Monday, June 26, 2017

Summer DVR Dump: The Librarians 3.04: “And the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy”

“The Guardian protects the Librarians but who protects the Guardian?”
- Cassandra

This episode of “The Librarians” has kind of an odd structure. We start with Jake, Eve and Ezekiel waking up in a cave. Their phones are dead, they’re covered in water and holding an hourglass. As they try to figure out why they can’t remember anything before they woke up, things get weird. A Spanish-speaking cleaning lady wanders into their little section of cave. Then they start to remember some times.

They were in Vegas looking into an actual pyramid beneath the Luxor Ezekiel, being him, took some coins as a souvenir. Silly thief! Oh, and the team tries to include Eve in their fun hanging out because they worry she’s lonely now that Flynn’s gone off chasing Charlene (or whatever little quest he’s on this season). But before they can have any fun, the lights go out and a shadow figure with two scythes shows up and taps a weird compact mirror that someone sent Eve, turning it into the aforementioned hourglass and some random black cube (kind of like the ones in the episode of Doctor Who when Eleven tried to live with Amy and Rory). Anyway, according to Jenkins, the figure is the Reaper, a super power magical assassin who can only be summoned by extra powerful magic. So, someone clearly wants Eve dead because she’s the target. The cube is modeled after one from Greek myth and holds a snippet of Eve’s fate. She insists on looking at it even after the rest of the team warns that by looking at it, she’ll create a self-fulfilling prophecy. It turns out, Eve sees herself die in the Library. Jenkins thinks this is preposterous seeing as the Library is specifically Reaper-proof but she’s not having it.

Back in the cave, we run into two more people: a swim team captain and the principal from the kid’s high school. The cleaning lady also knows them and as we jump back to earlier in the story we see the clipping book give them the location of the school as there is a lot of luck being thrown around somehow. They get to the school and after some questions, they figure out all the lucky kids (serious grade improvement and winning the lottery) were on the swim team. The kid that’s stuck in the cavern with them admits to bringing back water with supposed magical properties to help improve the team but it didn’t work. Or at least not the way they’d hoped. The swim goggles they’ve been using are working a little like the cube. Cassie takes a set back to the library just in time for the rest of the group to get dragged through the pool and into the cave.

Eve puts on a pair of the goggles and sees what she assumes is the way out. But it just leads to more confusion and drama. Eve, the principal and the cleaning lady get separated from Jake, Ezekiel and the swim captain. Oh boy. While Eve and her gang try to figure out which door to go through, the guys have to get across a room full of Greek symbols (and avoid being struck by lightning).

Back at the library, Jenkins and Cassie make some discoveries of their own. For one thing, they go back to the school and find a second cube in the pool. They’re examining it when Cassie finds a couple of ways to break self-fulfilling prophecies. Someone outside the prophecy can intervene or you create a bigger prophecy that blows the smaller one up. Case in point: The Oracle of Delphi saw her own death at the hand of one of her high priestesses and then she forged new cubes showing each of them being murdered on their wedding night. She married each of them and killed them all so they couldn’t kill her, negating the earlier prophecy. Cassie also sees a prophecy in the new cube of the Oracle predicting her own death again by bathing in the waters of Delphi.

In the cave, Eve and Ezekiel have visions of the other attacking. And they almost end up bashing each other’s heads in with really heavy weapons until the swim captain intervenes. At that point, they figure out the two ways to beat a prophecy. They also come to the part where Jake saw himself opening a Medusa door with a black eye. He’s bitching about not wanting to cheat fate but when he tries to open the door, he conks himself in the face. There’s your black eye buddy! But things quickly turn wonky when one of the librarians mentions prophecy glass and only the swim captain and the principal ask what that is. It turns out, the cleaning lady has been inhabited by the spirit of the Oracle and she’s been running from her own fate (about bathing one last time in Delphi water). She’s been trying to cheat fate by giving the Reaper Eve. Apparently, our guardian has a big future ahead of her and will change the fate of the library forever. The Oracle thinks this will shatter her own prophecy cube (which by the way, they’ve been stuck in the whole episode). Knowing that they are in the library, Eve uses the mirror (I was wrong in thinking the Reaper had changed it into the cube and the hourglass) to get Jenkins’ attention and signals for him to toss the cube through the back door to the other side of the world. It breaks Eve’s fate and since they end up in sunny Australia, the Oracle is dry and her water bottle is empty. The Reaper takes her and releases Eve from her fate (presumably for now).

The rest of the gang heads back to Vegas (including Jenkins) and shares a drink in celebration for wining another battle. I do have to admit I like seeing Jenkins tag along outside the library these days. Knowing he’s an immortal and a contemporary of King Arthur makes him more entertaining. I’m also intrigued to see what really lays ahead for Eve and the rest of the team as the season continues to unfold.

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