Blood & Treasure: Observations From “Into the Forbidden Zone”

The fourth episode of the long-awaited second season of Blood & Treasure aired on Paramount+ on Sunday night, moving forward with the story of Danny McNamara and Lexi Vaziri as they are on the hunt for the latest antiquity that is also desired by a dangerous terrorist and his vicious team of killers.

Episode four of the second season of Blood & Treasure aired this week on Paramount+, picking up where last week’s episode left off with Danny and Lexi driving in a caravan with Andrei Levchenko and his Russian motorcycle gang on the trail of the Spirit Banner.

The synopsis for the fourth episode, entitled “Into the Forbidden Zone,” is “Danny and Lexi join forces with Levchenko’s gang as they journey to Mongolia. Levchenko hopes to find the Spirit Banner for himself, even with the Great Khan’s horde in hot pursuit.

The Good:

First of all, they finally said it! During the most crucial moment of the episode, when things are looking extremely bleak, Danny and Lexi both say “I love you” to each other – despite their verbal misgivings about once those three little words are said, that it’s all over, they said it anyway – and clearly meant it.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s discuss the other good things that happened in this episode.

What a wild ride our duo went on with Andrei and his motorcycle gang, right? We learned that the Spirit Banner was at that secret military base that actually turned out to be a research lab. It would seem the Russians were trying to figure out Genghis Khan’s DNA from the hair on the banner in a time when DNA wasn’t a new science. What kind of experiments did they perform in that lab? I’m almost afraid to learn the answer to that question.

It was hysterical listening to Chuck talk about being an asset for the CIA via Kate. He was thinking she’d give him microfilm or putting a code inside the crossword puzzle in the newspaper she gave him. Really? What was he thinking that he’s a spy in the 1950-1960’s?

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The Bad:

That freaking Simon has nine lives, or at least it sure seems that way. The Great Khan (or at least who we all seem to “think” is the Great Khan) breaks Simon out of that prison in Ireland – that was quite the prison break by the way, wasn’t it? – and now Simon is “working” with him. But given what we know about Simon he is only in this to save his skin, and I’m sure he’s already devising ways to get himself out of the deal and away from the Great Khan one way or another.

I felt kind of bad that Andrei and his motorcycle gang got taken out by the Great Khan’s men. Danny warned all of them that it would be a trap, and they just didn’t listen. Andrei may have felt that he would be reunited with his beloved, recently departed wife Claudine, it was, to me, a waste of a great villan-like character that could have been tapped to help Danny and Lexi more with the hunt for the Spirit Banner.

Andrei dispatched that Asian assassin, but that’s not going to stop the Great Khan from sending way more men to take out Danny and Lexi and anyone else who will lead him to the Spirit Banner.

Additional Thoughts:

I have to admit that I missed seeing Shaw. The banter between little Hahn, his uncle and Chuck were delightful, but those scenes were sorely lacking without Shaw. I hope we get to see more of him. Speaking of Hahn’s uncle, does anyone have any bad feelings about him? I hate to disparage a character that we don’t know enough about just yet, but that’s kind of the problem. We don’t know enough about him (yet), and hopefully he is a good addition to the team and not there for some other kind of long-con, nefarious reason.

Make sure to tune in to Paramount+ next Sunday, August7 for the next new episode.

A new episode of Blood & Treasure will air each Sunday on the streaming service.

You can also rewatch season 1 of Blood & Treasure on Paramount+.