Episode Recap: Emergence

Ok team, we have a problem. After the giant paradox that happened in 1944, Cassie and Cole are stuck in the past with no way to get back. Katarina has a plan, though she's not totally convinced it's a good one. Since she only has one traveler left, Ramse, she decides to send him back in time to rescue Cassie and Cole. In exchange for his service, she'll set him free to leave with his son. Which would be all well and good except as soon as he arrives in 1944 he gets hit by a car. SPLAT.

Unable to do anything more for Cassie and Cole, Katarina investigates these crazy red cloud time anomalies that have been killing people by aging them hundreds of years. While inspecting some of the recently dead, she notices her team is being watched by The Daughters, lead by our buddy Jennifer Goines. Why is she so interested in this? Could she have some answers?

Back in 1944 we find out that Ramse survived getting hit by the car (yay!) but the hospital he is at won't let him leave and insists that he have surgery the next day (boo!). In order to escape, he beats up a hospital visitor and steals his clothes. We'd feel bad for that poor guy, but Ramse has some people to save and is running out of time! He makes it to the asylum before The Messengers carry out their plan, but before he can find Cassie and Cole, The Messengers find Ramse (or Ethan Secky as they once knew him) and chain him to a pipe, leaving him unable to stop the paradox from happening…

And speaking of which, after the paradox causes an explosion in the asylum, Cassie and Cole are hauled off in cuffs and taken to a nearby motel for questioning by two feds. They get slapped around for a hot minute, but soon Ramse breaks through the door and rescues them. Now here's the question: Should our team find The Messenger woman, who survived the blast, or initiate the plan to get them back to 2044?  As they mill this over, in 2044 Katarina is unable to find any answers about the time anomalies, so she pays a visit to Jennifer Goines. She soon gets frustrated though when all Jen has to offer is riddles, crazy talk, and drugs that are supposed to teach Katarina how time works. Just our two cents but we think Katarina should stick to her own devices for a bit.

Back at the Emerson Hotel, Ramse and Cassie are having a drink together after putting Katrina's plan to get them home – place an ad in the paper, which she will see in the future, in motion. As the two drink, a miracle happens: Cassie and Ramse share some feels. Could this be the beginning of the end of the Cassie/Deacon vs. Ramse/Cole feud? We hope so!

While the Ramse and Cassie love fest is going on, Cole finds out that The Messenger woman is at a local hospital and he needs to find out what she knows. However, on the way there he bumps into an ally we never saw coming, one of the feds that was questioning him and Cassie. Apparently, this fed has been doing some digging of his own and figured out there's something not right about Cole and the gang. Cole decides to let him in on their secret that they're time travelers from the future, after which they find The Messenger and start questioning her. Turns out, the boy they killed, Tommy Crawford Jr., was a Primary and they killed him in order to stop time! Whaaaa? Then, after a brief scuffle, The Messenger escapes.

After screaming at some of her colleagues, it is made very clear that Katarina is kind of out of control. But a pep talk from her new/estranged husband/boyfriend/Colonel Tigh –er Dr. Ecklund, makes Katrina remember that she is an explorer and explorers go wherever they have to for answers! In her case, she goes back to Jennifer Goines and does the drugs that Jennifer insists will explain what's happening. And boy howdy, it actually works. Through some pretty trippy hallucinations, Katarina finds out that the time travel is, in many senses, a conscious entity and primaries ARE time. Well, physical manifestations of it. Without them, time will cease to exist and everything will be life and death and a memory of tomorrow all at once! Trippy huh?

So, to summarize, the Army of the 12 Monkeys wants to totally destroy time by killing primaries (which they do by causing a paradox - i.e. stabbing a live primary with a bone from their-from-the-future-dead-body). Kill all the primaries, time is destroyed. And they've already succeeded in killing one. 

In better news though, that gang returns back to 2044 safely. And now they have a new mission: Stop the 12 monkeys from killing the primaries and destroying the world… cakewalk, right? Except, that peace between Ramse and Cassie we saw a glimpse of? Gone. But it's time to bury the past behind them if they want to save the future.

Later, in a flashback to 1971, it turns out that The Messenger woman who escaped went on to lead a full life and we are catching her in her final moments as she says good-bye to her son – The Pallid Man! In 2016 we then see The Pallid Man, all grown up and creepy with the scar on his face, just like we remember him, watching Jennifer Goines from afar. She's checking herself into a treatment facility to stop the voices in her head. Good luck with that, Jen.
 

P.S. how trippy is it that the Messenger lady gave birth to the Pallid Man in 1971, who grows up and oversees the birth of the Messengers in 2015, one of which grows up to be his mom who travels back from 1944. That's some deep stuff.