Spoilers ahead for Episode 9 of Found Season 1, called "Missing While Scamming."
"Missing While Scamming" was a rough episode for the Found team, as they didn't locate the missing social media influencer in time to save her life, and no celebratory shots were taken. The main focus of the hour was more about Gabi and her relationships with the people around her in the aftermath of the previous episode's twisted development with Sir. In the promo for the next episode, she makes a promise to Mark-Paul Gosselaar's character that leaves me wondering what exactly she believes she can do.
Sir spent most of the episode so sick and miserable in Gabi's basement that he was hallucinating moments from what was clearly a troubled childhood, and the scenes shed some light on why he has insisted to Gabi that he's not the monster she believes all season. He truly seems to believe that, based on the new reveals about what his mother was like.
For her part, Shanola Hampton's character hasn't forgotten how he forced her to say that she loved him last week and now knows about Lacey; the case of the week ending in death just gave her more reason to not want to deal with him. In the promo for the next episode, called "Missing While Indoctrinated," Gabi says something that stuck out to me immediately. Take a look:
Gabi tells Sir in the quick trailer that "When this is over, you will pay." It's not clear if the "this" she's referring to is about that episode's specific case or her mission to find people who have been forgotten in general, but she certainly sounds like she means it when she promises to make Sir pay. The problem? There's not really a way out for Gabi at this point that doesn't involve jail time, murder, and/or keeping her kidnapper in her basement long term.
She considered confessing to keeping Sir captive in "Missing While Scamming," and was actively researching penalties for kidnapping in Washington D.C. Naturally, she did so using a VPN, because even unraveling Gabi isn't an unintelligent Gabi! She got to the point of writing out a statement, which shed some light on a question I've been asking for quite some time: how did she capture Sir in the first place? The camera shot of her statement was brief and blurry, but focused just enough to shed some light:
The shot doesn't provide all the answers, but fans now know that she "did lawfully detain Hugh Evans on Friday, February 3rd" and has "held him against his will for the last 8 months without other human interaction or sunlight," noting that she "acted alone" and hadn't told anyone. For due diligence, I checked to calendar to confirm that February 3 was indeed a Friday in 2023, so Found isn't set in the past or future. She ultimately burned the statement rather than give it to the authorities or risk keeping it.
At this point, the reveal is most relevant as a sign of how seriously Gabi was considering confessing about holding Sir captive, which is really one of few possible choices for her at this point. She could confess her crimes and let Sir be properly imprisoned according to the letter of the law; she could keep him imprisoned in her basement indefinitely and just hope that Trent doesn't start to get suspicious despite his priorities; or she could kill Sir.
"Missing While Scamming" made the point that she only cared for him in his illness because she wanted to avoid a murder charge, so killing him seems out of the question at this point. She decided against confessing, so that's out as another option. The other choice seems to be just keeping him indefinitely. While I'm on board with that as a viewer who doesn't want to lose Mark-Paul Gosselaar from the cast, it doesn't seem in line with what Gabi has in mind in the promo.
With seemingly no good option for dealing with Sir as the 2023 TV schedule winds down and the 2024 TV schedule approaches, it'll be interesting to see how Found continues to handle Gabi and Sir when she's already tired of keeping him in her basement after just nine episodes. If you want to revisit any of those nine – or, like me, are still dying to know more about Annie – you can find every episode of the series so far streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription, and check out new installments on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.
