This article discusses who Joplin is in Lockwood and Co and contains major spoilers for the entire first season.
Lockwood & Co. is undoubtedly a show that focuses primarily on its heroes, particularly the teeny-bopper Scooby gang of the titular agency, Anthony Lockwood, Lucy Carlyle, and George Karim. But it also has its fair share of snidey antagonists, and chief among them is the intriguing and eccentric figure of Pamela Joplin, whose story interestingly parallels and intersects with that of George. But who is Joplin, what does she want, how does she go about getting it, and what happens to her when she eventually does? We have all the answers below.
Who is Joplin in Lockwood and Co?
So, the gang are first introduced to Joplin as a client. She and Sebastian Saunders run a grave-digging business called Sweet Dreams excavations which occasionally requires the services of an agency like Lockwood and Co. to ensure that nothing nasty is being dug up. Joplin is clearly the brains of this operation, which doesn’t go unnoticed by George, and vice versa. There is immediately a kinship between the two characters who seem to see themselves in each other. Both are eccentric and somewhat overlooked, and they recognize that in each other immediately.
It’s obvious to the audience, though not necessarily to George, that Joplin has ulterior motives. She’s obsessive about finding the bone glass, and the way in which she ingratiates herself with George rings all kinds of alarm bells. Helping him gain access to the British Archives and inviting him over for dinner might have seemed like nice gestures to the naïve Lockwood & Co. researcher, but to savvy viewers, they were clearly steps in a master plan that hadn’t quite been revealed yet.
Joplin’s endgame was indeed quite sinister. Her obsession with the bone glass, which far from being a mirror was actually a window to a realm beyond the mortal one, had completely consumed her, and George became an integral part of her plan. When Anthony and Lucy were able to swipe the bone glass from a black market auction, it was entrusted to George, despite Flo having earlier pointed out that he had become “mesmerized” by it, so that he could hand it over to DEPRAC. Instead, though, he handed it over to Joplin.
Joplin’s plan was to use George to look into the bone glass and uncover whatever secrets it had to reveal about The Problem. When she tries to use Quill Kipps to accomplish this task, George begins to realize that he was only ever a potential sacrifice to her. In recognizing the dagger she’s using – the twin of one that was earlier used to kill a relic man named Carver – he recognized that Joplin was willing to spill as much blood as necessary to get what she wants.
Does Joplin die?
And, in the end, Joplin got what she wanted – she was able to stare into the bone glass, which caused her to scream and laugh and eventually dematerialize. Is she dead? Possibly, but she could just as easily be trapped in another dimension. It’s impossible to say.
Perhaps a second season may reveal Joplin’s fate. She might even appear as a Visitor.
Is Joplin in the books?
Joplin seems to be a gender-swapped version of a character named Albert Joplin from Jonathan Stroud’s second Lockwood novel, The Whispering Skull. Many of the details are the same involving the bone glass and Kensal Green Cemetery.
So, that’s who Joplin is in Lockwood and Co. What did you think about this character and her fate? Let us know in the comments.
