"The Librarians" Recap: "And the Final Curtain"

Written by John Edward Betancourt

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

Season Finales are such a bittersweet experience. On one hand, we know that once this particular hour of the show is over, our lovely experiences and adventures come to an end if only for a little while, but at the same time...we're no doubt getting the resolution of a story that we so desperately crave and that's exactly how I felt heading into the season two finale of The Librarians.

After all, last week set the stage for a grand showdown with the wizard Prospero, leaving the fate of the world hanging in the balance and this week, our intrepid heroes wasted no time in trying to figure out not only what Prospero was up to...but how to stop him. We learned quickly that the internet and power had completely disappeared but thanks to Cassandra's quick thinking the gang was able to capture news feeds from a few of the networks before the world went dark and lo and behold, Prospero's plan came into focus, turns out he is slowly turning the world into a giant forest, thus undoing all of mankind. 

His reason for this? To put mankind into a place where they can find joy and simplicity and with a few days or possibly hours left to stop Prospero, it means the Librarians will need the staff to defeat him and in order to get it...it's time to go back to when the staff was in one piece, which means only one thing...time travel! In fact this was by far one of my absolute favorite moments in the show to date with all the lovely easter eggs we found in the Time Travel Room...since blink and you'll miss seeing the TARDIS and DeLorean hiding in there but I digress, because there's a world to save and complications on the horizon for the Librarians since Flynn and Eve go back to 1611 to stop the wizard...only to have their time travel device shatter, leaving them trapped long ago and per Eve's orders...if she and Flynn didn't make it back, the Librarians had to find a way to stop Prospero in the present.

It leads to an interesting style of storytelling for the show, one that takes us between past and present as both groups converge upon the place where Shakespeare accidentally summoned Prospero. In the past, Eve and Flynn are joined by Moriarty, who plans to betray Prospero and put and end to all of this in the past by killing Shakespeare, especially after realizing the wizard has no purpose for him after this. But Moriarty's plan is foiled by Flynn, giving him court with the legendary playwright himself and it doesn't take long for Flynn to realize the Staff is actually part of Shakespeare's quill and well...with the old playwright furious about his career winding down, his fury does something interesting with the quill...it turns him into Prospero. It means that the staff must be broken, and quickly before Prospero unleashes his fury and it leads to a showdown in the past that costs Moriarty his fictional life and sends Eve into the waiting arms of the strange ladies of the lake before she returns with Excalibur allowing Flynn to vanquish Prospero and break the staff.  

But the Prospero of the present must still be dealt with, and the Librarians find clues left by Flynn and Eve to put an end to this madness at last, by trapping Prospero/Shakespeare and binding him before reading words from William's work, words that sound oddly like the journey each individual Librarian went on this year...and those words do the trick, freeing the old bard of his own magic and allowing him to return to his own time...at a cost, Flynn and Eve will still be trapped in the past. Of course, Flynn finds a way out of that rule, using the magic of the quill to be turned into a stone statue with Eve so that the two of them can be tucked away in the Library to be released at just the right time and once they are free...everything wraps up happy. Prospero is defeated. The world is saved and it looks like Flynn might stick around for a while. 

So I have to say, what a lovely little season finale. There were laughs to be found everywhere, plenty of plot twists because I did not see that whole thing coming with Shakespeare actually turning into Prospero instead of summoning him and I loved the fact that Flynn is finally sticking around for a change as the Librarians settle in to their new home. No side missions this go round, no splitting up, they're a team at last...no, they're a family and that made for one fine ending. But alas, the season has now come to its end, and the wonderful adventures we enjoy going on with the Librarians are on hold...for now. After all, there's no wondering this time, the good news already came down that Season 3 is on its way...and as much as this show has stolen my heart, it's going to be a tough but worthwhile wait for the next chapter of the story. Until then. 

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