The CWWell, Max Evans found his family.
Or at least a part of his family, or possibly, if we're going by the logic of the classic Mary Kate & Ashley movie It Takes Two, a guy who is completely not related to him but just happens to look exactly like him.
It turns out there was a stowaway on the ship that brought Michael and Isobel's mothers to Earth, and he also survived the massacre. He was a farmer named Mr. Jones for a while, but he's been locked in a cage underground for decades until Max, with the help of Liz's science, accidentally unlocked the cage and woke him up. And now Max, Isobel, and Michael have let him fully out of the cage, and have discovered that he looks exactly like Max.
While Tripp's journal tells of a dangerous man who Louise and Nora were afraid of, showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie says don't be so sure he's the villain he seems to be.
"Obviously, Mr. Jones is related in some way to Max, so we are going to dig into what Max's family history looks like. We're also going to discover in season three that the story that we heard about Nora and Louise may have been the story that they wanted to tell, so our tale about Mr. Jones, even though he seems like a threatening figure right now, is a little more complicated right now."
Mr. Jones has a whole lot to share about the nature of aliens.
"The insights that he gives the aliens into where they come from and why they're here is going to put interesting new pressure on Michael, Max, and Isobel and take their relationships to a very different space," MacKenzie says. "He's not necessarily the villain, and all three of our aliens are going to have different expectations, different perspectives on whether or not they can trust him."
He'll be a particular help to Max, who only learned a few episodes ago that he's not related to Isobel or Michael at all.
"[Max] really felt adrift, and he discovered that he was sort of the only one who didn't have information about his family, and Jones comes with a whole lot of information about Max's family."
While Max is busy with this life-changing discovery, Liz has left town.
She got a job offer in California, thanks to some help from Diego and a renowned scientist friend he brought to town. She had asked Max to go with her, but that's before a few things happened.
Max didn't fully trust Diego, so he had him bugged (thanks to some pretty excellent undercover work from Cam) and heard that Liz's new boss wasn't so sure of her yet even after offering her the gig. Diego then said he'd show off Liz's top-secret lab as if he knew how to get into it, and when Max heard that and thought of what was in the lab, there was really only one choice in his eyes: he had to destroy it.
He threw everything around and then blew the whole thing up, just as Diego and the scientist had arrived. MacKenzie says it's the fact that the lab blew up that meant Liz became very valuable, and so her California job offer stood. But not her plan to go with Max, since he blew up all of the work she'd been doing.
"She will definitely meet some new and interesting people while she's away," MacKenzie says. "We'll do a bit of a time jump within season three, and Liz will of course be drawn back to Roswell when she gets some new information, but her time in California is going to be really important and really transformative for her."
MacKenzie says it was always important to her that this isn't a "lovely little rom com" story about a "big city girl realizing all her romantic dreams can come true in a small town.
"Liz's romantic life is always going to be at odds with her ambition, and she's gonna have to find a way to reconcile both of those things," she explains.
MacKenzie says fans should go back and rewatch the episode, and you might notice that Max had more going on than just keeping nosy scientists out of Liz's work.
"I will say that Max's motive might have been more complicated than it seems on a first viewing," she says. "You might notice things going on with Max that he's not necessarily talking about. That said, I think the best scenes on television are scenes where two people are fighting and they're both right and they're both right, and Max and Liz are both wrong in this situation and they're both right."
Max is so used to living with secrets, she says, that he's not good at being a partner, while what Liz was doing in that lab was genuinely dangerous and unethical.
"I'm proud of the way we told the story between them in that it's not Diego or Cameron or anybody who comes between them, it's the two of them," MacKenzie says. "Their interests don't align right now, and their flaws are hurting each other."
Elsewhere, something huge happened that we haven't even mentioned yet: Jesse Manes is dead, at the hands of his own son Gregory. He will, of course, get a hero's funeral, but Alex is hoping he can prevent any other "Manes men" from stepping into his shoes.
Alex also appeared to make a major breakthrough as he stepped up to the piano for open mic night and delivered one hell of a performance of a song written for the show by MacKenzie herself, along with writers Leslie Powell and Charlie Snyder.
"I've been writing songs since I was in high school, so it was a really cool opportunity to put myself in someone else's shoes and tell the story from Alex's perspective," MacKenzie says. "I was really excited that Tyler was down for this. We've kind of been building to this moment all season, in which he finally really just says how he feels out loud. It's buried in a song, but it's all said and on the table."
Michael heard the beginning of the song, which is a tale of love despite Alex's homophobic military father, but he had just come from a breakup with Maria, who wants to explore her newfound alien abilities on her own.
"He's trying not to keep repeating the same unhealthy patterns, so when he walks away from listening to the end of the song, he's sort of in his mind setting Alex free, and he's gonna spend a little time healing himself," MacKenzie says.
Michael started the season with the idea that hope is the most dangerous and painful thing a person can have, and now, she explains, he's finally got some.
And while Michael isn't willing to listen to the whole song, we happily will, since we've already rewatched the full scene several times. The song, called "Would You Come Home" will be available for download tonight at 9 p.m. PT.
Roswell, New Mexico will return for season three next year on The CW.