The Librarians and the Drowned Book – Director: Marc Roskin/Writers: John Rogers, Paul Guyot
This one starts nine months ago, when magic was brought back to the world with King Arthur’s sword. While the Librarians were trying to stop Dulaque and Lamia, someone else was taking advantage of the newly awakened magic to bring a character from the pages of a book into the real world. The book is Sherlock Holmes, so I guess we’re supposed to assume it’s him, but it could just as easily be Moriarty or even Watson (especially since the guy doing the conjuring says he has need of the new character’s genius).
In the present, Jenkins is annoyed that the Library keeps reconfiguring itself for no apparent reason. Elsewhere, Flynn and Eve are on an expedition
(which seems to be doubling as a date) to find the lost Idol of Agamanzo. Things start out well but take a bad turn when Flynn sets off a volcano and they’re chased by pissed off villagers. They do recover the Idol, but Eve is worried that they haven’t seen much of the other Librarians lately. They’re interrupted when the Clippings Book opens to show them an exhibit on a newly-discovered shipwreck at the Museum of History in New York. Eve agrees to go with Flynn to check out the exhibit, but she’s still worried about the others. We see the others on 
various missions: Jacob in Japan acquiring a doll, Cassandra at CERN warning a physicist about causing a dimensional inversion (a warning the physicist ignores and is turned into a goat), and Ezekiel stealing a book from a museum in England. All three of them get notices in their personal clippings books about the Museum of History, so all of them head for New York after checking in at the Annex.
At the museum, the big exhibit is the Isola Perduta, a salvaged ship that sank off the Italian coast centuries ago and was just discovered with most of its cargo intact. The Librarians are surprised to see each other there and it’s
clear they haven’t been working together much lately. They soon realize something weird is going on as a massive storm moves in right above the museum. They run into a janitor named Terry who tells them he’s locking things down, since the storm is powerful enough to cause a lot of damage. Even though their Clippings Books sent each of them there, it was for different reasons: Jacob’s book mentions an antique chess set sent from Milan, Cassandra’s is about the new sonar weather station on the museum roof, and Ezekiel’s mentions a guest (who’s 
part of the family who owned the Isola Perduta back in the 16th Century), who’s wearing some very expensive antique pearl earrings. The Librarians don’t seem interested in working together, which worries Eve but which Flynn thinks is normal. A museum official (James Worth) lets everyone know that they can’t leave because the storm is flooding the streets, but assures them they’re perfectly safe there for the duration. He seems to take special notice of Flynn.
Jacob finds a whole bunch of chess sets but isn’t sure which one is the set he’s looking for. Ezekiel finds the Italian countess (Isabella, played by
Serbian supermodel Nina Senicar), but she’s unimpressed by his patter. Cassandra reaches the weather station just as all the meteorologists are taking off, leaving her with the run of the place … right before the storm knocks out the power to the station. Flynn and Worth meet and make various brilliant deductions about 
each other, but Worth also flatters Eve enough for her to take a shine to him. Upstairs, Cassandra restores the power, but is startled to hear what sounds like a human voice inside the storm. Jacob asks her to help him with his chess set problem and Ezekiel asks Jacob to help him impress Isabella with some Italian culture. They all start arguing and Cassandra wonders why they have so much trouble working together outside the Library.
Flynn figures out the Isola Preduta was carrying unusual cargo and goes to check the manifest, leaving Eve with Worth. Terry lets Flynn into the Archive Room and drops a book—the same Sherlock Holmes book we saw in the opening—from his cart, but he says the book isn’t his and tells Flynn to
put it in Lost and Found. Isabella still isn’t impressed with Ezekiel’s come-ons, but she is intrigued when he tells her he and his friends are planning on robbing the museum. Flynn finds a coffer that doesn’t seem to belong with the rest of the cargo, having been picked up in London in 1611. Worth gets agitated when he sees the Sherlock Holmes book and when Flynn sees the pages are all empty, he deduces that Worth is actually Sherlock Holmes come to life and Worth congratulates him on his perspicacity. But Eve shows up just in time to stop Worth from stabbing Flynn and tells him that Worth is the one who set everything up, everything the Clippings Books warned the Librarians about. Worth admits 
he’s actually James Moriarty, but won’t tell them his plan. They chain him up and go to find the others. Jacob has figured out which chess set is the right one, but Ezekiel still hasn’t gotten Isabella’s earrings and she wanders off, bored with his bragging. Jenkins gives Flynn advice on Fictionals, sayings ones like Moriarty are magically summoned from books, but another kind is so iconic they emerge from stories on their own. Jenkins warns Flynn that a Fictional whose narrative matches the real world can be very hard to stop, although they are bound somewhat by the parameters of their tales.
Ezekiel and Jacob find Isabella hanging out with Cassandra, who encourages her to follow her dream of studying science. Isabella gives Cassandra her
number and is clearly into her, although I’m not sure if Cassandra realizes that or not. Isabella leaves her earrings behind and someone picks them up, just as someone grabbed the king from the chess set Jacob was examining. When Cassandra plays the recording of the voice in the storm, Flynn puts it all together, realizing that events are mirroring Shakespeare’s The Tempest, so Prospero must be behind everything. We see Terry the janitor on the roof and it’s obvious he 
must be Prospero, since he has the chess piece and the earrings which he uses to open the coffer and retrieve a book. Flynn knows Prospero is controlling the storm and figures he must be on the roof. Flynn confronts him and Prospero says he never renounced his magic willingly, he was forced to do it by Shakespeare and now that magic has returned, the rules have changed. Prospero is no longer bound by his story but can write his own tale.
Prospero knocks Flynn out and Eve runs into Moriarty and ends up stabbing him, which has no effect since that’s not how his story ends. Prospero
wants to find his staff so he can rule the world and uses his book to call Ariel from the storm and put her in his pocket watch. She opens a portal and Prospero and Moriarty jump through. Flynn tries to follow but Eve stops him, pointing out they have a more pressing problem. Now that Ariel no longer controls the storm, it’s raging out of control and could destroy the whole city. The Librarians work 
together and Cassandra comes up with a solution: they can dump heat into the storm to make it dissipate. Flynn mentions that they just happen to have a sun (in the Sun Room, naturally) and figures they can redirect its energy with mirrors through the Back Door and into the heart of the storm. They channel the energy through the Statue of Liberty’s torch and the plan works, dissipating the storm.
This is a pretty good season opener, establishing Prospero as (I assume) the main villain for this season and throwing Moriarty in just to make things more dangerous. I’m wondering if Moriarty will end up betraying Prospero;
I can’t really see him being subordinate to anyone for very long. Cassandra and Eve’s contention that the Librarians work better together than apart is obviously right and I assume they’ll be working together again from here on out. I liked Ezekiel’s fumbling attempts to impress Isabella (who cares for intellectual stimulation than physical) and his and Jacob’s consternation when she ends up giving her number to Cassandra. I’m not sure if Cassandra really was oblivious to Isabella’s interest in her, or if she was just trying to spare the guys’ feelings.
Favourite Quotes:
- “Sun damage? I moisturize.” Flynn taking exception to one of Moriarty’s observations about him.
- “She seemed nice.” Cassandra’s rather coy reaction after getting Isabella’s phone number.
- “Villain? I always prefer antagonist.” Moriarty quibbling with Prospero’s description of him.
- “Eh, I’m always a little ticked off.” Eve being honest.