Travelers: Ilsa
December 14, 2018 5:36 PM - Season 3, Episode 1 - Subscribe

MacLaren, his team, and their loved ones regroup at a safe house protected by the FBI, but doubts and betrayals may sabotage the rest of their mission.

PROTOCOLS:
*Protocol 1 = The mission comes first.
*Protocol 2 = Leave the future in the past.
*Protocol 3 = Don't take a life, don't save a life unless otherwise directed.
*Protocol 4 = Don't reproduce.
*Protocol 5 = Resume the host's life.
*Protocol 6 = Traveler cells should not be in contact unless instructed to by a messenger or the Director.

*An old woman in a hospital bed tells a young woman, "Joanne, listen to me."

*MacLaren and the team are in an FBI bus en route to a safe house, with Kat, David, and Jeff unconscious, having been drugged with a memory inhibitor.

*Simon is still waiting in his quantum frame chair, calling for Vincent to fix him as he promised. Perrow's voice responds through a new comm, telling him to close his eyes and keep them closed, as Vincent's henchmen carry him to train tracks and leave him in the path of the oncoming train. As his time of death counts down, Simon is overwritten, and the comm combusts.

*At HQ, Philip tells Ray his cover story for the kidnapping - that Ray came to Philip needing money to pay off his loan shark, and then got blackout drunk celebrating after Philip won him all the money he needed.

*Agent Yates (Joanne from the hospital) tells FBI Director Stevens that the Director has instructed her to tell him he has to cancel the planned worldwide Traveler-capture operation.

*MacLaren and Marcy enter the FBI safe house, interrupting Grace and Trevor's conversation (which resumes in their absence) as Grace tells Trevor how much it means that Vincent chose her as the person Trevor cares most about. World's most awkward hug and flirt follows.

*MacLaren, with Marcy and Carly, insists that Protocol 5 still holds. Carly is infuriated that she is expected to continue her life with Jeff, while MacLaren and Marcy have jeopardized the entire program by breaking protocols over their own love lives.

*Wakefield questions Kat about her memories of the abduction, as another (Traveler) agent questions David & Jeff. Kat remembers being taken, and her first conversation with Perrow, but nothing later. The Travelers' cover story for the abduction is that Vincent was an insane serial killer who MacLaren was close to apprehending, and that Vincent kidnapped those with a close connection to MacLaren.

*Simon, now Traveler 5069 arrives at HQ and tells Philip he was sent by the Director to take care of the confession videos. He berates Philip for lacking fealty to the Director, and Philip breaks the news to him that the body he was sent into has incurable schizophrenia.

*Grace walks to the end of the safe house perimeter looking for a ride, and is taken captive by the anti-Traveler FBI commandos.

*Back at FBI HQ, Agent Yates, tells FBI Director Stevens how she was contacted by a Dr. Teslia, who shows her an advanced AI called Ilsa - the Director speaks to Yates through it, mentioning Yates' mother's recent terminal diagnosis. Yates doesn't understand how the AI machine could possibly know something she only just found out herself, and storms out thinking Teslia is some kind of nutty creep. But she comes back the next day, having received a text from Teslia correctly predicting a plane crash the next day. Teslia tells her the Director told him what to text, and the Director tells Yates what it is, that it knew about the plane crash and her mother's diagnosis because they are historical facts from a future perspective. The Director tells her that she must tell the FBI to call off the anti-Traveler operation or face a series of world-ending disasters, that exposure was inevitable at this stage of the grand plan, and that cooperation with 21st century authorities is now the optimal path. FBI Director Stevens is unconvinced.

*Wakefield updates MacLaren on the status of the abductees (and enjoys the results of Trevor's cooking, which Mac and Marcy did not). Trevor and Carly go to surveil the perimeter, while Jeff confronts MacLaren. Jeff doesn't buy the story that Carly has been doing FBI work for Mac, and says he may be remembering more than he let on to the FBI questioner (which may be true, since per Marcy alcohol may interfere with the memory-inhibitor), then gets on the FBI bus to be taken home. Passing the perimeter, he sees Grace in the back of the non-Traveler FBI van. Trevor and Carly see footprints and head back to the safe house, telling Mac they're being watched.

*At HQ, Traveler 5069 finishes inserting the codes in the team's confession videos which will enable other Travelers to track down and erase all of them. His new brain's schizophrenia kicks in and gives him a hallucination of someone berating him for leaving him behind in the future.

*MacLaren goes to Kat. She imagines telling him about the last time she had this feeling of missed time, how he blamed it on her getting drunk, and accusing him of having drugged her before, and imaginary Mac sighs and says he'll have to start over, approaching with a new injection. When MacLaren actually enters the room, Kat plays along with believing the whole "Vincent was a crazy serial killer" cover story instead.

