien meet-and-greet. The man says he has no idea what he’s talking about. Although the man warns Russell that he will kill him if he takes another step, a T-minus three-minute announcement distracts him, and Russell easily grabs the gun and knocks him out. Then he takes something out of a cupboard.

Colter, meanwhile, finds Scott, who wants to stay to see what will happen. He cannot keep this a secret, he argues. But Colter tells him that some secrets aren’t worth dying for and reminds him of his daughter. Before they can leave, however, an alarm sounds, something happens outside, there are bright lights and the room shakes. Once it stops, they leave, meet up with Russell and rush away from the location. Both Colter and Russell draw their guns as a van approaches them on the road, but it is only Reenie’s help that they have called for them.

Sergei Bachlakov / CBS

After reuniting Scott and his daughter, a still-disbelieving Russell shows Colter what he brought with him: some kind of alloy that he thinks could be a piece of a craft. He has someone running tests for him. As they get into Russell’s car, Colter comments that he wouldn’t mind getting behind the wheel. “That’s never going to happen,” Dean says Russell.

That’s when he tells Colter that the man knows something about their father. Colter wonders if it’s more than just a textbook “ghost move” where he drops a crumb and sees where it goes, given the box of their father’s things that their sister Dory (Melissa Roxburgh) has and which neither of them has told us about. Russell thinks she just didn’t want him to go down a rabbit hole.

Russell leaves Colter on the side of the road and walks to his truck in the woods. “This baby doesn’t ride on gravel,” he explains. Used to be sure to pick it up from the black site (“That was an emergency”), but this is different. He goes to Colorado to pick up the stuff on the date Reenie promised for rescuing Colter. He’ll see him when he sees him. We hope this is sooner rather than later.

What did you think of the last episode with Russell? What are your theories about what happened to the Shaws’ father? Let us know in the comments below.

FollowerSunday, 8/7c, CBS