TIMELESS Finale: The Time Team Teases One Last Mission

It may be November, but it’s awfully festive on the Santa Clarita set of TIMELESS. Amidst the holiday decorations for the two-part finale, series star Abigail Spencer (Lucy) sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” between takes, to the delight of her co-stars.

“TIMELESS, the album!” Malcolm Barrett (Rufus) jokes.

It wouldn’t be the strangest twist for the sci-fi series. The drama—about a team who travels through time trying to stop Rittenhouse, an evil organization hellbent on getting power, even if it means destroying the past—debuted on NBC in October 2016 and ran for a full first season. The network canceled the series in May of 2017…and uncanceled it days later.

The season 2 journey was arguably as dramatic: the sophomore year (with a shortened ten-episode order) was held until midseason—and aired at 10 PM, a tough slot for a family-friendly show—and its fate was once again in limbo as NBC went into its 2018 Upfronts with no decision made about the show. Weeks passed before the network officially canceled the series, though there was the tease that the show could wrap up via a TV movie. It took another five weeks before it became official that there would indeed be one last mission for the Time Team.

“It’s a really weird experience, all around,” Barrett acknowledges. “I don’t think I’ve been through anything like this; I don’t think television has been through anything like this before. It’s a rarified air. And at the same time, it’s indescribable. There have been so many ups and downs. Our real live careers have mimicked what is happening with the actual storyline: we were constantly on a cliffhanger, wondering if we were coming back to life or not. And when we do, we’re completely surprised.”

When the series left off, Rufus was killed in action. But before the group could fully mourn him, Future!Lucy and Future!Wyatt (played by Matt Lanter) appeared—breaking the previously established rule of not being able to travel to your own time period—and asked them if they wanted to get Rufus back.

Though the futuristic duo play into the two-hour finale, it isn’t a huge part. “Because we didn’t get a season 3, we didn’t get to explore as fully as I would have liked,” Spencer says. “I thought that was cool—I would have really liked to have taken a longer ride with her. But Future Lucy and Future Wyatt are a cautionary tale of what could become of them if they don’t save Rufus. And if they don’t work out their interpersonal relationships.”

The timeline paradox will be addressed, Lanter promises—“We answer a couple of questions and raise five more. We don’t forget about our rules; our rules come into play in a fresh way.”—and the duo “answer some valuable questions about how we proceed in our present day.”

Though everyone will cop to Rufus being a significant part of the finale (and the promo and photos reveal as much), the circumstances around his return remain top-secret.

“I always thought I’d be in it—people like me!” Barrett says with a laugh. “The writers, their [gamble] was the added loss of Rufus would be enough to galvanize the Clockblockers, and it paid off—it wound up being true. It wound up forcing the hand of the network to get some sort of closure for the fans. I’m glad they got it.”

“For us, it wasn’t always a question of if the show came back, whether they’d get Rufus back, but [rather] how and what would the ramifications be?” he continues.

Unfortunately, the team doesn’t know, for sure, Rufus will return. Among those most impacted is Jiya (played by Claudia Doumit), who is desperate to save her deceased boyfriend. “She can’t think of anything else but that,” Doumit admits. “She’s nowhere but that mental space. That is her sole focus.”

But the reunion could come with its own drama. In addition to Rufus’ potential changes, the programmer had her own significant shift at the end of the second season, when she spent three years stranded in Chinatown in the 1880s.

“The Jiya she became in Chinatown is the Jiya she is now,” Doumit says. “She does have to struggle with that new person she’s become, because she’s introducing that new person into her old life. It definitely puts a strain on things. Her reality and his reality are different…the events that have transpired are different worlds. It’s all about finding what works now.”

“[The writers] are pretty good about never making things easy,” Barrett adds. “They’ve been really good about making life or death depend on their relationship. That hasn’t changed with this finale. The stakes are very high with them reuniting and the possibility of them staying together after the fact. It’s a very scary thing that happens here. Will they get back together here, and if so, will they be the same? Will they be able to get over that in order to save the world. I think those elements are still there. There definitely will be holiday-related quips and relationship-based ones. This is probably one of the more emotional episodes. But it never loses its humor.”

A little less funny is the twisted quadrangle between Lucy, Wyatt, villain-with-a-good-heart Flynn (portrayed by Goran Višnjić), and Wyatt’s formerly dead/now villainous (pregnant) wife Jessica (Tonya Glanz).

Wyatt originally chose to reunite with his wife—despite the blossoming romance with Lucy—because he felt it was the right thing to do. But Jessica’s double-crossing was part of what led to Rufus’ death…and the heartbreak also allowed Lucy to bond with Flynn, who long-insisted they had a connection.

“Wyatt didn’t choose Lucy, and she’s going to need some time to heal from that,” Spencer says of Lucy’s mindset in the finale. “His reasons are wholly valid. And Flynn is a great option. He’s done a lot of really bad things, but they have a real connection…they’ve warmed up to each other. Wyatt wasn’t available. So Lucy is free to roam. And roam right into the arms of a tall, debonair Croatian. I really understand their connection.”

Lanter acknowledges his character is in a very bad way through most of the finale. “He’s struggling through the first episode and even into the second hour of the finale [because of] what he did to Lucy,” he says. “When we left him, he was in such a broken and low place that he just wanted to put his cards on the table and tell her he loved her, not expecting anything in return. He knows he messed up in a couple of different ways. He’s willing to earn that [trust] back. But I don’t think he thinks he’s worthy in the first episode. But we see some redemption.”

“I can’t stress enough, in every single possible way, he’s broken,” he says with laugh. “He has no love, he hates himself, he let his team down. We see a lot of broken Wyatt.”

Things aren’t any less dramatic in the bunker, as Agent Christopher (played by Sakina Jaffrey) and Connor Mason (played by Paterson Joseph) try to figure out how to save the team (and history), and also assess how they should handle time travel going forward.

“He’s a constant questioner,” Joseph notes, noting the appearance of the future versions of Lucy and Wyatt throw Connor for a loop. “He’s not like one of those characters who has [all the knowledge]. He really does question the science of what’s happening.”

“She puts her game face on because so much is at stake,” Jaffrey adds. “There’s a couple of issues that Connor and Agent Christopher have to really hash out and get a clearer picture on—what their priorities are.”

Given the show’s penchant for coming back from the dead, Lanter isn’t entirely sold this is the last we’ll see of the Time Team. “I don’t know if you can ever put a cap on anything with all of these streaming services coming out,” he says. “Who knows might happen? But for right now, this is a nice cap on the series. And I don’t think it’s too big of a surprise to say we end the movie with a slightly ambiguous way of where our characters could go in the future. They’re still around and there’s still the possibility of time travel. So…you never know.”

And if this is the end, the TIMELESS cast is pretty convinced the die-hard Clockblockers will love the final hours, penned by Arika Lisanne Mittman and Lauren Greer. “As we were having the table read for it, I honestly thought to myself, ’It feels like a fan wrote the movie,’” Doumit says. “That made me so happy.”

Are you excited for the TIMELESS finale?

TIMELESS, Series Finale, Thursday, December 20, 8/7c, NBC

RELATED:

• TIMELESS Series Finale Promo Teases the Final Mission
• TIMELESS Finale: ‘The Miracle of Christmas’ Photos
• NBC Sets Holiday Lineup, Including HOLLYWOOD GAME NIGHT, AMERICA’S GOT TALENT, and More
• TIMELESS: NBC Orders a Two-Hour Movie
• Matt Lanter on the Complicated TIMELESS Triangle in Season 2
• TIMELESS Stars Abigail Spencer and Matt Lanter on the Show’s Passionate Fans

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