The Librarians Episode 10: And the Loom of Fate

There’s a very strange opening in which Eve wakes up smiling at a bloody hand – this will presumably make sense later.  She snaps to full consciousness and finds herself fighting a bunch of mummies, along with The Scoobies.  They are all working well as a team and hey – here’s Flynn, who told everyone to meet him at the pyramid but failed to mention mummies or the medallions which they wear (remove the medallions and the mummies turn to dust).  So, clearly the message here is that Flynn is terrible at working with a team.  Flynn thinks that the sarcophagus is the key to retrieving the library. 

The pyramids create a doorway to the void – the space where the library is.  On the way to figuring this out, Cassie has a nosebleed and clearly her tumor is getting the best of her.  Flynn thinks that because he has the sarcophagus, he can get to the void, but Jenkins points out that the sarcophagus only works when it’s powered by the pyramids, which are built with great precision on ley lines.  Flynn says they need lots of things and he talks very quickly and I like him better when I’m not trying to keep up for recapping purposes.  He needs stuff, OK?  Jake reminds us all that they still have the reality altering storybook from a few episodes ago, to power the magic. Morgan LeFay can be the software.  Eve is smug.  I am confused.  They have a dimensional stabilizer courtesy of Tesla, and a ball of twine from the minotaur.  “The clipping book sent you to get all these things?  Almost as if it was fate,” says Fynn.  Hmmmm.  Jenkins says they don’t need the twine so of course you’ll never see the twine again. *sarcasm*

All the past episode artifacts are assembled into a device.  Flynn tries giving coordinates to the storybook but nothing happens because the book only responds to stories.  Flynn kills any vestiges of romantic chemistry between him and Eve by acting like she’s his big sister and he’s nine.  Eve tells the book a story and everything is going great until Flynn tells Jenkins “Your notes [about the pyramids] were spot on,” and Jenkins says, “I didn’t send any notes!”  Cue fog and entrance of Dulaque and Lamia.  Dulaque set the librarians up to get the sarcophagus, and he doesn’t want to destroy the library, he wants to destroy the world.  Oh, Dulaque, where will you get your pizza from?  You know you’ll miss pizza!  Admit it!  Dulaque needs a blood sacrifice to add a little more power to the device and he kills Lamia.   Oh no, she and Jake never got to have incredibly ill-advised yet no doubt spectacular sex!  They had such great flirting!

All this business opens a door.  Dulaque goes through it, with Eve and Flynn close behind. They end up at a river where a loom is set up on a riverbank.  It’s the river of time and loom of fate.  Dulaque cuts the fabric at the point of the fall of Camelot.

Instantly, Eve and Flynn find themselves surrounded by armed men in a jungle.  Flynn claims to be a professor and it seems that he isn’t just being clever – he really is a professor.  He doesn’t know anything about the library.  Jake shows up, reveals that he is The Librarian, and kisses Eve and she’s all nopenopenope.

 

In this timeline, Jake has been the Librarian for ten years.  He’s surprised to see Eve because he saw her die years ago.  Flynn got an invite from the library, but he never showed up to take the job, so he’s a professor with no knowledge of magic.  Eve stopped the library from being lost but she was stabbed by Excalibur and died.

Jake is looking for a circle of standing stones and Flynn shows him where they are although of course Flynn does not believe in magic. Flynn points out useful things (he’s a dork in this timeline, but still smart) and Jake gets the magic stones activated so that Flynn and Eve can teleport out of the jungle.  Jake says goodbye to Eve and let me tell ya, if I were Eve, I might not have viewed Jake romantically prior to this moment but I sure as hell would now.  My GOD that man can make a romantic speech.  If you are on the rebound Jake, look me up.  Jake teleports Flynn and Eve out of the jungle and into Ezekiel’s scary lab.  In this timeline, Ezekiel is the Librarian, and Eve was “like a mother” to him.  Sure enough, Eve was stabbed by Dulaque the day she saved the library.

Ezekiel is having a crappy timeline, because it’s essentially zombie infested.  In this timeline, Killer Katie from the haunted house episode made one last wish, and now everyone in the world is possessed by dead people.  Ezekiel calls them Deadites.  Behold the helpful sign in the background.

