So after watching La Brea for two seasons now, I can safely say that mankind cannot ever be trusted with time travel. We have a bad tendency to ruin even the most innocuous of technologies, let alone the dangerous ones. And as “The Journey Part 2” shows, even the best of intentions don’t hold up when time travel is involved.
It wasn’t super obvious in the end of “The Journey Part 1,” due in large part to the cave system being overly dark. But it turns out the reason Gavin is dying is that he moved Eve out of the way of the Komodo dragon, and got impaled on a stalactite for his trouble. He can’t be moved, since he’d bleed out minutes later. So Sam and Riley do their best to ease his pain.
To make matters worse, moments after the attack, Sam and Josh hear a sound, and discover James holding a gun. He demands they move and let him access the machine, but thankfully Izzy sneaks behind him and knocks him on his ass, allowing James to be safely tied up.
Eve isn’t content to watch her husband die, so she uses some fuel rods James was lugging around to activate the machine. She’s going to travel back in time a few hours, warn Gavin and prevent his fatal accident. The only problem is the machine can only go to one location at a time, so once Eve travels back, nobody else will be able to head home safely until she returns.
After Eve and Izzy travel back, they realize they don’t know how far away from the caves they are. Eve manages to use the clouds and her memory to find their way in the right direction, and come upon James holding Ty and Levi at gunpoint. Turns out, those fuel rods he had on him were taken from them, and both men were likely killed in the process. Luckily time travel affords them a chance to undo the damage James has wrought.
Back in the original timeline, Riley and Sam are having a heated argument about the lies he’s been telling her. He says his perspective changed once the Lazarus tower was blown to smithereens, and he realized he was deluding himself thinking him and Riley’s mother could love each other again. And since we didn’t have enough problems, the cave starts rumbling. When Gavin gets James to talk to him, his father admits the coolant system is malfunctioning, which means soon it will be unable to work, and the portal Eve and Izzy used will close on them. His demand to fix it is that he’s allowed to return back to his own time to restart the Lazarus program.
Veronica and Lucas were such a cute couple last time, but now there’s some drama. She takes the pregnancy test, and it’s clearly a negative. Then a random white horse trots over, and Lucas says it’s domesticated. Growing up, he could never wrangle them, and suspects it’s because the animals could sense he was bad. He tells Veronica again he wants to stay, and so she lies and tells him she’s pregnant.
Back on Eve’s mission, Ty tries to reason with James, but it’s clear he’s gone full super villain and isn’t listening. Not only does he not consider Gavin his son anymore, but he’s determined to do things right the second time around. He’s about to shoot Ty when Eve yells at him, distracting him. Then there’s a scuffle, and Ty gets grazed before James runs off. Eve then fills both men in on her confusing mission to save Gavin.
Scott continues to try and contend with the puzzle that is Petra. He gives her a precious candy bar and asks if she can open the locket he found, and inside we find a picture of Petra and her mother, Maya Schmidt. AKA the woman Scott was going to interview with before getting dragged to 10,000 B.C. Before he can think on that more, Petra starts wheezing. She has asthma, so Scott and her go to find the girl’s inhaler.
In the cave system, Josh is losing his mind watching his father slowly die, and Riley finds him crying. She comforts the boy, and they finally kiss and make up. A little bit later, Gavin calls Josh to talk with him, and tells his son how much he loves him and their family before finally passing away.
Ty guides Eve, Izzy and Levi back using skills he’s learned from his new wife. Izzy and Levi talk, and he thanks her, but warns that he had to cross powerful people in order to return to 10,000 B.C., but doesn’t elaborate further. Then the group finds the lockbox and opens it up, showing they reached it before Gavin. Levi has the foresight to leave a note on the map, knowing Gavin will read it. But before they can jump back through the portal, it suddenly fizzles out.
Judah and Veronica decide to investigate a spring he found outside, which is likely the source of the coolant system. Lucas is being a dick, and doesn’t want to return to modern times. Then Sam and him have a come to Jesus moment, talking about their mutual bad fathers, and helps psych Lucas up to realize he can be better than the man he thinks he is.
Turns out, Judah was right for once, and there’s a massive tree branch blocking the intake of the water into the coolant system. Him and Veronica try in earnest to move it, but it won’t budge. Then Lucas gets a hero moment, and arrives astride the white horse he found earlier, lasso in hand. He uses it adeptly to remove the tree. When Veronica asks about him and horses not getting along, he says maybe people can change.
Scott finds the inhaler, which likely saves young Petra’s life. He asks where she’s from, in English instead of his broken German, and she hands him a picture of military barracks. When he questions where it is, she says “here”. Somehow this young girl grew up in 10,000 B.C. Then Scott realizes she understood a question he asked her, and that she speaks English as well. Petra says she’ll tell him everything she knows if he can help her find her mother.
Eve and Izzy jump through the portal with Ty and Levi, and are relieved to find the note worked, and Gavin is alive. It looks like everything is headed to a happy ending. There’s just one issue. Earlier in the episode I noticed nobody was watching James as Eve and Izzy walked through the portal. Though that didn’t result in an immediate problem, it does lead to an issue at the end of “The Journey Part 2.”
Before that, we have a couple smaller scenes. Lucas and Veronica talk baby names, and he says that if it’s a girl they should call her Ella. Then some cute villager named Catherine talks with Sam, thanking him for helping them, and hands over her phone number. And as Scott is looking at Petra’s locket, we see the same symbol tattooed on Levi’s arm.
Okay, ready for the final moments? No, you’re actually probably not, but here we go! James gets loose and cold cocks Gavin. He’s changed his mind, he says. Family isn’t the solution, it’s the problem. Love just creates weakness. So now instead of saving the world, he wants to control it. He tries to grab Moore’s journal from Gavin, and they have a violent confrontation. James’ gun gets fired in random directions, and gas starts venting from the room. James finally snags the journal, but before he can walk through the portal, Gavin shoots him twice from the other side of it. As James lays dying, he mentions Gavin’s sister that we’ve never heard of, and warns she’s coming.
The sky is ripped apart with multiple blinding doorways to other times. Now people and things from all across time will end up in 10,000 B.C. Gavin and his family watch random dates flash across the screen, and decide they can’t safely walk through the portal anymore. Gavin, Izzy and Josh get outside the room, but Eve hangs back to grab Moore’s journal. Which is of course when all hell breaks loose.
Containment protocols suddenly activate, sealing Eve in the room. Gavin struggles to get the door open, but it won’t budge. He does manage to break the tiny window, and through it Eve hands him the journal. She says they found each other once, they can do so again, moments before she gets dragged violently into the portal.
Bereft, Gavin and his children wander outside, vowing they’ll find a way to save Eve. Then they see the giant footprint in the earth. Moments later, a gigantic Tyrannosaurus Rex roars in fury at them.
Now that is how you end a season! La Brea season 2 did a lot of stuff right, and kept us guessing all season long. Here’s hoping that the writers manage to tie up most of the loose ends next season.
