We open with a great deal of depressing. The Warehouse is destroyed, the artefacts gone and a whole load of people are dead. Claudia, Lena, Myka, Pete and Artie all gather in grief and loss. Time for dramatic scenes, tearful memories and painful flashbacks. All of which I’m glad of – because this much loss should be accompanied by grief and pain and it needs to be impactful
Artie has the watch though, Macpherson’s watch, that may be a key to bringing something back. But they don’t’ know what it does or what the side effects can be and, as Myka wisely says, they can’t just selfishly use an artefact to bring back the people they love without realising the consequences. Of course, blowing up the Warehouse comes with other consequences – the destruction of the Eturnium chamber, made of the world’s hardest metal, it was destroyed in the blast – and it contained Pandora’s box.
Turning on the television, they learn the world’s economy has collapsed, there’s rioting in the street and there are mass suicides. At the bottom of Pandora’s box, hope remained – and with the destruction of the box, the world lost hope.
With that established, side effects of using the watch seem pretty minor in comparison; reading that it has “push the button” written on it in Portuguese (everyone gives Myka a look for speaking Portuguese and she has a little snark moment which was really needed to counter the heavy emotion). Pushing the button, the watch became a stop watch – they have 23 hours to use whatever fail safe they have. The back of the watch has black diamonds in it – which means something to Artie – who rushes to the warehouse in characteristic “I’ll tell you later” style.
At the Warehouse, Pete catches the American football – the ball that continually travels around the world we’ve seen since season 1. It’s an Artefact tracker and, inside, is a computer and a database and the last resort they have. Between internet and rugby ball they find the Brotherhood of the Black Diamond, a sect based on the Templars based in the South of France
Lena has to join one of the Regents to find an Artefact that was in Warehouse 13 that they can use to diffuse the bomb – going back in time won’t help anything if they can’t actually stop the bomb. Claudia wants to stay and use the Metronome of immortality on Steve, she’s done the maths, even if they do save the Warehouse, they won’t be saving Steve – but if she does bring him back it will be into a world without hope; faced with that, she agrees to go with Artie, Myka and Pete. But Claudia is determined – she will save Steve after they have fixed the Warehouse
Arriving in France, the loss of hope is already affecting them – Pete isn’t flirting and everyone feels cold. And they’re already been followed by the Brotherhood, not very subtly (Pete waves at them). At their base, they split up, Claudia and Artie to steal with Pete and Myka to distract. Have they considered asking? I mean, loss of hope is probably something the Brotherhood won’t enjoy either. Distraction begins with a gay joke and the massive plan of “hit the big one” (Myka is going to murder Pete one of these days).
