"Limitless" Recap - "Finale: Part One!"

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

Television shows that build their foundation upon a grand conspiracy often find themselves in the midst of a delicate balancing act. Tip your hand too early about what's really going and the audience loses interest, take too long and you bore them and the same result comes into play. Or, if the show is lucky, the find the balance and deliver one entertaining tale and it is the latter of those options that Limitless falls into. 

After all, this is a series that has provided us with one incredible conspiracy in its freshman season, and I've always been appreciative of the fact that we get just enough from the story to advance the plot at a brisk and tolerable pace while keeping us hooked so we tune in to see exactly how it ends, and that's the reward we come to expect with shows like this. We better get all the answers to our questions and thankfully this week, "Finale: Part One!" delivered on just that by pulling everything together. We finally know what Sands is up to, and we finally know why Senator Morra placed Brian Finch as an inside man with the FBI.

But of course, those answers wouldn't come easy, for starters we still had to deal with the fallout of Brian's confession to Naz and subsequent firing from the FBI and well...that was perhaps the strangest part of the night, seeing Brian back to being the every man and let's be honest, every single scene of him not working with Rebecca was painful. That made the little plot twist of NZT flooding the streets of New York all the more important because not only did it get Brian back into action but it was the moment we saw Brian finally find his calling. Let's not forget that not too long ago, Brian was a lost soul if you will, a man without purpose or direction and now...he wants to help people, he wants to work to make the world a better place and law enforcement seems to be the place to do it, which is precisely why Morra chose him in the first place.

It was never about bringing down the system from the inside, it was about getting a man with a strong moral center surrounded by people that can do one particular thing...watch Eddie Morra's back. Because the finest reveal of the night, is that Sands and the aptly named Legion of Whom were playing the FBI all along in order to get to Morra's inner circle and remove them, which can only mean one thing...Sands is indeed our true villain and he needs Eddie out of the way to realize the Legion's evil plan. What that is exactly, I'm sure we will find out next week but if I had to guess, I get the feeling that Senator Morra wants to use NZT for the betterment of mankind while Sands and the Legion want to use it for every nefarious purpose that one can imagine and of course rule the world with it.

The best part though of discovering that Sands is working to bring down Morra, is that it does fill in all the blanks when it comes to a few plot points from earlier this season that we all still had a few question about. For example, it's clear now that Sands was behind all the assassinations that we thought Morra had sanctioned and there's a good chance now The Purge from a few years ago was all part of Sands' long term plan to control NZT as he and the Legion saw fit. Either way, I'm dying to know how this season is going to wrap up, and how the heck Brian and the FBI are going to bring Sands to justice when he is surrounded by a group of people who know exactly how to harness the power of NZT. We'll find out next week, and the wait is already driving me mad. Until next time.

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