The Librarians... and the Loom of Fate

I give you... the Librarians.

One of my favourite shows of the past year comes to an end with the finale The Librarians... and the Loom of Fate.

Flynn returns once more with a plan to restore the Library; a plan which can only work thanks to an assortment of the artefacts that the Librarians in Training have gathered over the course of the series, including the Book of Tales, Morgan le Fay's smartphone app and Tesla's dimensional stabiliser. But when Dulaque interrupts the spell and hijacks it to break the Loom of Fate, the world is altered and only Eve can remember how it once was. With the aid of a rather lost non-Librarian Flynn, she must travel through a series of possible worlds and find a way to fix what was broken.

In the first world Eve died fighting the Serpent Brotherhood and her Librarian, Jake, is now travelling the world trying to keep magical artefacts out of the hands of bandits, mercenaries and anyone else who might abuse them. In the second, Katie the serial killer from ...and the Heart of Darkness managed to unleash a tide of ghost-zombies on the world, with only 'Team Jones' (Librarian Ezekiel having franchised the Library) to oppose them. In the third, magic has gone feral and dragons rules the skies, and Librarian Cassandra is a mighty white witch and the former student of Morgan le Fey.

In each instance, Eve is dead, having taken a stab wound from Excalibur that Flynn would have taken if he'd been Librarian, but the news is softened by a lovely running gag where she reacts with horror to learn that she and Librarian Jake were involved, or that Librarian Ezekiel looked on her as a mother figure. Also in each instance, non-Librarian Flynn brings something to the table that the Librarian in action lacks, because Flynn is a one-man band while the Librarians are a beat combo. Between the different worlds and the device and the denouement, basically everything from the past nine weeks is woven together.

Hey kids! It's Jerry O'Connell from Sliders! (Also Rebecca Romjin's husband.)
I love this show so much I'm not even going to bitch about that sword hilt.

Eventually, of course, they must return to the Loom, defeat Dulaque and restore the weave using Ariadne's thread, but to do that they need to return to their own timeline with the aid of all three alternate Librarians. The three accept that they are about to be written out of existence, happy with lives of adventure well lived. Flynn and Eve face off against Dulaque and are thoroughly outmatched by the rejuvenated Lancelot, until the (still aged) Galahad/Jenkins shows up and kicks his ass.

Eve is fatally stabbed (because she dies for her Librarian in every timeline,) but Flynn calls bullshit on fate, weaves the Library back to the Annex and uses his healing potion to save her. So very much huzzah!

I cannot adequately quantify the degree to which I have loved this series. It's done so much with such a limited budget and sparkling writing, and the season construction was splendid (even the Santa episode is relevant.) I so want it to go for another season.