*Trevor and Carly see the assault teams approaching, and see all of Wakefield's non-Traveler FBI agents fleeing. Marcy tells David to stay inside and away from the windows, and she and MacLaren join Trevor & Carly facing off against the approaching gunmen.

*Yates tells Stevens that the Director last spoke to her using her mother as messenger, telling her to tell Stevens "Tell him the bargain he made that autumn morning was not with his God, but with me." and Stevens cancels operation. The assault team retreats, and the men holding Grace let her go (but don't bother to remove the zip-tie binding her hands, to her extreme annoyance). MacLaren tells the team that the Director must have done something, then tries to play the whole thing off as nothing when David and Kat appear, but Kat doesn't believe it.

*Stevens tells Yates that the message he received was in a hospital room too - his daughter was dying of a rare form of cancer, and one day said "I will save her life. There will come a day of reckoning." then started miraculously improving the next day. He asks Yates what happens next, but she has no answer.
posted by oh yeah! (10 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
So glad to see Grace again -- her happily eating a power bar on the bus while everyone else looks serious & exhausted, her "are you fucking kidding me?!" at being abandoned on the road by the FBI, and that scene with Trevor were golden.

I thought this was a good start to the season. I kind of figured they were going to walk back the direness of the S2 cliffhanger, same as they did with S1. They rolled it back pretty far, though it's not a complete 'hit the big red reset button', I'm not sure what I think about David getting his memory of Marcy's true identity erased.

(I was hoping to get through at least 2 episodes tonight, but I'm getting sleepy already, I think I'll have to start up again in the morning.)
posted by oh yeah! at 7:03 PM on December 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I agree this was a good start, and it was enough for me to immediately want to go on to episode 2.
posted by forforf at 4:33 PM on December 15, 2018


I think I need to rewatch season two because I'm very hazy on the Enrico Colantoni stuff in the final episodes. But I'm excited for season three.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:17 PM on December 15, 2018


Yeah, much of season 2 is gone to me and I had to go back and re-watch a bit to try and make sense of where the story was now.

That said, this is a great piece of lively, well-acted, well-produced (Canadian) TV. Uh, I mean, Netflix content...? No, I mean... what I mean is, I really liked the characters for the first two seasons and am glad to see them back. That the actors, except for Mac, weren't familiar to mean has been a bonus.
posted by From Bklyn at 4:32 AM on December 16, 2018


Binged through this season and liked it much better than s2. This first was perhaps the weakest of the season, squeezing a lot of plot details to synchronize with the end of last and getting going. There seem to be a few secondary characters that show up and then exit without any real acknowledgement. Good list of protocols above, is it complete? ( ;-) )
posted by sammyo at 11:14 AM on December 16, 2018


I copied the protocol listing from one of my previous season threads, so I'd know where to look for them this season whenever one was referenced by number only. If any new ones pop up I'll note them in their episode thread though.

I was hoping to get all the threads up this weekend - I've got 4 more to go, so we'll see. (I figured some people would have zipped through the binge by yesterday, but maybe others are saving the season for the holiday break, so I'm going to stick to my recap format for all 10 episodes so that later bingers can comment as they go.)
posted by oh yeah! at 11:32 AM on December 16, 2018


I hope the Jeff storyline doesn't get too annoying.

Love that David is simple enough and lacks introspection that his memory wipe actually worked and his brain filled in the gaps for him. It's adorable how super into it (playing special agent) he gets. Somehow it feels like David's Marcy revelation only got kicked down the road.

Thanks for the recaps oh yeah!
posted by porpoise at 3:04 PM on December 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


I always feel like David knows something is up, but he doesn't push too hard for answers until he absolutely has to, because he doesn't want anything to ruin what he has with Marcy.
posted by misfish at 5:23 PM on December 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


It's been awhile. I was not happy with the total rollback, but Kat's visions of Grant being mean are pretty scary. I am also with Carly on HELL NO to Jeff, but I've been that way all along. Watching David and Marcy's scenes are weird now because it's like, what the heck does he think is going on now? So confused.

Oh, Grace. Coming on to a student. Damn, girl.

Nothing at all ominous about this new computer, nope.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:48 PM on December 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


yeah, same here with forgetting season 2. I'd forgotten that Vincent Ingram overwrote Perrow, and didn't recognize her voice at all and thought there was a new ability from the Director to speak into their coms. I had no idea what was happening with Simon. Then I promptly forgot about him when the rest of the episode focused on the team.

So after reading the recaps and knowing that it's Perrow speaking to Simon, I'm wondering where he's gonna pop up again, since he's in 001/Perrow's custody now.

Also, if being an alcoholic makes you resistant to memory wiping, I wonder if the team should just load up on liquor and build up a tolerance.
posted by numaner at 9:10 PM on December 21, 2018


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