The Rydell Revelations

Morrie Rydell has come to John Avery Whittaker with an alarming claim: his sister Suzu has vanished, and he believes Emily Jones kidnapped her. But Whit is not so quick to believe him. He tells Morrie plainly that he thinks the boy is trying to game him, just as he has been gaming nearly everyone in Odyssey since he moved to town. To prove his point, Whit reads aloud from Morrie's own private computer journal, an entry Morrie wrote after staging the "writer's ruse" mystery for Emily and Matthew, boasting that no one in town could ever keep up with him. Morrie is stunned that Whit has it, but Whit is only getting started. He has visited the Stratford Theater in Connellsville, where he recognized an actress named Beatrice Kaufman, a specialist in Eastern European accents who recently played a certain "Mrs. Popov," and met an actor named Roland Tomlinson, who was hired to pose as a representative of a completely made-up Student Project Fund. Both were hired over the phone by a disguised voice and paid in advance. Then Whit plays a recording of the mysterious voice from the escape room incident. Once the disguise is stripped away by careful audio work, the voice is unmistakably Morrie's, challenging the kids to prove the Bible verse about laying down your life for your friends.

Cornered, Morrie confesses to everything: rigging the student body election so Emily would win, opening all the school lockers and letting Dion take the blame, the drama club fundraiser, the escape room, even sending Emily on an imagination adventure at Whit's kitchen sink using salvaged Imagination Station parts. But he insists that Suzu's disappearance is not another game. "Everyone here says you are the guy to come to when you're in trouble," he pleads, and begs Whit to come see Suzu's ransacked room for himself. Whit agrees.

At the house they are met by Mrs. Meido, the children's caretaker, and Morrie gets a shock: she and Whit already know each other. She is the one who gave Whit the journal entry. Feeling betrayed and spied upon, Morrie demands answers, and Whit sits him down for a story. Years ago, Whit's government work took him to Japan, where he befriended a diplomat at the American embassy named Raymond Rydell, Morrie's father. Whit has known about Morrie since the day he was born. Mrs. Meido recalls happier days before Morrie's mother, Juliana, got sick and died, and how his grieving father buried himself in work while his brilliant, restless son roamed the embassy causing trouble, even snooping in a secretary's computer. Convinced an embassy was no place to raise children, Raymond called his old friend Whit and asked him to watch over the kids in Odyssey, with Mrs. Meido as their guardian. "I'm not a good father, and I never have been," he admitted. Hearing all this, Morrie bitterly concludes that his father simply doesn't want him and Suzu.

Then Whit plays his final card. He knows Morrie has a genetic condition that limits the use of his hands and wrists, which means he could never have opened all those lockers himself. He had help. Morrie breaks down and admits the truth about Suzu. "It was just supposed to be games," he says; games are how the two of them have always talked to each other. Suzu is every bit as brilliant as he is, only her gifts run to engineering, mechanics, and lock-picking. She opened the lockers, and once had a habit of taking things that weren't hers, though Morrie secretly returned what she stole. What Morrie took instead was information, and it surprised him: most of the kids in Odyssey are Christians. Having always heard Christians were hypocrites, he designed his schemes as tests to see whether people like Olivia, Matthew, and Emily really lived what they believed. To his surprise, they passed, and Suzu was genuinely touched, saying she wanted to do right by their new friends. But Morrie fears his kitchen-sink adventure, which featured a pretend kidnapping, gave Suzu an idea for one final game of one-upmanship. "I think Suzu kidnapped Emily," he tells the astonished Whit.

Mrs. Meido spots Suzu's notebook under the bed, and since Morrie never learned to read Japanese, she translates: Suzu has written about a secret hiding place, a house in a tree. They realize she means the Wonderworld treehouse. Leaving Mrs. Meido behind in case the girls return, Whit and Morrie hurry off. On the way, Morrie needles Whit, arguing that Whit's inventions, from the Imagination Station to the Room of Consequence, manipulate kids with staged scenarios just like his own schemes did. Whit objects that his adventures are meant to help kids choose what's right on their own, but before he can finish, they reach the treehouse and climb up, calling for the girls.

The treehouse is empty. Then a voice behind them answers, and Morrie whirls around in disbelief: it is Natalie, the secretary from the embassy in Japan. But Whit knows her too, under a very different name: Tasha Forbes. Now certain this is no game, Whit and Morrie are left facing a bigger mystery than ever, and the story ends there, to be concluded in the next episode.