The Librarians and the Bleeding Crown – Director: Marc Roskin/Writer: Tom MacRae
For everyone expecting a Spider-Man review today, I better explain myself. I’ve just gotten a new job that’s taking up more of my time than anticipated, so I’m going to have to put my blog on indefinite hiatus. But before I do that, I will finish off my reviews of The Librarians. They’ll be appearing three times a week instead of just once, so for all the Spider-Man fans out there, sorry but this is just the easiest solution (and it is fitting to end my Spidey reviews with the classic issue #50). Anyway, on to the next Librarians review. This one starts with a teenager named Pete waking up to find that he’s an old man. He runs to tell his parents, but they’ve prematurely aged too, as has everyone else in town.
The Librarians come to investigate and Flynn and Eve interview Pete’s
parents. They learn that there was a flash of red light right before everyone mysteriously aged, but no other clues. While exploring the town the others see a girl who’s still young and chase her into a garage. They don’t catch the girl, but do find themselves surrounded by hooded figures that seem to be analyzing them with some weird device. They’re rescued by a heroic figure who drives the creatures 
away with a sonic blast. He turns out to be Darrington Dare, a Librarian from the past. When Flynn and Eve arrive, Flynn fanboys out over Dare, who tells them he’s there to help save the day. He’s happy to meet Flynn and Eve, but assumes the others are his assistants. None of them notice one of the hooded figures watching and listening.
The minions report back to their boss (Ambrose Gethick) that Dare is here and has made contact with four Librarians, which intrigues Gethick. At a
local diner, Dare recounts how Gethick used the Bleeding Crown of a vampire queen to drain people’s life-force, turning them old (or killing them). Dare was immune thanks to some anti-magic tattoos, so Gethick opened a portal to the past, taking his minions (who actually degenerated clones of himself) through. Dare followed, but arrived months after Gethick did, giving the villain time to set his plans in motion and start draining people. They discuss what Gethick 
might be looking for in the present, but when Dare mentions he was catapulted through time the day before his fortieth birthday, Flynn gets worried since he knows Dare is fated to die on his fortieth birthday because he was alone and had no friends to help him fend off the attack from the Serpent Brotherhood. Naturally, Flynn can’t warn him without screwing up the timeline.
Flynn and Dare go looking for the girl the others saw. When Flynn mentions the others are also Librarians, Dare freaks. He says having multiple
Librarians has always led to strife and tells Flynn he has to fire the other three before some internal conflict arises that’ll destroy the Library (or the world). The argument is interrupted by when they see the girl and chase her. The others follow the sound from a music box into a garage where they’re ambushed by Gethick’s clones and 
blasted by a flash of red light. Flynn and Dare follow the girl to a house in the woods where they find her parents haven’t aged either. They soon realize it’s because their power was cut off, meaning Gethick has tied the Crown into the power supply so he can drain everybody at once. Flynn and Dare head out to find the others, but they’ve been aged like the rest of the town.
After bringing their aged (and cranky) colleagues to the Library, Dare is reunited with Jenkins and gives him shit for allowing four Librarians to
serve at once. Dare restores the missing pages in the Book of the Library and tells how two brothers once served as co-Librarians until their jealousy tore the Library apart and caused the Dark Ages. Dare warns the same thing may happen again. Dare and Flynn head to Gethick’s power station headquarters where they’re soon surrounded by clones. Speaking of clones, it turns out the “old Librarians” 
are actually clones and the real Cassandra, Ezekiel, Jacob, and Eve are being held prisoner by Gethick, who’s draining their life forces so he can use the Librarian energy against Dare. Gethick conjures a sword made of Library energy and he and Dare fight, but Flynn points out that neither of them is fighting for a cause anymore, they’re just fighting to defeat the other. Flynn chooses to rescue his friends instead of engaging in a pointless fight and goes to save Jenkins from the clones. He brings Jenkins back and sticks him in Gethick’s machine, which
causes the Crown to overload since Jenkins is immortal. Later, Flynn points out that his decision to save his friends is what saved Dare and suggests that Dare stop being such a loner. After dare returns to his own time, his story in the Library Book changes to say he lived another 62 years after he was supposed to die because his friends were at his birthday party and helped him fight off the Serpent Brotherhood. He also left a letter for Flynn inside the Book, urging him to get rid of the other Librarians before disaster strikes.
This is a really good episode that gives us another Librarian to contrast the ones we’re already familiar with. Flynn’s hero worship of Dare is a bit much 
at times, but it is nice to see him actually met his hero. Flynn says he was a lot like Dare, thinking he didn’t need friends to have a full life. We saw some of that in previous seasons and we saw Flynn finally open up and let the others in, so it’s good to know Dare did the same thing in the past. His dire warnings about too many Librarians get a bit tedious after a while, but I assume they’re leading up to something later in the season. I can’t imagine these Librarians going to war with each other, but they do sometimes have doubts about the Library itself, so maybe that’s where the conflict will arise.
Favourite Quotes:
- “Or it’s Florida.” Jacob’s speculation about why an entire town is full of old people.
- “How can a buffalo have wings?” Dare trying to comprehend a modern diner menu.