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Is Dayana (Pearl Thusi) the true traitor on Quantico?

That's what Lydia (Tracy Ifeachor) implies at the end of Monday's episode, when she tells Alex (Priyanka Chopra) that Dayana found the G20 Summit drives and has kidnapped Will (Jay Armstrong Johnson). Now Lydia wants Alex to go back in there to take Dayana down literally minutes after she and the other hostages escaped.

Lydia looks slightly less suspicious after she reveals to Ryan (Jake McLaughlin) at The Farm that the AIC is actually a sanctioned black ops program trying to do good in the world, hence their tapping of the NSA to protect Syrian refugees from Russian suicide bombers. Alex and Owen (Blair Underwood) tapped their tap (double tap?), leading them to a warehouse room covered with photos of everyone from The Farm and computers tracing them. It's too low-level to be Lydia's doing, according to Owen, but they have to bounce before they can investigate further thanks to a gas leak. Alex spies a shadowy figure enter the building just as it goes kaboom!

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Who was it? Showrunner Joshua Safran answers our burning questions below and teases next week's episode, which will wrap up the terrorist storyline and morph into a single timeline. Plus: Find out how he came up with Harry's (Russell Tovey) moving monologue to Sebastian (David Lim) explaining how his boyfriend Elliott killed himself.

Is Dayana the mastermind?
Joshua Safran: All signs point to yes! Next week you'll find out what she's doing.

I rewatched her Farm scenes, and she was saying things like "I follow orders," "I want him gone" about Leon (Aaron Diaz) and she called it "our cause" to Lydia. Should we read into the words she uses?
Safran: Yes, you can, especially for this episode, but let's see what happens. I can't spoil it!

Can we presume that she and Lydia are working together?
Safran: I think you can presume that Lydia is a complicated figure and always holds things very close to the vest, so there's definitely some more to Lydia than meets the eye, but I wouldn't necessarily say she's bad.

She gives Ryan a pretty convincing explanation about what the AIC does and that it's sanctioned. Is she telling the truth?
Safran: That is all true.

Dayana got Leon kicked out of The Farm, but they are closer in the present and he was presumably protecting her last week when he was being interrogated.
Safran: Right. This is the last we see of Leon in the Farm timeline and even though it looks like they're closer in the crisis, it's more like there's no specific history between them in between The Farm and then, but she has explained something to him that we haven't seen that has brought them closer. You'll find out [next week].

Who is Lydia writing those emails to that Alex and Owen were reading?
Safran: Those emails are just to whoever her contact is at the CIA since, as we learn, this is sanctioned by the CIA. ... It's not important who she's emailing. That's just the encryption she is using between her and the head of the program.

I'm guessing Alex goes back into the crisis zone. Is she going to come face to face with Dayana? Is she going to save Will?
Safran: Yes. Well, maybe not, but yes. ... There's a team going in with her. There's a game plan. There's a very specific mission and a specific timeline, and it's completed by the midpoint of the episode.

Whoever the terrorist is or are -- are they going to be taken down?
Safran: I don't know if I'd say "taken down," but they'll be exposed.

But they might not necessarily die?
Safran: Maybe? [Laughs] After that, the stakes are much different.

Who is spying on everyone at The Farm? Owen says it can't be Lydia.
Safran: That is in Act 1 of the next episode. The body is identified. I know how astute you are as a viewer, Joyce, so you can figure out who that is considering what we've heard in the future.

I think I have an idea. I liked Harry and Sebastian's storyline. First of all, were those files all the NSA had on Elliott's father?
Safran: Yes. That's what Harry's struggling with. He's unable to find anything that supports his theory that Lawrence Bishop is a bad human being. You will see the fallout of his inability to find anything in the next episode. The show has always been about gray instead of black and white, and I think Harry was looking for a black-and-white answer. Instead, he's stuck in the gray still.

Did you always plan for Harry revealing his history with Elliott in a monologue?
Safran: Harry's entire backstory we knew about when the character was created. I don't think we knew it would come out in a monologue. At a certain point, I just decided that I wanted to do that, especially because Russell is an actor who can act a monologue and memorize five pages of dialogue. The craziest thing was that ... it happened to be Russell's birthday the day of the table read and he hadn't read the script yet because it had just came in with the final changes.

So he was reading it cold at the table read and when he got to the monologue, he was discovering it as we went. He knew the backstory because we had always talked about it, but he ended up getting incredibly emotional reading that in the moment and I felt so terrible because it was his birthday. He was literally crying at the table read in front of everyone on his birthday! [Laughs] It was beautiful and sad, but he was totally fine with it even though I was making him cry on his birthday.

People were nervous. The network was like, "Try this." But you're always nervous because you have five pages of dialogue, but it totally worked, and we wanted to have this moment for their storyline.

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Their relationship is unfolding in an interesting way. It'd be easy for them to get together after that speech, but Sebastian tries to strangle him.
Safran: I think the story with Harry and Sebastian is obviously a very personal story to me, but sometimes I wonder if it's not of its time. When I watch how people are reacting, they definitely love Harry and Sebastian, but the idea that we have moved so far and people still have trouble with their sexuality. ... I think that's very real. I'm surprised by the reaction to it that people really like them together and there's a lot of shipping, but it isn't about their sexuality like it is on How to Get Away with Murder. That couple [Connor and Oliver] is very much about their sexuality in the response, not the way it's written. But I'm happy it exists and I'm really grateful for it.

Did Sebastian actually want to kill Harry or was that his self-hatred manifesting?
Safran: I think it's the latter. Sebastian wants to kill that part of himself and Harry represents that part of himself. I think in Episode 3, Harry says to Sebastian in the future, "You almost killed me." So we knew it was coming. In that moment, you can see on his face that he is willing to die.

He just lets go.
Safran: Yeah, it was great. That's what makes Russell a great actor.

On the flip side, Sebastian tries to save Harry's life and kills his wife in the process who's actually in the AIC.
Safran: Yeah, and Sebastian gets himself shot, which is really hard for Harry. Sebastian is not dead, I can say that. Whether he's going to be OK or not is a different story. The woman he thought he loved has been lying to him for eight months and that's yet another person who has used him. He's got some surprising twists ahead.

What else can you tease about next week's episode?
Safran: Every single thing gets answered. There's not a thing dangling with the exception of an event that transpires three-quarters of the way through that gives us the motor for the back nine [episodes]. Everything is tied up. There isn't even interpersonal character dynamics that are left open. I mean, of course there are, because you'll see things like Raina and Nimah clearly have an issue that's outstanding. There are outstanding things, but it's like if this had been a 13-episode season, we leave you with enough to launch into a new season except it's just the rest of the season. And it'll all be on one timeline. It'll be all on one timeline three-quarters of the way through. It catches up and we stay. There was going to be one more flashback in Act 6, but we cut it. ... The funny thing is, I definitely did a dance at the mix when I knew that was going to be the last time I heard the transition sound. [Laughs]

Quantico airs Mondays at 10/9c on ABC.

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