As the season draws to a close,The bandits go in search of the missing corner of the map – and discover some additional surprises. But first there is a surprise for the audience: Is another team of bandits in the Supreme Being’s realm. They see themselves as superior to the “bush designers” who currently hold the map. And the detective who has been tracking down clues, persuaded by her second-in-command, is preparing to defect from SB and secretly join their ranks. At least that’s what she tells them. It could be very interesting to have another whole band of bandits portaling around.

The bandits return to Troy in 1200 BC. Kevin’s theory is that Cassandra can give a prophecy that will help them track down the missing corner of the map. Meanwhile, the Greeks and Trojans are locked in fierce battles and Cassandra has been thrown in prison. When the gang is thrown in there too, she gives them some pretty obvious, motherly advice: “Where was the last place you saw it?” Penelope gets a little tip too. Cassandra tells her that her ex-fiancé Gavin is living on a man’s head and that she’ll see him again when they complete their search. They make a bit of fun of Cassandra’s curse – that she can see the future, but no one believes her. Everyone pretty much blows her off after she gives her advice, except for Kevin, who is observant enough to see past the confusion sown by the curse. The group concludes that they must return to the place where Susan died and rides the sleigh to the beach where it happened.

On the beach, Poseidon appears to them, rising from the sea. (It’s actually SB, of course.) He puts his giant hand on Kevin, and they are transported together into a white void, where the Big Man makes Kevin a rather tempting offer. He tells the boy that if he gives him the map, he can not only free his parents, but give him better versions of them, parents who will look out for his interests. He could also give him popularity. To demonstrate this, he summons a whole crowd of smiling children looking in his direction, and one shouts, “Kevin! Tell us some historical facts!” He doesn’t outright agree to spy for SB and find a way to give him the map, but when he comes to, he at least thinks about it.

As it turns out, the bandits had been arguing the whole time, accusing each other of espionage. And Widgit reveals something big in this context. Penelope had an ulterior motive the whole time: she wanted to return to all the places Gavin had been. With this revelation, Cassandra’s premonition seems all the more plausible. They will probably find him at the end of this search.

But first they look for Susan, back to the spot where she died. And it doesn’t seem to be as “clear” a death as they had claimed. In fact, it turns out that she had only shouted: “I’m falling off this cliff. Now I’m going to be crushed by this huge boulder,” placed her shoes next to a huge boulder in a not very convincing display, and then ran off. Saff sees her scurrying away. Susan had fake her death.

Now the bandits go in search of her, passing through one portal after another and seeing some cool things. They track her down to China during the Qin Dynasty, 220 BC, and see Qin Shihuang Construction of the Great Wall of China begins. He doesn’t like that Kevin tells him it will ultimately take 2,000 years to build, but he seems to love that it will be made of four million bricks (“so damn cool,” he says). Next they follow her to Caffa in 1343, where bodies of people who have died of the plague are catapulted into the city: the first documented example of biological warfare. And I love that part.

Taika Waititi in Time Bandits (Photo: Apple TV+)

There’s a sort of village announcer here, and it’s the same actor who played the mayor in the Middle Ages (Shaun Micallef). He was great, so I’m instantly excited to see him back. The jokes here are sort of a straightforward comparison between COVID and the plague. The mayor even claims the plague is “like the flu—we’re all going to get it eventually.” But it’s the way she delivers it that makes it all work. Her time here ends when Alto prepares to give a speech to Susan, begging her to reconsider abandoning her, and clears his throat, only to have the villagers suspect the plague and prepare to kill the germ-ridden foreigners in their midst. Just as the villagers flock to the bandits with their torches and such, Susan takes pity on them and pulls them through the portal to where she’s been staying all along—and she wasn’t alone.

They exit the portal and find a beach cottage. When they knock on the door, they discover that Gavin and Susan lived there together as lovers. They didn’t know how to tell Penelope they were in love, so they ran away instead. Penelope traveled through time to win Gavin back, but he had long since said goodbye to her. This is sad for her, but it gives Kevin the opportunity to say, “Gavin may not need you, but I do.” In his memory, she is a hero. There’s even a little montage about it. The lesson here is that they didn’t have to try so hard to impress people who actually don’t care about them, because they had each other all along. Taking care of each other was their purpose in life.

So yeah, it’s cute. Everyone offers to take Kevin to the Fortress of Darkness (but not all the way in), and they ask Susan for the map piece to find the Legends’ time. It turns out, though, that they don’t need it. They’re already there – and on a big guy’s head, at that. This was a heartwarming little episode with plenty of jokes woven in. The chase through the portals was exciting and entertaining, giving us brief glimpses of other worlds while maintaining a pace appropriate to the circumstances. We have one more episode to go this season, and it seems like they’ve accomplished a goal, so this might be the last time we see time jumps for a while. But this was a strong goodbye to that device. Now it’s time to bring some pure evil into our lives.

Scatter observations

• • The leader of this other elite group of bandits we meet in this episode is also the “Cherub Spice” maker. Now that we know this guy is a turncoat, the whole Cherub Spice thing has to be a prank, right? Just a way to get SB to drink some urine because it turns out the “Cherub” doesn’t like the guy?
• • I love SB’s description of the progression of his voiding. Currently it is white, but he says it was black darkness before that and pink before that.
• • SB also says he can do whatever he wants with the void/space, but not “just like that.” Apparently, “you have to deal with HR crap.” That’s the way it is.
• • Susan says the bandits would be more accurately described as “hapless history tourists,” and frankly, she’s not wrong.
• • So basically Susan faked her own death to avoid having to tell her friend that she was the other woman in a relationship. If there are indeed stories of something like this happening, and I suspect there are, I need to know them now.