Last Week’s episode of The Following gave us plenty of background information on Serial killer Joe Carroll, his wife Claire Matthew’s, and former special agent Ryan Hardy, who caught Carroll and may or may not have then slept with his wife. If that wasn’t enough, they also left us sitting on edge as Claire Matthew’s son was kidnapped, by his own Nanny, “Denise Harris,” who is part of the Joe Carroll cult.

Harris is an alias that she used to get in with the Matthew’s family. Her real name is Emma Hill and as we learn through a flashback (the literary technique is becoming a staple of each episode), she first met Carroll at a book signing in 2003.  Carroll is instantly fixated on her and is able to seduce her, despite her mothers best efforts to embarrass her by heavily flirting with the author.

Emma had taken the little Joey Matthews to a very large house along with the pretend-gay couple, Jacob and Billy. As far as Joey knows, he is going to this house upon his mother’s request, and has no reason not to believe that’s the truth. He has trusted his nanny for years, so there’s no reason not to trust her now.

Emma and Jacob as it turns out have a thing together. As we jump into more flashbacks, we learn that Emma visited Carroll often after he was first arrested. During one of her visits, Carroll decides that he should set Emma up with a guy- Jacob. They are immediately transfixed by each other and fall in a love.

As Emma and Jacob begin to get more and more serious, she brings him to her house to meet her mother for dinner. Both Jacob and Emma seem like decent kids in love, but there is something dark hanging over their relationship that inevitably comes from being set up by a serial killer. This darkness comes out when the three sit down for dinner and Emma’s mother begins to flirt with Jacob, just as she did to embarrass her when she first met Carroll. This time, Emma takes matters into her own hands and puts a knife into her back. She killed her own mother.