Episode 1: Time Will Tell
In last season’s cliffhanger (last week for us), renegade Warehouse agent MacPherson maneuvered his way back into the Warehouse after using inside help to steal a number of artifacts. MacPherson was supposed to be turned into a bronze statue, but was rescued by his mole, who turned out to be Leena even though MacPherson made sure Claudia took the blame. Oh, and MacPherson blew up the umbilical tunnel connecting the Warehouse to the outside, apparently killing Artie (who was in the tunnel at the time) and trapping Myka and Pete in the Warehouse. Got all that? The new season starts with Pete and Myka climbing down into the rubble to look for traces of Artie. Myka finds his glasses and they freak out, but a cloud of smoke swirls up
and coalesces into Artie. Turns out he had the Phoenix medallion in his pocket, which protects against death by fire (or explosion, apparently). Myka and Pete are thrilled that he’s alive (and Artie seemed to find the whole death-and-resurrection thing fascinating), but whenever the Phoenix medallion saves a life, another life is taken in its place. Pete starts coughing and they freak out again, but it turns out he’s just choking on the smoke (some of which may be part Artie), so they wonder whose life will be taken to balance Artie’s.
We find out pretty quickly that it’s Mrs. Frederick’s bodyguard, who’s driving her back to the Warehouse at top speed. His life is snuffed out and the three agents inside the Warehouse hear a crash and make their way up top. I guess the tunnel was just a 
convenient way of accessing the Warehouse, but it seems there are stairs so they weren’t actually trapped inside, even though it looked that way. Outside, they find Mrs. Frederick’s car bursting into flames, but she’s lying unconscious about fifty yards away. There’s no way she could’ve been thrown clear that far, so I’m thinking she has some kind of teleportation power. It would explain how she always pops up out of nowhere. Meanwhile, Leena has unbronzed someone else and taken them (wrapped in a blanket) to the Warehouse’s “back door” on a nearby ridge. MacPherson is observing Mrs. Frederick’s accident (and doesn’t seem too broken up about it) and Leena hands over the person she took from the bronzing chamber. MacPherson tells Leena to carry on with their plan and bundles the mysterious figure into his car. MacPherson welcomes the bundled figure to the future and says it’s time to change it.
At the closest military hospital, Mrs. Frederick is in a coma and Artie blames himself for her condition, since his using the Phoenix caused her driver to die. She suddenly wakes up and tells him to find Claudia and her brother Joshua because MacPherson is playing
the long game. Artie wakes up and Mrs. Frederick is still comatose, but he wonders if she was sending him a message. At the Warehouse, Pete and Myka view the video of Claudia releasing MacPherson from the bronzing booth. Of course, we know that was Leena disguised as Claudia, but nobody else knows that … except Leena, who has a strange flash of herself turning into Claudia but doesn’t say anything. Artie shows up and says Claudia has popped up in Switzerland, probably heading for CERN where her brother works. Artie’s going after her in case she and Joshua have both been working with MacPherson all along. Pete refuses to believe Claudia is a traitor, but Myka seems convinced by the video.
Myka and Pete use the Durational Spectrometer to check the Bronze Sector, hoping to pick up a clue, but the Spectrometer only reveals events within the last five hours, so all 
they see is a phantom rat. Myka finds drag marks and they check the log to find that someone also released H.G. Wells. They can’t figure out why H.G. Wells would be incarcerated in the Bronze Sector, which is supposed to be reserved for the worst elements of humanity. Pete finds an article about Wells’s historic home in London being broken into a few months back, except nothing was missing. He figures MacPherson might’ve been looking for something at Wells’s house, and when he couldn’t find it, decided to get Wells himself to show him. Myka and Pete figure they’d better head to London as fast as possible.
At CERN, in Geneva, Joshua gets a Skype call from Claudia warning him not to trust his old physics prof, who was really MacPherson. Joshua is confused and Claudia says she’ll
explain when she gets there; it’s obvious Claudia is still worried that MacPherson might be controlling her somehow. They’re interrupted by Joshua’s supervisor, Dr. Lefebvre, who wants his help moving some lab material. But when Lefebvre steps outside, we see the real Lefebvre down the corridor; this Lefebvre is actually MacPherson using the Harriet Tubman thimble to disguise himself. He changes back to his normal appearance and walks off before Joshua can notice anything.
