And I thought the prison reveal was going to be exciting. 

There are so many tricks up the sleeves of the Counterpart team; it's impossible to guess what's in store for the group of spies trying to keep tabs on different worlds.

"Our" Howard, Howard Alpha, will become a huge disappoint to me, personally, if he doesn't get a fire lit under his behind while inside of Echo. He didn't quite understand what "being a spy" meant before Counterpart Season 2 Episode 3, and he's only scraping the surface on his first day with the locals.

Echo wasn't as expected. The way it sounded, he was going into hell. 

For those who have been there years on end as nothing but an encyclopedic knowledge of their counterparts, it probably seems like hell. 

Having worked in Strategy, even in a lowly occupation like Howard A's, he knew a lot of the faces housed in the facility. He was kind of confused, though, as he called out to Marcel expecting the other to know him, not recalling he doesn't know Echo's Marcel at all.

The most exciting reveal from Echo was Peter Quayle Prime. 

Peter Prime was equally as excited to meet Howard Alpha because Peter has delusions of grandeur. I'd never call Peter Alpha a genius, but Peter Prime fall off the turnip truck half-baked.

Related: Counterpart Review: Inside Out

At some point, Management must have decided it was better to use him for his knowledge of Peter Alpha's innermost thoughts and patterns of behavior rather than to risk sending a less-than-stellar mind over the crossing to take his place. 

Howard A: Why are you in here?
Peter Quayle P: I'm serving my world in the fight against yours. Yanek says I'm one of the most important people here. I suppose now we know why.
Howard A: Yanek?
Peter P: Yeah. I give him secrets, my secrets, things about my life, things I'm afraid of, things that only I can know. So now Management knows my other's secrets.

• Permalink: Yeah. I give him secrets, my secrets, things about my life, things I'm afraid of, things that...

He's almost childlike in how proud he is to be of service to his world even if it means he has no life of his own. While everyone else seems noticeably upset to be imprisoned for such reasons,  Peter P flaunts his other's high position and his counter-importance inside Echo as a way to get the best chair in front of the TV.

It's through Peter P, though, that Howard gets the lay of the land. Yanek didn't sound so bad coming from Peter P, and despite his role at the prison, his dialogue with Howard wasn't all that bad, either.

Yanek's role is normally to extract information about his captives. He seems decent because he has to be. He's working with people from his world. They may be captive, but they should be sold a bill of goods that says they're role is just as crucial to the cause as those sent across from the Indigo School.

Echo must be how it was done in the old days, before Indigo. We've always been led to believe Indigo was an elite experiment, not the norm in how the system had been run. Echo would seem like the precursor and a remainder of the old ways of the spy game.

Treating those whose information was needed like dogs wouldn't guarantee the nature of the knowledge gained. As for Howard, Yanek is tasked with providing him information and getting him out of Echo and to the streets to spy on "his wife," as Howard puts it. There's more to it than that.

Yanek: The thing of it is mankind has existed in a state of tension since the beginning of time. Between what is and what could be. There's a truth, too, that we can't deny.
Howard A: What truth?
Yanek: That any man may see himself as ordinary, but confront him with another version of his life and the one destroys the other. It's inevitable.
Howard A: I don't believe that.
Yanek: Your other is out there right now erasing you from your own existence.
Howard A: You don't know that.
Yanek: If it's occurred to you, it's occurred to him, and it has occurred to you, hasn't it? You are a gentle man, and this is war.

• Permalink: If it's occurred to you, it's occurred to him, and it has occurred to you, hasn't it? You are...

Howard Alpha is highly suggestible, but he's never given up faith on Emily Alpha. I wonder what he'd think of her now as she struggles to remember who she is and worries so about who she was in the past.

Related: Counterpart Review: Outside In

With everything we've seen so far, Howard Alpha may be the only person who can help her remember who she used to be.

Howard A: Look, I don't know I'm better or worse, but I know I'm not him.
Yanek: That is because you have never had to be.

• Permalink: That is because you have never had to be.

Howard Alpha has been caught paying for the sins of Howard Prime more than once. He felt the wrath of Anna when she lashed out at him because she believed he was Howard Prime, and now he's been physically harmed by a bunch of men who blame him for being in Echo.

Now that Howard A knows the full extent of Howard P's work before they met and how potentially dangerous he could be for his Emily, shouldn't he say anything to get out of Echo so he can work his way back to Emily Alpha?

