‘Timeless’ Retro Recap: ‘The World’s Columbian Exposition’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

If there’s one thing that’s super high on my list when it comes to reasons I’m such a fan of NBC’s Timeless, it has to be the fact that this series doesn’t mess around when it comes to resolving plotlines and answering questions. For many shows out there will take their sweet time in doing those things and in essence, drag everything out before bringing it all together come season finale time. But this show, knows that it needs to keep things moving and wrap up matters quickly and for proof of this, look no further than the next episode in season one, ‘The World’s Columbian Exposition’.
 
Because this particular tale could have left us hanging when it comes to finding out exactly what the heck Flynn had planned for Lucy. But it didn’t take long to discover that he needed her mind to try and help him continue his search for Rittenhouse’s executive leadership and unfortunately for both Lucy and Flynn, the botched attempt to end this in 1780 meant that Flynn was going to have to figure out a new plan on how to stop this madness and he dragged Lucy to the first world’s fair in 1893 in order to assassinate Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan who as it turned out, were also top tier leaders in Rittenhouse.
 
But, getting to a trio of leaders as important as those men would not be as easy as one might think, which means that Flynn needed a little help in getting into the building and room they were going to meet in and he forcibly enlisted the help of one Harry Houdini who was in fact, able to get Flynn into the meeting room to set up a bomb. But thanks to an early appearance by everyone involved in the meeting, and some quick thinking from Lucy, Houdini was able to foil Flynn’s plans and get him captured by Rittenhouse, giving Lucy freedom from Flynn’s madness and preserving history and seemingly giving the audience an early happy ending for a change.
 
However, there was a bit of a complication surrounding the story before a happy ending could arise in that, Rufus and Wyatt were in this time period as well, looking for Lucy of course and thanks to Flynn’s lackey they found themselves trapped in a room with other strangers at the World’s Fair Hotel, a place that housed a man named H.H. Holmes who just so happened to be America’s first Serial Killer and the rest of the story ended up being a twisted cat and mouse game where the Time Trio and their new friends worked to survive Holmes’ hotel of horrors, wherein Lucy eventually had to use her knowledge of Holmes to confuse him in order to escape his clutches.
 
If anything, this ended up being quite the harrowing episode when all is said and done since the Time Team was under constant duress in this one, but what matters most, is that we saw more genuine heroism from all of them since Lucy was bold and brave in this tale regardless of the circumstances, Wyatt made Holmes pay for his cruelty in unexpected fashion and Rufus, well he finally stood up to Rittenhouse and while it seems as though everything is back to ‘normal’ for the Time Team, one does have to wonder what Wyatt is going to do with the information that Flynn (who of course escaped) gave him regarding the identity of the man that supposedly killed Jessica and well, I suppose there’s only one way to find out, so on that note, I’m off to watch another episode of this magnificent series. Until next time.   

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