In London, Pete and Myka go to Wells’s house, where a tour group is assembling. Pete notices a hot English woman (played by Jaime Murray of Dexter and Defiance fame) and 
immediately gets distracted. (Myka: “We are working!”; Pete: “Working it, okay. You know how long it’s been? Way too; there’s no reason for me not to get my groove on.”) Myka finds the name Edward Prendick (a character from The Island of Dr. Moreau) in the guest book and they figure Wells must already be there. During the tour, an H.G. Wells impersonator sits in Wells’s office and throws out some bon mots, but Pete assumes he’s the real thing and tries to collar him. Myka points out the fake mustache (and the guy’s accent changes from upper crust to East London cockney) and asks to see the tour guide outside. Pete feels stupid, especially since the hot British babe is looking on with amusement (or maybe bemusement).
Claudia arrives in Geneva and immediately feels like she’s being followed, so she leads her stalker into an alley where she conks him with a piece of wood. It turns out to be
Artie, who tells her she’s fired before he slips into unconsciousness. In London, the guide and tour group leave (after Myka explains that Pete is a mental patient who thinks Wells is his long-lost boyfriend), but none of them signed in as Prendick, so they figure Wells must’ve come and gone already. They decide to search the place to see what Wells might’ve been interested in. Back in South Dakota, Mrs. Frederick has a weird dream about Claudia and Leena and suddenly pops up out of her coma.
In London, Myka’s going through Wells’s papers and Pete hears someone trying to get in 
the front door. It turns out to be the hot British lady, who forgot her notebook in all the excitement. She and Pete start flirting like crazy. In Geneva, Artie and Claudia make peace (and he tells her he doesn’t think she’s a traitor, willing or otherwise) and when she mentions warning Joshua about “Professor Reynolds” Artie remembers that when he recommended Joshua for the CERN job, Reynolds name was mentioned. So if MacPherson has been Reynolds all along, Joshua could be in trouble. They head for CERN on the double.
In London, Pete and the mysterious English woman (who says her name is Helena) are making out like crazy. Myka gets a call from Artie, who freaks when he hears H.G. Wells
has been freed. Pete has a bad vibe mid-liplock, but by the time Myka comes to tell him what she learned from Artie, it’s too late … Helena has Pete’s Tesla gun jammed under his chin. Yeah, turns out H.G. Wells is a woman, and not just any woman, an ex-Warehouse agent. In fact, she was the one who first brought the Tesla gun to Warehouse 12; seems she met Tesla at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. They distract her with Myka’s ringtone and Pete gets loose, but Wells punches him out when he refuses to hit a woman. Myka’s not so chivalrous and pulls her gun.
They cuff Wells in her office and warn her MacPherson will turn on her. Wells says all 
men turn on you eventually. They tell her they’ll rip the whole house apart if she doesn’t tell them what MacPherson was looking for, so she guides them through a complex set of steps involving a key and a hidden switch, culminating in a secret panel sliding open (and Pete quoting Young Frankenstein: “Put … the candle … back!”) Inside the recess is something that looks like a steampunk girdle. They notice the wiring on the vest matches that of the hidden switch, but Wells tries to pretend there’s no connection. They probably should’ve listened to her, because when they flip the switch they’re instantly pulled against the ceiling of the room; yeah, she suckered
them into a trap. Wells is unaffected because she’s wearing magnetic boots and she makes short work of the cuffs. She puts on the vest and says the world wasn’t ready for a woman with her scientific acumen a hundred years ago, so she let her brother Charles write the novels (and be the public face) based on her theories. She also tells them that while people are bronzed, they’re awake and aware of the passage of time, which kinda freaks them out. No wonder Wells seems a tad bitter as she leaves Pete and Myka stuck to the ceiling.