Even if he doesn't get there in short order, he needs to know what Emily Prime is digging up on his wife.

I thought the scenes cutting back and forth between Naya's conversation with Emily Alpha and Emily Prime's excavation of information made what we learned about Emily Alpha much more powerful. 

Emily Alpha, at the moment, seems so timid and impossibly inept. She cannot write. But she had already sussed out who Shadow was well before she lost her faculties. At the very least, she knew Shadow was a woman -- and she never shared that information with anyone who has shared it with us.

Related: Counterpart's Justin Marks on Season 2 and the Seriousness of Violence

When we first met them, options on the table for who was the mole included Peter Quayle Alpha, and if they knew it was a woman, they wouldn't have wasted their time with Peter.

Emily Alpha has become the most exciting character on the series, and her secrets are hidden in a broken mind.

One man who may know them, and I hate to imagine what it means if he does, is Claude Lambert. Well, one of them anyway. I admit the Lambert situation has me utterly confused.

Is Lambert a twin or are they counterparts cavorting with each other? The reason I ask what shouldn't be an obvious question is that one Lambert said to the other he wished he had brought more from "back home." You don't call a place "back home" if you don't both come from there.

You might say "from my world" or something similar, but that's not what was said. 

I was laughing at how lazy Lambert was when he talked about being a lamb on the lam which was why he couldn't do any of the tasks Management were assigning to Clare, and when he walked into his flat, I had to rewind to the sex scene again because I thought I was seeing things.

Lambert 2: Can we still trust her?
Lambert 1: I suppose we'll find out.

• Permalink: I suppose we'll find out.

Whether they've both been as involved in all the action is an open question, just as is from where they come. The Lamberts' fetishes aren't open for debate. EW. They could use some time with Yanek in Echo.

But now I can see how it's going to play out. One of them (the one who met with Clare) is the dominant Lambert. He'll put up the other for slaughter, and everyone will think Lambert is out of the equation making him more dangerous than ever.

And Lambert, for all of his laziness, is very dangerous. But how?

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Lambert has connections somewhere. Is there another Alexander Pope alive? Maybe somebody with more follow-through and a line to Management. Maybe there is a counterpart to Clare's father who can rattle some cages.

There is someone already on the scene who is totally unexpected to have any connection to the dark side who is pulling the strings to everything happening.

Lambert isn't keen enough to do much on his own, and his boss' desire to have Clare do it all herself means something. 

It's also kind of crazy that everyone has a Lambert problem at the same time.

Howard Prime didn't know Baldwin was still in Berlin.

He didn't even know a group of his own people were still in Berlin and operating, let alone that they'd learn he was Howard Prime and not Howard Alpha. 

They have a Lambert problem because the office on the other side suddenly wants Lambert. Why? Would they be willing to trade him to open the crossing? What about Mira? Does that mean Lambert is working on his own? Has he gone off the reservation completely? 

Those are just thoughts in my head. Are the Lamberts setting up Clare? Nothing about what's going on between Clare and Lambert feels right. After what she learned on the jog, especially.

Clare's inability to share information with Peter A almost got him and Naya killed, and it did kill another man. Clare and Peter are blown now, but with two Lamberts and the two of them working with Howard P to get a Lambert and someone probably wanting to keep the peace, we're losing the horny Lambert.

What will remain to be seen is how losing a Lambert (if I'm right) will affect what Emily Alpha remembers. Who she was working with and knew of her years worth of work on the other side is going to be a secret bigger than any we have seen yet.

The way she describes feeling about it is intriguing in its own right, so when she eventually recalls direct pieces of evidence, it should be mind-blowing.

What I can't figure out is why Emily A took a report to Richard Langston about the virus originating in the Alpha world and blowing through the crossing only to have that information essentially disappear.

Emily P already determined her Management was covering up Emily A's presence on their side, so Emily A is a double agent at best, a traitor at worst. If she is either, though, why did Prime's Management cover up what the rumored evidence on the virus?

Has someone from Alpha infiltrated Prime Management and was testing Emily Alpha, so they ran her down with a car for his misdeeds?

Oh, so many questions. What are your thoughts on all of the mysteries between the worlds??? You can watch Counterpart online if you're not on board. You should be. It is so good!!

Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She's a member of the Critic's Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on X and email her here at TV Fanatic.