While there are a handful of nods to the holiday like Agent Christopher (Sakina Jaffrey) attempting to offset the bunker’s drab aesthetic by outfitting it with Christmas lights, the real spirit of Christmas isn’t on display until this moment when the team reunites. Barrett has played Rufus with such thoughtfulness, warmth, and wit since his first episode, it’s no wonder he quickly became the heart of the show. Rufus appears, grinning from ear-to-ear, a pop culture reference slipping naturally off his tongue - “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals” - and completely re-energizes the team and the movie.

The dire straits the gang finds themselves in puts them just close enough to the edge of hopelessness to ensure that the Rufus reveal feels like the movie’s titular miracle. Soon after Flynn’s sacrifice,the film gets a welcome shot of adrenaline when Rufus busts down the door to rescue the team from a hostage situation. It’s an easy out, but if Flynn had to die, at least he died in a sequence that honored the complicated hero he was. It’s not clear why he needs to sacrifice his life to do so, other than to offer the writers a chance to cheat their way out of resolving the pesky romantic triangle between Lucy, Wyatt, and Flynn that created a season’s worth of friction between the team members. This is just the information everyone’s favorite unscrupulous assassin, Flynn (Goran Visnjic), needs in order to take off with the new autopilot-equipped Lifeboat (thank you Future Lucy and Wyatt) to kill Jessica. The plan comes from Wyatt who, in his first of many scenes designed to win the team back, offers one simple equation that will set everything right: taking Jessica’s life will restore Rufus to his. Things don’t really get moving until the writers lay out how the team is going to pull off the movie’s raison d’être: saving Rufus. Her villainous acts are more frustrating than intimidating she lures the Time Team into two different historical periods, the California Gold Rush in 1848, and North Korea at the beginning of the Korean War, but never shows up to confront them. But aside from providing a diverting historical detour that allows the show’s elegant and evocative costumes and cinematography to shine, the team’s time in 1848 is a bit aimless.ĭespite killing Rufus (Malcolm Barrett) along with a handful of Rittenhouse’s top brass last season, Emma Whitmore (Anna Wersching) is a bit toothless as the Big Bad here. Though Murrieta has a negligible impact on the plot of the movie, his introduction feels like a way for the film to fold in the spirit of the show approaching history with reverence and a social justice bent that aims to educate as much as entertain.

In 1848 we’re introduced to Joaquin Murrieta, a famous outlaw whose vigilante activities inspired the story of Zorro.

Timeless movie finale