National Treasure: Edge of History – Season 1 Episode 7 Recap & Review

Point of No Return

Episode 7 of National Treasure: Edge of History starts with Tasha, Jess and Oren deliberating over their next move and trying to work out exactly how to get to Mexico. Jess decides their target is Salazar, believing that they should get him on their side to make Billie their common enemy to go up against.

On their way home, the trip realize feds are sniffing around their house, they even have Jess’ suitcase outside. Tasha (the same Tasha who’s a brilliant hacker only when the plot calls for it) checks the judicial and public document archive to see what’s going on, and realizes that Jess is actually wanted for Peter Sadusky’s murder.

With time of the essence, the gang head over to Oren’s place where he happens have a whole bunch of shoeboxes full of emergency supplies. There are burner phones, wads of cash and more. Tasha is impressed, as Oren points out he does listen to her.

Ethan confirms Liam isn’t a bad guy when he shows up and chats to Jess. Jess is shocked and blames herself, even though she knew Liam was on the straight and narrow twice and still chose not to believe him. Anyway, Jess wants to apologize but she has more important things to do.

Ethan shows up to see Agent Ross, who plays a voice recording of Jess threatening Peter followed by choking after being threatened with poison. Ethan claims that it’s a deepfake, bringing up a grammatical error as the cause, given that’s something Jess would never do. Ross refuses to divulge who gave the tape, but does confirm that it wasn’t Billie.

At San Antonio courthouse, Billie catches up with some woman who allegedly knows the truth about the Alamo. This random woman brings up how the Alamo is in Mexico, and it’s super lucky she was right there to give out this info. Ross shows up to see Billie, confirming that Jess is a murder victim. She cryptically tells her she’s dodged a bullet, so Ross starts to doubt her intel. Despite having genuine evidence in front of her, Ross is convinced there’s more to this.

Liam finds evidence of Jess inside the ransacked Clue Room (there’s still no explanation as to how the invader got out without tripping the alarms or the traps) and hurries out. He heads straight to the bar and tries to ring Jess. As he does, Ethan, Oren and Jess cross into Mexico, nearing their destination.

Down in Mexico, Tasha gets hold of the voice recording the police have. Jess deduces that they use Billie as a threat. She intends to reveal Salazar’s location unless he tells her the location of the third box. Apparently he has zero digital footprint, but as the camera pans out, we see someone shady sitting in a car watching the kids. This is the same man that was snooping about Sadusky’s place earlier in the season

Jess soon finds out that Salazar is behind bars in a maximum security prison. Wearing the medallion for him to see and with her bugged glasses on, Jess speaks to him and he immediately perks up. Salazar reveals that he’s actually her father, Rafael!

Rafael reveals that the police made a mistake and locked him up, believing that he was Salazar. Jess doesn’t believe him until he sings a song from her childhood. Eventually she comes around to him and questions why he didn’t come find her. I mean, I don’t know about you guys but from where I am, prisoners aren’t allowed to go on walkabouts to another country to find their family members… but maybe that’s just me!

Jess reveals that her mum is dead, and goes on to blame Rafael for taking this Salazar alias. Rafael suggests she try and find the last relic. Jess doesn’t listen and walks out, deciding to give up entirely. Jess blames Rafael for not coming to find her, and in fact she drops her medallion and walks away. For a few seconds anyway. Eventually she decides to get back on the hunt again.

The group deduce that the relic they’re after is being hidden inside a convent. Specifically the point where they “pass notes”. This hints toward an organ, which the group manage to find completely unguarded. The group play a load of notes, with Jess deciding to play her mother’s lullaby. In doing so, a whole bunch of nuns show up.

Oren holds them off as one of the organs spins round to show a secret compartment holding one of the puzzle boxes. Jess eventually takes the box and heads off. The nun spots her with the box and agrees to let her know when Jess reveals her lineage. “Go with God” the woman says.

With all three puzzle boxes, Jess lays them all out before her and contemplates what it means. There’s another code, but in order to decipher it, she’ll probably need to see her father. When she shows up, Jess realizes that Billie is onto her. She’s in the prison and has figured out that Salazar is inside. Jess decides she needs to do something and that something stems from breaking her father out of prison.

The Episode Review

So National Treasure continues to meander along with a whole bunch of questionable plot elements and contrived scenarios. The writing in this series has been poor across the board and this episode is no exception. How did Jess manage to leave the country given she’s allegedly wanted for murder? I know they mentioned Interpol but something as serious as murder would surely flag up across all the scanners?

Why didn’t Tasha scramble the system and mess up the police database to prevent that from happening? And how did that Clue Room get trashed without the traps being triggered? While some may see this as petty, these sort of questions should have been answered in the writing room. It’s sloppy and contrived, especially as you have a walking deus ex machina device in Tasha to explain everything through the power of hacking.

If that wasn’t enough, Jess blames her father for not coming to see her sooner… even though he’s behind bars. There should have been a better explanation for this because Rafael could easily have said that he was trying to protect her by pretending to be dead. Or even better, he could have said the police refuse to believe he’s actually Rafael.

Hopefully the episodes ahead can improve and send this one off with a bang but based on what we’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t count on it!