Summary
“Not the Eternal” is a solid finale that finds just the right balance of closure and potential for more stories to come.
This article contains spoilers for Lockwood and Co Season 1 Episode 8, “Not the Eternal”, as well as an open discussion of Lockwood and Co’s Season 1 ending.
Now we’re at the end of the first season of Lockwood & Co., it’s easy to look back and see just how good of a job the show has done of steadily escalating its plot and character development as we’ve progressed. Everything that happens here in the finale, “Not the Eternal”, feels like a logical extension of everything that has come before, and it doesn’t confuse “leaving things open for a sequel” with “leaving things completely unresolved”. The ending works by closing, more or less, this chapter of the narrative, implying a wider, more interesting conspiracy in the margins, and leaving the core characters in a position for more investigations and misadventures.
But let’s take a look at the final episode itself.
Lockwood and Co Season 1 Episode 8 Recap
After the events of Episode 7, and Anthony’s desperate efforts to win his bet with Quill Kipps almost getting him and Lucy killed, the two leads are at each other’s throats. However, I’m glad that “Not the Eternal” doesn’t linger on this. After all, Lucy should be used to Anthony by now. The brush with their own mortality, not to mention the death of the undercover DEPRAC agent, certainly brought things into starker focus, but their objective remains the same. They need to prevent the bone glass mirror from falling into the wrong hands.
The problem is that it already has. By reading through Mary Dulac’s book, Anthony and Lucy realize that the bone glass isn’t really a mirror, but instead a window to something horrifying and otherworldly. The symbol used to illustrate this point in the book is a swirl, and, wouldn’t you know it, George has subconsciously doodled the same swirl all over the kitchen tablecloth. They realize that he is mesmerized and probably didn’t turn the mirror into DEPRAC after all.
Why does Joplin want the bone glass?
As we surmised, George took the mirror to Joplin.
Joplin’s thing is knowledge. She never had any talent after the Problem emerged, but she has spent her life researching the phenomenon anyway. Throughout the series George has been susceptible to her charms because they’re both the academic types, often looked past or taken for granted. For Joplin, if she can figure out and explain the mirror, she can take some kind of control in a world that has never allowed her any. Her plan was to have George look into the mirror so she could observe the process, with Bickerstaff’s corpse chilling in the background to watch, but another option presents itself when Kipps arrives at the cemetery where this is taking place, having followed George there.
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Kipps, it turns out, has hit an age where he is beginning to lose his talent. But Joplin doesn’t know this. So, she holds him at knife-point — the blade is the twin of the one used to kill Carver — and takes him prisoner, all while George wonders why she was armed and carrying cuffs in the first place. Since he’s the smart one, he figures out pretty quickly that, if Kipps hadn’t arrived, it’d be George sitting in that chair. Joplin was using him.
Of course, when Kipps reveals that he is losing his talent, George ends up sitting in the chair anyway.
What does the skull see in the mirror?
It’s the skull that leads Lucy and Anthony to the same cemetery, hoping to be reunited with its master, Bickerstaff. When they arrive they meet Kipps’s team outside, and Anthony offers to stay outside and help them fight off Winkman and his goons, while Lucy descends into the catacombs to rescue George. There’s plenty of solid action outside, but the important stuff happens inside. When Lucy arrives to save George, she offers to look into the mirror herself and tricks Joplin by holding the skull up to the mirror’s gaze.
But something seems to be wrong. The skull says that the bone glass is “not the eternal” and that it’s a trap and must be destroyed. The physical toll this takes causes Lucy to pass out temporarily, but at least both she and George were able to avoid coming to any harm. Not from the mirror, anyway.
Joplin isn’t so lucky. She stares into the mirror herself and it tears her to pieces, breaking apart itself and freeing the various benign spirits inside, who are all grateful to have been freed from their plight. But Bickerstaff’s giant, terrifying ghost isn’t having that, and rounds on Lucy and George in a roiling mass of CGI smoke. Anthony arrives in the nick of time to help fight it off.
Lockwood and Co Season 1 Ending Explained
Earlier, Anthony had once again encountered the Golden Blade and actually been shot by him after being told that his death would be insignificant, like those of his parents, implying that the Golden Blade and perhaps even Penelope Fittes, who we know he’s working with, were responsible for making him an orphan. The Golden Blade was also explicit about not working for the Fittes Agency, though that doesn’t mean he isn’t working for Penelope specifically. Or, more likely, perhaps they’re both answerable to someone else.
Beyond this, though, “Not the Eternal” provides a mostly happy ending. Even Barnes is happy, for once. The kids all survive and become closer through the experience, and even Kipps developed a begrudging respect for Anthony. With a little rest and recuperation, Anthony will recover from his gunshot wound, and Lockwood and Co. will be ready for business.
But first, Anthony has to get the last of his secrets out of the way. That means showing Lucy and George what is behind the locked door upstairs. He leads them there and opens the door.
You can stream Lockwood and Co Season 1 Episode 8, “Not the Eternal”, exclusively on Netflix. What did you think of the Lockwood and Co Season 1 ending? Let us know in the comments.
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