 

Flynn figures out that Dulaque cut the threads on the loom of fate, which re-wrote history.  The Deadites invade but frankly they are not very menacing or vigorous.  Flynn uses the Odic Force to get rid of the ghosts and free the possessed people.  Earlier, Flynn knew about trees, and Jake said that his thing was more art and history.  While Flynn is babbling about the Odic Force, Ezekiel says that tech and security is more his thing.  I sense an important theme.  Flynn and Eve teleport out as Ezekiel thanks them for stopping by “just like it was fate.”  Oh, there’s another theme.  This episode is just full of themes but that’s OK because it’s also full of…

DRAGONS!  WE HAVE DRAGONS!  The next time line has Cassie as Librarian.  Or is she?  It’s implied that there is no Librarian, but that Cassie Is In Charge of Stuff, with Lamia as her Guardian. It is not immediately obvious whether she is evil but she is indisputably wearing a gorgeous cloak.  Anyway, in this timeline, Cassandra used Excalibur to heal herself instead of using it to heal Flynn, and Lamia knew that meant that Cassie was the chosen one so she (Lamia) killed Dulaque, as one does.  Eve died, of course.  Eve is beginning to look a bit put out about this “dying in every timeline business”. 

Flynn explains that if you cut the loom of fate, you stop history at that point and history also restarts from that point.  Flynn speculates that Dulaque was King Arthur and that he wanted to restart history from the point where he was at the height of his powers.  Because he didn’t re-weave the thread, Flynn and Eve are skipping from thread to thread, each one another possible path that history could have chosen.  Cassie, by the way, is super magically powerful.  Kudos to those who saw that coming.

Cassie says that all of history is going to unravel.  “We lost, Eve,” she says, echoing Eve’s words from last week.  Morgan Le Fay taught her how to open doors so she’s going to evacuate this world.  All the Librarians have interesting untold backstories but Cassie appears to have the most epic backstory of all, what with the dragons and magic lessons from an arch-villain, and I’m kind of pissed that we don’t hear it.  Flynn makes a rousing speech about how one must never give up, and how he chooses to save the world, by golly.  Flynn thinks that they can save the world if they return to the loom of fate and reweave it.  They will need a special kind of thread – gosh Jenkins, aren’t you glad you foreshadowed the crap out of Theseus’s ball of string earlier?

 Cassie, Flynn and Eve go to the Annex, but there’s no string (and, BTW, Cassie has never been there).  Eve and Cassie give up AGAIN but Flynn comes up with the idea of splicing the thread together.  For Cassie to get them to the loom, they have to gather all the librarians together.  Mathamagician Cassie is pretty cool, I must say.  Cassie gathers all the librarians and that allows her to bring everyone to Eve’s original timeline.  Eve and Flynn grab the string and make for the loom, after a touching goodbye with the three librarians who will inevitably disappear when the loom is re-woven.

Eve guards Flynn while he starts the weaving process and they are attacked by Dulaque who is now young, dressed in chain mail, and in possession of a sword.  Flynn was almost correct about Dulaque’s identity, but not quite.  Dulaque is Lancelot, not Arthur.  He stabs Eve, who collapses onto the rocks and views the blood on her hands as we saw in the episodes’ opening shot.  This means that Eve has been stabbed by Dulaque in every timeline. 

Flynn and Lancelot fight and Lancelot says that only one swordsman can defeat him “and you are not him.”  Enter Jenkins, AKA Galahad, to the sound of riotous cheering from my family room couch.  We saw this coming but it’s no less satisfying.  Jenkins kicks Lancelot’s ass while making a speech about democracy, Flynn fixes the loom and returns to his full Librarian state, and Eve bleeds all over the place because, as Jenkins says, it’s her fate to die.  Flynn rushes her back to the Annex, tells the book a story, and hey presto the Librarians from the timeline that we know and love appear, and Flynn and Eve and all of them rush into the library.  Flynn heals Eve with the magic elixir from the pilot. 