At CERN, Artie and Claudia see Joshua, who’s helping Dr. Lefebvre remove some anti-matter from the storage facility. Artie notices the thimble on Lefebvre’s finger and warns 
Claudia, who pulls it off to reveal MacPherson. MacPherson shoves Joshua over a railing (he lands relatively softly on some duct-work, but he still looks hurt) and takes off with the anti-matter. In London, Myka remembers Wells writing about Cavourite, an anti-gravity metal, and figures that must be what’s holding them up. She speculates that Wells might’ve increased its power with an electric current, so Pete blasts the light fixture with his Tesla, short-circuiting the power in the room and dropping them—rather painfully—to the floor.
Pete and Myka get in touch with Artie to tell him about the vest and he has Claudia run a computer check on Wells artifacts. The vest is an Imperceptor Vest, which lets the wearer move so fast as to be invisible to the naked eye, like the Flash. The vest was never
developed because it needs a compact but incredibly powerful energy source to run it—like anti-matter, for instance. Artie figures Wells must be going after her personal effects, which are stored in a place called the Escher Vault back at the Warehouse. So MacPherson stole the anti-matter so Wells could use the vest to get into the Vault and get her shit back. Pete and Myka realize that if Claudia isn’t MacPherson’s accomplice inside the Warehouse, it has to be Leena.
Speaking of Leena, when she returns to the boardinghouse, Mrs. Frederick is waiting for her. She questions Leena about any memory lapses she’s had lately, then tries a more direct approach—she starts choking her. Mrs. Frederick chokes Leena out until a pearl falls from her ear. Mrs. Frederick revives Leena with a shot of absinthe and tells her it’s a Pearl of Wisdom, which allows someone to control her thoughts and actions. Leena remembers everything now, including disguising herself as Claudia when she freed MacPherson.
At the Warehouse, MacPherson and Wells prepare the vest with the anti-matter and it works; she zips around like a hummingbird on speed, too fast for MacPherson to see her. She notices the diamond-and-palladium necklace that keeps his blood from turning to
acid, but she’s more worried about the others showing up. MacPherson says he’s set some traps and Wells heads into the Escher Vault at super-speed. Artie and Claudia are heading for the Vault via a circuitous route, but MacPherson anticipated that and they end up trapped in an aisle between Chameleon Mines and a wall of fire. Claudia suggests they climb up the shelves to get around the fire, an idea that doesn’t thrill Artie. Pete and Myka get back and Artie tells them what to do, stressing that they’ll have to take a roundabout route to avoid MacPherson’s booby traps. Myka gets a better idea; as Artie struggles to the top of the shelves, he and Claudia see Pete and Myka zoom past on the zipline.
Outside the Escher Vault, Wells shows up (without the vest) and tells MacPherson she got what she needed. She puts the moves on him and he’s distracted enough that Pete can sneak up and handcuff him. Yup, turns out “Wells” was Myka using Tubman’s thimble to disguise herself. Artie and Claudia show up, grateful to see MacPherson in cuffs. MacPherson offers to turn on Wells if they let him go. Unfortunately for him, Wells has returned from the Vault and overhears his treachery. She not surprised, but isn’t happy either. She cuts the necklace and zips away at super-speed.
MacPherson’s blood starts turning to acid inside him and he admits he’s the one who put the Phoenix in Artie’s pocket when they were fighting. He wanted Artie to experience the darkness, desolation, and emptiness he’d felt when he used the Phoenix to save Carol.
But Artie says all he felt was light, peace, and hope. MacPherson is surprised and tells Artie he’s sorry, then disintegrates into dust. Later at the boardinghouse, Artie says the vest was found outside but there’s no trace of Wells anywhere. He says it’s their duty to find her and re-bronze her. Claudia is pissed off at Leena for setting her up, even though Leena didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Artie tries to make Claudia feel better by giving her a Farnsworth communicator of her own (which she’s wanted for a while); but this isn’t any old Farnsworth—this one belonged to Philo Farnsworth himself, which makes Pete jealous as hell.
At the Warehouse, Mrs. Frederick and Artie head into the Escher Vault to figure out what Wells took. They use special goggles to avoid becoming disoriented by the ever-shifting features of the Vault. It’s kinda like the moving staircases at Hogwarts on acid. They figure out that Wells took her locket, ring, and compact … but they have no idea why she took those specific items. We see Wells in a coffee shop, sketching something. When some dude tries to flirt with her by asking what she’s working on, she says it’s something she’s been thinking about for a long time.