WAREHOUSE 13 Recap: ‘The 40th Floor’

Hey, Warehouse 13 fans! This week’s episode, “The 40th Floor”, was intense from start to finish, right?

One thing I loved about it is that the entire team worked together to solve the same case. It made the episode seem less choppy and more cohesive when it flipped from scene to scene and character to character. Also, since the characters were experiencing (mostly) the same plot, it allowed for good character development–especially for Steve Jinks, who really got to see firsthand how ‘dedicated’ Mrs F is to the warehouse. More on that later.

The episode begins with a woman being tortured. She’s strapped to a chair and her hand is being pressed with the doorknob artifact from the previous episode. Her torturer is searing it into her hand until she reveals some sort of secret. Even when the secret is revealed, the torturer uses the doorknob to obliterate the woman, and as she practically disintegrates, we see that the torturer is none other than this season’s baddie, Agent Sally Stukowski.

But this is more than just a one-time killing. At the warehouse, Artie is explaining that Regents (you remember–the overseers and head honchos of all warehouses in history) are being killed–four in the past year. And another, Theodora Stanton, has gone missing. The team decides to track Sally to see what she’s up to.

We see her in a bar in Atlanta, and Pete and Jinks approach her. She plays coy and like a southern belle. When Pete doesn’t buy it, she attacks him and Steve and runs out of the bar. But Myka is there waiting and zaps her with the Tesla. When Pete recovers and runs out of the bar, he sees a mysterious guy drive off in a sedan.

The team drags Sally back into the bar and search her belongings. She has the doorknob but says it’s no big deal that they’ve found her. “What’s done is done and done,” she tells them in a smug voice. Artie pulls out some parchment once belonging to Sir Henry Morton (of “Dr. Livingston, I presume” fame). When Sally’s hand is pressed to it, it becomes a map of the places she’s been in the past 12 hours. And there’s an x that marks the spot. The map matches up to an address. It’s a huge skyscraper (with, as the title says, at least 40 floors), and the building is guarded. The team leaves–or at least, they pretend to. Instead, Claudia tosses in a Tesla grenade. Very convenient! On one of the guards is a tattoo–the eye of Horus. And in the pocket of his pants is a business card for Diana K. Snow. Artie realizes it’s important and he and Myka go to the 44th floor of the building while Claudia and Pete try to examine the building’s security footage.

Steve has Sally under arrest at the bar. She states that the Regents aren’t good and virtuous AND she can prove it. Mrs Frederic arrives, and let’s face it… every.single.time she shows up, it’s awesome. It’s kinda scary, but it’s awesome.

In the building, Pete and Claudia are checking the cameras and they see footage of Sally and another man–dressed as painters. In room 4013, Kasan is there with two other Regents- Philip and Jane. Artie wants them all to evacuate immediately. There’s a big guard who is resistant to Artie and Myka, but he always gives in to their demands in order to protect the Regents. When they all get into an elevator, the brakes engage and it’s an emergency. Myka investigates through the top of the elevator and the cables are gone–slowly being corroded by some visible fiery energy force. Artie has a grappler and they are able to keep the elevator in place while the doors open and they all escape. Just when they all do, the elevator breaks off and crashes to the ground.

Sally’s partner is James Aquino, and Pete and Claudia track him to a bank. Pete enters and evacuates it as best and silently as possible. But Aquino sees Pete’s reflection and produces a spray can of the burning corrosive. When he attacks the bank loan officer, he’s able to escape. Pete and Claudia realize they can use traffic footage to see where he went. When they figure out that he’s headed to a private airport, Claudia hacks into his GPS and gets him to use another traffic route so they can corner him. Once they do, Pete tries to get Aquino to hand over the spray can, but he insists that there is nothing anyone can do to escape “him”–some other mysterious deadly person. Pete is confused, but before he can do anything else, Aquino sprays the corrosive into his own mouth and disintegrates. Yikes! Pete and Claudia are able to retrieve the spray can and when they bag it, it’s artifact properties react, but the bagging of it isn’t enough to stop the effects of the spray already released in the building where Myka and Artie and the Regents are.

They’ve investigated the stairwells and determined them to be compromised at different levels and so they go to the roof of the building and request a helicopter. But they can see the reflection of their building in the one next to it, and the corrosive fire is widespread on an entire floor. They don’t have time to wait. Artie spots a window-washing rig and the Regents decide to attempt to get to it. Below them, the floor corrodes and the lead guard falls into a fiery pit. His last instructions to Myka are to protect Philip.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Frederic is applying a Japanese torture device to Sally–simulating drowning. Sally tries to gulp in air and refuse to give information while Jinks grows increasingly restless with the torture technique. After all–he’s been told by the warehouse agents that they DON’T torture. Mrs. F isn’t concerned with Steve’s anxiety and she continues to interrogate Sally. But when Steve pulls a gun on Mrs. Frederic, she has no choice to react, thereby giving Sally time to escape her binds and attack them and run away. Mrs Frederic tells Steve there will be consequences.

In the building, the ceiling has collapsed a bit and Philip is trapped under some debris. He insists that Jane take some metal bands and put them around her wrists. She is now the main Regent, or as Kasan calls it “The Guardian”. The corroded debris affects him and he disintegrates. Artie uses Frank Lloyd Wright’s son’s pick up sticks (the coolest artifact of the ep, in my opinion!) to form a ladder outside the building to the window-washing rig. He gets to the rig, followed by Kasan. The corrosion affects the rig and the ladder–leaving the women still in the building to find another way out. Jane pulls the firehose from the wall and she and Myka slide down the elevator shaft. But once they get to the bottom doors, they open to see they are buried in debris and potentially trapped.

Outside, Pete, Claudia and Artie figure that they might be able to block the effects of the corrosive by spraying peace signs on the building–and sure enough, it works.

Meanwhile, Sally reports to a man we can only assume is the evil ‘he’ Aquino was talking about. We never see his face, but when Sally tells him that though she wasn’t completely successful, Jinks seems to be turning buying into their idea. The boss tells her it doesn’t matter, and from behind, Sally is attacked by the suspicious man Pete saw earlier. He immobilizes her and apparently kills her. His name is Marcus, we learn, but we never see the face of the man in the chair.

Back at the building, Myka and Jane are rescued, and Pete and Myka share a meaningful hug. While Claudia approaches Steve (who tells her that he’s been fired), Myka leads Pete over to meet Jane. What happens then is so crazy that you have to see it for yourself. All I can say is “Well played, Warehouse 13”.

But what say you? Did you think Mrs. Frederic was going overboard (as it seemed Jinksy thought), or is she really there to protect the warehouse at all costs? Sally warned her mysterious boss that Mrs. F had no trouble crossing “the line”, presumably between what…good and evil? Humane and inhumane torture? Will Steve stick around or is it too much for him? And what will the surprise ending mean for Pete? Let’s discuss!