The ley lines are officially open, and magic is returning to the world and to our televisions. The two hour frantically packed season premiere of The Librarians included a mega storm, revenge against a famous playwright, and a monster on Tinder. It’s all just part of the job when you are a Librarian.
A Complete Wreck
The gang’s all here, oh wait no they’re not. Three of The Librarians are flying solo, while Flynn and Guardian Eve have been traveling together, engaging in a bit more than just adventure.
I’m not a Flynn/Eve shipper. I can’t seem to get on board with their romance. It feels forced, awkward, and not needed given that I’m sure it came as no surprise that at the end of the episode Flynn left the group, once again, to pursue his own quest.
Returning to The Library after completing their separate missions, the clip book gives each team member a job that involves visiting a shipwreck exhibit in New York City. As they approach the museum, a dark, sinister swirly cloud appears. Sinister swirly clouds are never a good sign and it is soon deemed a mega storm.
Cassandra, Ezekiel, and Jake find that they lack all of the necessary skills to complete their individual tasks. Finally they admit that as much as they annoy each other, they work better as a team. I assumed that this was where the episode was going. Hooray for team work and all that, of course where the episode ventured from this point proved surprising.
Dueling Deductions
While strolling around the shipwreck exhibit, Flynn delivers a Sherlock Holmes level deduction of the Oxford professor who curated the exhibit. Of course Flynn is shocked when the professor volleys an even better, more articulate deduction of The Librarian. The deduction is good, a little too good; suspicious even. As it turns out, The Professor just so happens to be James Moriarty.
As if I could not love this show more, they introduce a concept that captures any voracious reader’s full enthrallment…fictionals.
As it is explained, fictionals are literary characters who are so well written and/or whose story is so well read, a psychic energy combines with ambient magic, causing them to walk off the page into the real world. They live among us. I desperately want this to be true. I could think of at least fifty fictional characters I’d love to hang with. Dinner with Luna Lovegood and Anne Shirley, yes please.
We learn that fictionals lack free will. They are bound by their stories. This is discovered when Eve stabs Moriarty with a sword to no effect because that is not his ending.
Soon it’s learned that Moriarty, though villain that he is, isn’t the big bad of our story. Feeling a bit like a Scooby Doo mystery, it is revealed that the museum’s shifty janitor is the true villain. He is Shakespeare’s Prospero. For some yet to be known reason, Prospero is able to rebel against his story. His plan is to get back the magical powers that were stolen from him by his author.
As a Shakespeare geek I was jumping out of my skin at this point. Shakespeare and Doyle? How could this get better? Just wait.
Here Comes the Sun
Task one, the team has to defeat Prospero’s mega storm. After deciding against utilizing Thor’s Hammer, which is apparently stored in The Library (I’d love to see a Flynn/ Agent Coulson team up ), they use a sun located in what else, The Library’s sun room. A mirror and the Statue of Liberty later, a created solar flare causes the storm to break apart. With one task down, it’s on to task two.
Team Fiction vs. Team Librarian
At first it is thought that Prospero will go searching for his broken staff, but Prospero has a more grandiose plan in mind. He plans to go to the heart of the library and steal a branch from the tree of knowledge, thus creating a new magical staff of power.
In order to follow Prospero and Moriarty to the heart of the Library, the team must split up into pairs to triangulate the library.
Hurrah, more fictionals. Prospero summons a couple of brawny book characters to distract The Librarians.
Eve and Jake are accosted by The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. As an Alice in Wonderland fangirl, I found this version of The Queen of Hearts delightful. She’s not the roly-poly, loud mouthed, ill-tempered Disney version. No, she is a young barbarian, axe wielding psychopath. If I didn’t love The Librarians so much, I’d root for the wild Queen.
While Eve and Jake are attempting to keep their heads, Ezekiel and Flynn encounter Frankenstein’s monster. The monster exerts violence as well as eloquent prose. Flynn makes a humorous attempt to hug it out with the monster but it isn’t until Ezekiel suggests plastic surgery that the monster finds hope in his new world. A few swipes on Tinder and the monster is a new man. Now he roams among us looking for dates and a good plastic surgeon.
With the triangulation a success, Eve and Flynn find The Library’s heart. Flynn pretends to destroy The Tree of Knowledge while preserving the actual tree. Prospero and Moriarty escape to survive another day, thus securing their roles as the villains, or as Moriarty prefers, the antagonists season two.
The Conclusion
The premiere was fantastic. Packed with the usual witty banter and nods to nerds of all proclivities, The Librarians continues to be a breath of quirky, clever fun, in a landscape of many darker leaning television shows.
I love science fiction in all forms, but I can’t say that science is where most of my knowledge lies, but I know about literature, so I am full on geek for this Librarians season. With Prospero and Moriarty on the loose, I hope that more fictionals will appear. I can’t wait to see which new characters will walk off of the page.
And Cassandra got the Italian woman’s phone number! … ** Cas drops mic and walks away** 😀