Kevin gets an enticing offer in Time Bandits' penultimate episode

As the season nears its end, the Bandits are off to find that missing corner of the map—and they uncover a few extra surprises along the way. But first, there’s a surprise for viewers: There is another team of Bandits up in Supreme Being’s realm. They see themselves as superior to the “shrubbery designers” who currently hold the map. And, coaxed by her deputy, the detective who has been sniffing out clues is preparing to defect from SB and covertly join their ranks. Or at least that’s what she’s telling them. It could be very interesting to have another whole gang of Bandits portaling around.  

The Bandits head back to Troy in 1200 BCE, Kevin’s theory being that Cassandra may be able to offer up a prophecy that helps them track down the map’s missing corner. By now, the Greeks and Trojans are full-on fighting, and Cassandra has been tossed in jail. When the gang gets themselves thrown in there, too, she gives them what seems to be pretty obvious, mom-like advice: “Where was the last place you saw it?” Penelope gets a little tip as well. Cassandra tells her that her ex-fiancé Gavin is living on the head of a man and that if they complete this quest of theirs, she will see him again. They have a bit of fun with Cassandra’s curse here—that she can see the future, but no one believes her. Everyone pretty much shuts her down after she offers her advice, except for Kevin, who is aware enough to see past the curse-sown confusion. So the group concludes that they must go back to where Susan died, and they kind of sled over to the beach where it happened. 

On the beach, Poseidon appears to them, rising up from the sea. (It’s actually SB, of course.) He lays his giant hand on Kevin, and they are transported to a white void together, where the Big Man presents Kevin with a pretty tantalizing deal. He tells the boy that if he gives him the map, he can not only free his parents, but give him better versions of them, parents who care about his interests. He could also grant him popularity. To demonstrate, he generates a whole crowd of smiling kids looking his way, one exclaiming, “Kevin! Tell us some history facts!” He doesn’t outright agree to spy for SB and find a way to give the map to him, but it’s at least on his mind by the time he comes to. 

As it turns out, the Bandits had been arguing that whole time, hurling spying allegations at one another. And Widgit reveals something big in this context. Penelope has had an ulterior motive this whole time: to go back to all the places Gavin had been. With that reveal, Cassandra’s premonition seems all the more reasonable. They probably will find him at the end of this quest.

But first, they go looking for Susan, back to the spot where she was when she died. And it doesn’t seem as “conclusive” a death as they had claimed. In fact, it turns out she had really just called out, “I’m falling off this cliff. Now I’m going to get crushed by this giant boulder,” placed her shoes next to a giant boulder in a less than convincing display, then buggered off. Saff sees her scuttling away. Susan had faked her death.

Now the Bandits head after her, going through portal after portal, seeing some cool stuff along the way. They chase her to Qin dynasty China, 220 BCE, and see Qin Shihuangdi beginning construction on the Great Wall of China. He doesn’t like Kevin telling him that building it will ultimately take 2,000 years, but he does seem to love that it will be made up of four million bricks (“so frickin’ cool,” he says). Next, they follow her to 1343 Caffa, where bodies of people who have died of plague are being catapulted into the city: the first documented example of biological warfare. And I love this bit. 

Taika Waititi in Time Bandits (Photo: Apple TV+)

There is a sort of spokesperson villager here, and it’s the same actor who played the Town Mayor in the Middle Ages (Shaun Micallef). He was great, so I’m immediately happy to see him back. The jokes here are kind of easy COVID-to-plague comparisons. The Mayor even asserts that the plague is “like the flu—we’re all going to get it eventually.” But it’s the delivery that makes it all work. Their time here ends when Alto prepares to deliver an oration to Susan, imploring her to reconsider abandoning them, and clears his throat, only to have the villagers suspect plague and prepare to kill the germy foreigners in their midst. Just as the villagers crowd around the Bandits with their torches and the like, Susan takes pity on them and pulls them through the portal to where she has been residing all this time—and she hasn’t been alone.

They exit the portal to find a beachside cottage, and when they knock on the door, they discover that Gavin and Susan have been living in it together, as lovers. They didn’t know how to tell Penelope that they were in love, so they ran away instead. Penelope has been traveling through time to win Gavin back, but he had long since moved on. It’s sad for her, but it gives Kevin the opportunity to say, “Gavin may not need you, but I do.” In his memory, she is a hero. There’s even a little montage about it. The lesson here is that they haven’t needed to work so hard to impress people who don’t actually care about them, because they have had each other all along.Caring about each other has been their purpose.

So yeah, it’s sweet. Everyone offers to take Kevin to the Fortress of Darkness (but not all the way inside), and they ask Susan for that map piece to find the Time of Legends. It turns out they don’t need it, though. They’re already there—and on a big guy’s head, no less. This was a heartwarming little episode with lots of jokes woven in. The chase through the portals was thrilling and fun, giving us brief glimpses into other worlds while maintaining a pace befitting the circumstances. We’ve got one more episode to go this season, and it seems they’ve reached a destination, so this might be the last we’ve seen of time-jumping for a while. But this was a strong send-off to that device. Now it’s time to get some Pure Evil in our lives.

Stray observations

• • The leader of this other elite group of Bandits we’re introduced to in this episode is also  the “cherub spice” maker. Now that we know that this guy is a defector, that whole cherub-spice thing has to be a prank, right? Just a way to get SB to drink some urine because it turns out the “cherub” doesn’t like the guy?
• • I love SB’s description of the progression of his voids. It’s currently white, but he says that it was black darkness before that and before that pink. 
• • SB also says he can make the void/space into anything he wants, but not “just like that.” Apparently, “there’s some HR bullshit to contend with.” So it goes. 
• • Susan says the Bandits would more accurately be called the “Hapless History Tourists,” and honestly, she’s not wrong.
• • So basically, Susan faked her own death to get out of telling her friend that she had been the other woman in a relationship. If there are actual stories of this happening, and I suspect there are, I need to know them now.