Flynn graduates the librarians, giving each of them a clippings books and telling them to work on some projects together, some separately, and some with him and Eve, you know, depending on ratings and whatever other shows they happen to be cast in next year.  The three graduates head to Lima, Peru, to solve the case of the week.  Remember when I was worried that the show couldn’t survive without Flynn?  Now I’m kind of bummed that he’s back.  The whole season was building up to this group being a team.  Evidentially Jake, Cassie, and Ezekiel agree, because the three of them go to Lima, Peru, together to investigate the mystery of the week.

Eve asks Jenkins why she can remember everything that happened but no one else can. Hey, you know which episode has not been mentioned?  The Christmas episode.  Because Eve did all that time and space hopping then, she was prepared to do it again.  Eve points out that the clippings book didn’t send them on the Santa mission – Jenkins did.  Jenkins looks very self-satisfied, although that’s not really new. 

Flynn asks Eve on a date – his idea of a date is fighting evil monsters.

Flynn opens the Annex door and Eve say, “Do you have any idea what’s on the other side of that door?”

“No,” says Flynn, beaming.  “Isn’t it great?”

 

REVIEWS:

Sarah:

I pretty much start every episode asking, “Ok. What’s Cassie wearing?” This time: patterned shorts and a dark tights, which, ok, but Ezekiel has brought game with parasols printed on his shirt, which is buttoned up to his throat.

However, Noah Wylie’s white suit looks like a doctor’s coat, which gave me some serious deja vu because does the man age at ALL?!

I liked that everything that had happened during the season built up to and was referenced in the finale. I really liked discovering who Jenkins really is. I liked that everyone had a role to play in the variations of the timeline, too.

I still think there is negative chemistry between Noah Wyle and Rebecca Romjin. There is a void between them that should not be filled with banter because it is stiff and does not cross that chasm. At least they didn’t kiss, thank the spinny globe.

My favorite moments:

Eve: “NOPE NOPE NOPE NO NO NO NO  NOPE” when Jake tries to kiss her. HA.

And can we talk about the hints about Cassie’s sexuality? When she’s Prince Charming, only women are attracted to her? And when she meets Eve in her alternate reality, she seems to say that they had a more than guardian/librarian relationship, if you know what I mean. Which: awesome. I love that it’s a possibility but it’s not A Big Huge Thing.

Also: MOAR DRAGON. LOVE MOAR DRAGON.

I hope hope hope this gets picked up for another season. I love shows like this. And I seriously want there to be more silliness and campy goofing and sneering Jenkins. I have a lot of respect for how the season finale ended the over-arching storyline yet left room for more in a future season. There was an END for NOW and a possibility of MORE for SEQUELS and the balance was lovely, in my opinion.

So: more please, with dragons and Jenkins and phones and Noah Wyle in white suits and everything else. There’s room and demand for shows like this, and if this is the only one we get, I’m happy. 

(And More Dragons, Please.)

RHG:

Now, while I do understand Eve and her Nopeing on out after Jake kisses her, I JUST WANT TO SAY that I would 100% be into that. I mean really.  Look at him.

I found the alternate versions of reality to be really fascinating!  Although I can see the track that would lead Jake to being an Adventure Librarian, and can almost see the track that would lead Cassie to being High Priestess of Everything, I want to know the progression of events that lead to Ezekiel becoming Science Guy (although his grey streak?  hot.)  I want tie in novels or something to give these backstories.

I do like that all of the various things they’ve collected and done over the season came back to make a delicious Waldorf salad of plot macguffins (shut up, Waldorf salad is delicious).  I was also concerned that apparently, no one thought of putting pressure on Eve’s stab wound to slow the bleeding, at least?  I mean, anyone who’s read any book would think of that, right?

Right?

Mostly, though, when they started trying to repair the weaving of history, THAT IS NOT HOW YOU SPLICE WARP THREADS.  THAT IS NOT GOING TO FIX THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM AND AS A WEAVER THAT BOTHERED ME SO MUCH.  (I really want that loom, though?  I do.  I want it.)  (I want it now.)

What did you think? Would you watch another season?