The Librarians: The Next Chapter – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

The Review Geek

6 days ago

And The Dance of Doom
Episode 2 of The Librarians: The Next Chapter begins with a ballet dancer dancing right off into the street where she's hit by a car. Despite being knocked out and comatose, her feet are still dancing.
Over at the Annex, Lysa and Connor acquaint themselves to the various trinkets and different goodies on display for them to use. It's here we meet Elaine Astolat, who happens to be the caretaker of the Annex. She's been waiting for nearly 200 years, explaining how she's adopted a number of different roles – including the realtor who has signed the castle over to Lysa.
Ms Astolat has a magical map and unravelling it on the table, she explains that after Vikram opened the well and let magic spill out, they have no idea how widespread this situation is so they need to get a handle on things.
Lysa continues to play up the role of magic doubter here, butting heads constantly with Connor who dives head-first into this world. It doesn't take long for them to catch wind of the ballet dancer and the magic therein. The team head off to the hospital, where they find the ballerina in a hospital bed. She's comatose and is actually the principal dancer for the ballet company. Interestingly, she also sports a white streak in her hair which could be an important point to note.
Vikram leads the group over to the theatre to sniff out extra clues. Yelena is the choreographer here and she's not happy with the librarian troupe showing and asking questions. They blag their way into staying, and it turns out Charlie is actually trained in ballet, so she helps with the basics of dancing terms and who everyone is.
Dame Anna is the woman in charge here, and the one determined to press on with the performance of Jezebel. Not only is she butting heads with the conductor over who's the most important part of this show, there also appears to be an ongoing feud between Dame Anna and the Board of Directors. Anna is determined to press on with this show regardless, wanting her last page to be one of triumph rather than misery.
Another incident occurs during a rehearsal, when one of the dancers starts spinning and her shoes begin steaming, almost catching light. The Librarians jump in and save the day, lifting her up. They stop the girl from combusting and take the shoes back to the Annex. There, Charlie susses the culprit could be the Rosin Box, which originates its contents out in the old woods.
Connor and Lysa head out together where they continue to bicker the whole time, before Vikram races in.
The gang track down a dance tree, which happens to be the source of the magic resin. There are scars across the tree and it appears someone has been spiking the resin. This has been used, in turn, to control the dancers and drain them of vitality and essence. Vikram quickly realizes that this is the work of a witch.
Specifically, a witch by the name of Lady Midday. This witch saps the vitality from others to keep herself young and intends to hijack the Jezebel performance and dance herself. It's absolutely no surprise to find out that Anna is the witch and when Vikram shows to confront her, she's only surprised its taken him this long to figure it out.
Anna explains she's been sprinkling resin all over the place and intends to use that to fuel her own performance. Yelena has been drained of essence already, turned into a husk of what she once was. That's not good news, especially when Anna tasers Vikram, knocks him out, and prepares for her big dance. Should she be successful here, she'll drain the essence of the entire theatre audience and kill them all.
If the gang can stop Anna from dancing though, they could stop the spell but part of that includes Charlie heading out on stage to disrupt the performance. Connor and Lysa work to drop various props from the ceiling to try and put her off but it initially doesn't seem to work.
Anna completes her performance and revels in the applause… but there's a problem. The performance hasn't worked. Turns out Vikram has sabotaged the music, slowing the tempo just enough so Lady Midday misses her magic vitality window. It eventually leads to her crumbling to dust and disappearing. The theatre applaud, believing it's all part of the performance, but more importantly, the witch is stopped.
Back at the Annex, we learn that the Prima Ballerina is going to recover, but unfortunately Yelena is too far gone. Despite coming out on top, Connor and Lysa bicker about their antics until Vikram jumps in and reminds them they did a good job.
The Episode Review
The Librarians: The Next Chapter returns with a decent enough episode, one that slips into the familiar vibe of the old Librarian stories in the original series, with a simple but effective premise.
Personally, it would have been nice to see more of the overarching story involving Gregor, and the absence of Jacob Stone can definitely be felt here.
However, Vikram's journey from a confident loner to reluctant leader of the group is already starting to take shape and you can see parts of this character journey come to fruition.
There's plenty of opportunities for this series to deliver some bombastic action and big set pieces in the future, but for now this series does a reasonably good job capturing the tone and vibe of the old series. While a step down from the pilot, lets hope the episodes ahead pick up a bit.
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Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!