Col. Eve Baird, working with a counter-terrorism task force, runs into a strange man while tracking down terrorists. He helps her disarm a nuclear bomb (while disarming a... thing). A few days later she gets a letter in the mail from The Library. She has been recruited as the Guardian to the Librarian.
Then it turns out that a mysterious group is tracking down and murdering former candidates to the Librarianship. The Guardian and the Librarian track down the remaining candidates and learn that the mysterious group are seeking a magical artifact, for nefarious ends.
This episode, along with the next, forms a two-part duo.
Tropes:
- Bomb Disposal: Eve has to disarm a nuclear bomb at the beginning of the episode. Flynn tells her there's a blue wire... which she should not touch.
- Booby Trap: In Flynn's introductory scene, he sets off an ancient booby trap protecting the artifact he's going for, and then has three minutes to disarm it before it sets off a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Circle of Standing Stones: The Librarians recover Arthur's crown from a henge in the middle of the Black Forest.
- Clapper Gag: Jenkins tries to shut off the magical hologram of the planet with a clapper action. It doesn't work.
- Counting Bullets: In the opening scene, Flynn manages to keep track of the fact that the bad guy's AK-47 has fired 31 times, allowing Eve to have an It Works Better with Bullets moment.
- Gratuitous Latin: The Latin text in Lamia's tattoo is a line from the "The Second Coming," which was written in English. Jacob helpfully translates it back to English, but there's no reason for it to be in Latin to begin with except to make it sound more portentous (or pretentious).
- Literal Metaphor: Judson died five years ago, but he's still with them in spirit. Meaning, his actual spirit is haunting a mirror in the Library.
- MacGyvering: Flynn makes a blowtorch out of an oxygen tank and some prosciutto stuffed into a cucumber.
-
Retroactive Recognition: Mazikeen plays The Dragon with a penchant for katanas and throwing knives - Running Gag: Ninjas? In Oklahoma? Don't be ridiculous.
- Shout-Out: Flynn says that Librarians save the world... a lot.
- When the Planets Align: Subverted. The henge is designed to reveal the location of the crown only on a specific date, when the sun shines in just the right place. They get there on the wrong date, but Cassandra can do the math to figure out where the sun would be shining, so it's okay.
- You Can't Thwart Stage One: Despite all the efforts of the Librarians, the crown ends up stolen by the Serpent Brotherhood.
