The Librarians are back!
GIF Source: TGON
The season two debut of The Librarians saw a back-to-back, double episode premiere.
The main focus of the episode is a concept that, as a book nerd, I found endlessly fascinating; Fictionals. A fictional is a character from literature who is so well-written and rounded that they have the potential to physically manifest themselves in our world (with a little help from a wizard/magical entity). Fictionals make me really excited for the rest of season 2, simply because they have so much potential, and allow the writers to draw characters from any point in time and space. We could see Achilles and the Dorian Grey in the same episode. It’ll get weird. But it’ll also get really cool.
This time, though, we are presented with the wizard Prospero (Shakespeare’s The Tempest), and Professor Moriarty (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series). For an unexplained reason, Prospero seems to have been able to manifest in our world without being summoned. And, as with all villains on this show, his raison d’être is to bring magic back into the world, enlisting Moriarty to help him regain his power.
The Librarians is always an impressive show to watch because of its historical accuracy, and this episode is no different. Prospero is appropriately equipped with his spirit aid, Ariel, updated to fit inside his pocket watch. And the storyline is littered with references to his plot. From the “King” from Milan to “Those are pearls that were his [your father’s] eyes”, the writers seem to love slipping the Bard’s work (verbatim) into the script. They also cleverly establish Moriarty as Sherlock’s foil, as seen when Flynn mistakes him for the detective. The whole audience is convinced, by then, that we’re dealing with a quirky, but ultimately benevolent power. In a twist we all should have seen coming (but didn’t), Moriarty’s identity is revealed.
One subplot focuses on Bard and Flynn’s romance. These two are such an adorable couple for the contrast between Bard’s maturity and focus, and Flynn’s puerile antics. The end of the episode sees them take an unofficial break, after personal conflicts arise, but I sincerely hope we haven’t seen the last of Blynn.
