Did ‘Brilliant Minds’ Just Reveal the Truth About Sofia?

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 13 “The Rabbit Hole.”]

We’ve got a theory or two — no, it’s not bunnies — about just who Sarah Steele is playing on Brilliant Minds after the Monday, January 26, episode, and one may explain all those flashforwards about Wolf (Zachary Quinto).

Wolf met Sofia as a neighbor of his dad’s (Mandy Patinkin) after he found out where he’d been staying since leaving his house. But she has her own medical issues, which Wolf is now trying to get to the bottom of — she details her insomnia in this episode. Wolf insists she come in for some tests, including a sleep study. When he asks if she has a history of mental health issues, she brushes it off.

At the same time, she tells Wolf about his father — him living in Mongolia 20 years ago, working as a nomad doctor, and how they met when he asked her for a cup of sugar. She’s had to take a break from the book she’s writing about him since he disappeared, something Wolf is familiar with. “It’s so nice actually to have somebody to talk to about all this stuff. Everybody else in my life is so sick of hearing about it,” he remarks. She tells “Wolfy” to ask her anything.

And when Sofia sees him talking to Nichols (Teddy Sears) at work and Wolf tells her about him, she decides they need to go out and wonders what he ever did without her. He doesn’t seem too into the idea, until after a conversation with his best friend Carol (Tamberla Perry) during which she says she didn’t tell him about something going on in her own life because she’s been worried about him — he’s not swimming in the Hudson and he let his ferns die — and he’s been keeping to himself. At a bar, he complains to Sofia about Carol, she in turn talks about having a friend who also tells her she’s overreacting, and they dance … but we can’t help but notice that we have yet to see anyone else interacting with her.

Furthermore, there’s Wolf’s voiceover during that bar scene: “Sometimes a new friendship feels so intoxicating, like the connection you’ve been searching for all along, that you might not see the warning signs.”
Between that and the medical case of the week being about chatbots being persuasive and telling you what you want to hear, we can’t help but wonder … is Sofia real? Or is she a hallucination of Wolf’s telling him what he wants to hear, about his own life and about his father? Is she a warning sign of what’s going on with Wolf and why he’s ended up in Hudson Oaks?

The last scene of the episode takes place one week later, with Wolf in Hudson Oaks and walking through the hall of patient rooms. He knocks on one door and finds it locked. Then, he sees an open door and inside is Sofia. “Wolfy? What are you doing here?” she asks. “I’m here to save you,” he tells her. “Finally. I knew you’d come,” she says with a smile.

Now, could it be just what it seems at face value and Wolf is there to save her? Could Sofia be why he ends up at Hudson Oaks and he got himself checked in there to help her? Or could that final scene be more proof that our theory above holds water? After all, why would the door to her room be open when others aren’t? Could it be that there’s really no one in there?

Brilliant Minds, Mondays, 10/9c, NBC