The Librarians: And the Drowned Book/And the Broken Staff Recap

Synopsis 02×01/02×02: The team is forced back together when a power hungry fictional steps out of the pages of Shakespeare and summons a famous villain to help him retrieve his book and his staff.

Rating: ★★★★☆

The Librarians is back, and wasted absolutely no time in taking the stakes up a few notches in season two. At the end of the previous season, the team had all gone their separate ways after magic had been released back into the world. The Library had returned, but something was not quite right with it, and the team was left to continue their quest to gather artifacts and save the world. Flynn and Eve went on an adventure of their own, until they were drawn back into the Library along with the rest of the team as the whole crew were given separate tasks to tackle at a museum in New York City (where Flynn’s career began).

When they made it to the museum, the team split up. After all, they were used to doing their own thing and didn’t see the merit in teamwork at that point in time. While the baby Librarians went off on their merry way, Eve and Flynn made nice with the speaker of the evening. Ever the charming British fellow, Eve and Flynn used his knowledge to figure out their piece of the puzzle that the Library had sent them to find. Unfortunately, they found out a bit too much and it was revealed that the speaker was actually James Moriarty, brought to life.

Only when the team finally decided to work together did they figure out what was happening. It was too late at that point, though, after they connected all the dots. The chess piece that Jake was sent to find, the giant storm Cassandra was interested in, the earrings from the Italian visitor Ezekiel was supposed to charm into his possession, they all played a part in the bigger mystery. The Library had sent them all to work together to keep these items out of the hands of none other than Shakespeare’s character Prospero from The Tempest.

Prospero, we found out, had been wandering around for quite some time disguised as a man named Terry who was the janitor. He’s the one who summoned Moriarty to help him get his book back, one that would allow him to regain the powers that Shakespeare had stripped from him in his story. He wanted the ending he deserved, not the one that was written for him.

Eve fought Moriarty while Flynn went after Prospero. However, he’d already used his little celestial sprite to open up a door to go find the staff that had been broken to pieces and made his escape with Moriarty. Flynn was stopped by Eve from diving in after them, and the team refocused their attention to the giant hurricane that threatened to wipe out New York City. Back to the Library they went to come up with a solution.

Of course that solution just so happened to be to shine a beam of hot sunlight into the storm using the Statue of Liberty to heat everything up and cause the cold to dissipate. Was it sound science? I don’t know. I’m not a scientist. Was it cool? Hell yeah. A disaster was averted and the team realized they needed to work together again in order to stop Prospero from finding his staff.

This easily transitioned into the second episode of the two hour season premiere, though it doesn’t begin well. Prospero and Moriarty managed to make their way into the Library without the team realizing it. Flynn, ever the loner, decided he and Eve would take “plan A” and go search for the staff while leaving the kids to stick with “plan B” in case their plan went south. After they left, Jenkins just so happened to need to go to the room where Prospero and Moriarty were waiting for him. They put the Library on lock down and trapped Jenkins in there with them.

Their goal? With Prospero’s staff in pieces and hidden somewhere even he wasn’t aware, they wanted to get into the heart of the Library where the tree of Knowledge (from the Bible) would be kept. From it he would fashion a new staff, which together with his book would restore his powers. Jenkins refused to give him the location, and the kids all struggled to get to where Jenkins was to try and protect them.

Meanwhile, Flynn and Eve ended up in the middle of the woods at the dismantled home of a friend of Shakespeare’s. After a bit of snooping around they found a secret compartment underneath what had once been the stage. Yet where they hoped to find the staff, they merely found a note explaining that the staff pieces were gone and a Librarian had something to do with it.

We learned from Jenkins, after he got away from Prospero and Moriarty, that the Library was sick. It was out of order. While Prospero had a sprite to lead the way to the heart of the Library, the rest of the team had nothing. There were only three rooms that didn’t seem to change while the rest of the Library kept moving and shifting and disappearing and reappearing. He thought it was his fault at first, which is why he didn’t mention it to the team, but quickly realized it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the state of the Library.

With some quick thinking the team decided to triangulate the heart of the Library using some weird tech lined up in the three stable rooms. They had to fight with the Queen of Hearts and Frankenstein’s monster, but managed to triangulate the location. Eve and Flynn took off to the heart of the Library and almost immediately ran into Prospero. Flynn dealt with Prospero while Eve took the old wizard’s little sprite buddy and dashed off with it with Moriarty in pursuit.

She and Moriarty had a face off, and eventually came to a truce. She handed him back the sprite and both of them walked away from the situation alive. It had really been the only solution. It is difficult to defeat a fictional.

Prospero, on the other hand, was hell bent on making a staff out of the tree of Knowledge. However, Flynn at the last minute set the whole damn thing on fire. It ticked off Prospero, but he ended up storming off to figure out how to attain powers some other way. Thankfully, Flynn revealed to Eve that the tree he’d burned wasn’t the actual tree of Knowledge… but he couldn’t remember what it actually was. Whoops.

In the end, Prospero was still on the loose but the team came back together and were able to celebrate a mild success. At least things hadn’t gotten worse. However, they were called to split up again. Flynn wanted to go after the artifacts, to keep them out of Prospero’s hand, while the rest of the team was focused on helping Jenkins fix the Library.