Warehouse 13, Season 4, Episode 1: A New Hope

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).

Claudia and Artie, after much amusing banter (I love these two) and much cleverness, find Magellan’s Astrolabe. But it’s missing a bit. And then the Brothood arrive along with Pete and Myka – dramatic language, some tesla-ing and Claudia gets locked in a hole. They need to find the rest of the astrolabe to reset time so they can get Claudia out as well. Examining the changing watch they find it’s now set to 4:18 – so much brainstorming as to what that can mean, and it doesn’t help that they have so much knowledge between them. It eventually leads them to the Vatican – the basilica of St. Peter – off they go, leaving Claudia behind.

Chaos is breaking out as the world goes longer without hope. They enter the tunnels to the Vatican – but leave Myka behind in the process. They find the alidade – but the brotherhood shows up again and in the fight, Peter gets stabbed… to death. He won’t remember when time is reset – but Artie will remember losing another agent. Especially since the dying Brotherhood man reveals that Artie cannot tell anyone what happens when he sets the astrolabe back – and that the astrolabe will create a terrible evil as well. Evil vs World without hope. Right, serve me up some evil, folks.

Lena’s research turns up that the bomb was so powerful because it was powered by all the hatred of the Nazi regime – Artie considers an Artefact of pure peace would be good at counteracting it – Ghandi’s dhoti.

Back in time, Artie has just freed HG Well and Myka in the big showdown at the end of season 3. He instantly confuses them (as he does) revealing he knows about the bomb and rushing to get Ghandi’s dhoti, they put it on the bomb and… it doesn’t work. HG and Myka put their brilliant heads together and point out the bomb is fuelled by hatred and it’s that they need to diffuse – Walter Sykes’s hatred

Another rush to stop Pete killing Sykes (more confusion as to how Artie knows about this) instead to bring him back to the Warehouse – throwing him to the floor, they use the dhoti on Sykes – and diffuse the bomb and he dies. The Warehouse is saved….

Epilogue time – and Artie is arguing with the Regents and Mrs. Frederick (she’s back!!!!) about bringing back HG Wells since she redeemed herself by sacrificing herself for Myka, Pete and Artie at the end of season 3. He is so vehement that they agree to bring HG Wells back as an agent. Of course Mrs. Frederick is suspicious, partly because she’s Mrs. Frederick and, therefore, awesome and partly because she now has a grey streak – which isn’t supposed to happen since the Custodian of the Warehouse is unaging.

Now for the consequences: Claudia leaving in the middle of the night (presumably to save Steve) and Artie having an nightmare about Claudia stabbing him.

Well, that fixed a lot – which I’m relieved about because that was faaaar too much loss at the end of season 3. It remains to be seen what else is fixed. I found the sacrifice/loss of getting the astrolabe to be a little excessive though – as we lost more people, as Claudia got lost and Myka was captured it became obvious that time was most certainly going to be reset. Which means when we had Pete’s dramatic death scene it felt a little… anti-climatic? Though Artie’s acting more than gave it impact.

I’m not happy that, again, Lena takes a back seat to the proceedings. But at least we have Mrs. Fredericks back – I worried that she would be considered disposable.

So we're set up for aa new season  and... I'm both excited and worried. Is Claudia going to be the next big bad? And/or Steve? I hope not - she's one of the best characters on the show and the world doesn't need another gay villain!