The Treasure Map

In episode 2 of National Treasure: Edge of History, Billie captures Oren and hacks into Tasha’s laptop, preventing her from tracking their location. Jess decides they should meet at the USS Kidd Museum for the trade, reluctantly agreeing to the switch.

Jess suggests they go to the FBI, but Tasha doesn’t think that’s a good idea because they can track her every move and she clearly doesn’t like or trust the authorities. She warns this could get Jess into trouble. Instead of broadcasting Jess stealing relics to Tasha’s 100,000 view strong YouTube channel? ..

Jess and Tasha show up at the FBI, where they speak to newbie Agent Ross. Ross believes the whole thing is a haze given she’s new and warns the pair that if they illegally file a report it’s actually a crime. After lying to the FBI, the pair decide to scamper away.

Jess and Tasha were on their way to school when they saw a bus stop with a sign that said " relic." Jess, being the curious person she is, decided to go over and look. They both agreed that it looked like it might be a puzzle box, so they used an app on their phones to try and figure out how to open it. Once they did, they found pictures of different tiles inside and believed it might be part of a larger treasure map. ..

Jess decides to buy them some time in the gift shop by making it seem like Billie is a shoplifter and getting the police involved to bust her for a minor felony.

This plan involves me going into the men’s room and talking about the gender issues with bathrooms, prompting the security guard inside to leave. When he does, the whole plan goes awry as Oren decides against getting Billie arrested because he knows they’re going to kill them otherwise.

Jess and Oren head to Peter’s office and immediately begin rifling through the books, finding the symbol from her necklace in one of the books. Liam shows up and immediately calls her out for breaking and entering. He scoffs at her ideas of the treasure hunt and warns that searching for this is dangerous.

Ethan, the missing component of this foursome, finds out his friends have been lying all this time. However, he too has been lying given he’s secretly got a girlfriend. Jess promises no more lies between them, and the pair hug and make up. Off the back of this, Jess does some digging and believes that the symbols on her necklace are connected to the Aztec, Mayans and Incans. Which we know, of course.

Tasha shows Jess her work on reversing the Trojan attack on Billie’s computer. Tasha has found out that this Billie character is the Queen of Cryptocurrency. However, it is not clear how Tasha obtained this information if she hacked into Billie’s computer. ..

Jess is not in the mood to party though, given she’s just been fired from her job at the Storage Center for switching shifts at the last minute and her replacement failing to show up. Thankfully, Jess shows up at Squeaky Pete’s, the bar where Liam is singing at, to apply for a barmaid role. After being told she’ll need training that he can’t afford, Jess gives some obvious observations to different things – like a wobbly stool leg and a woman needing napkins – and it’s enough to convince him to hire her. She starts immediately. And that happens just as Liam is let go from his position of singer.

Liam approaches Jess and eventually concedes, asking for her help in uncovering what Peter may be hiding at his house. They show up at the office together, where Liam finds a hidden door. Inside, they find a whole series of documents written by Jess’s mother! ..

The Episode Review

Edge of History: The follow-up to National Treasure is not much better than the original. We get the obligatory social messaging and a whole rabble of issues inherent with Jess’s plan. There’s still no mention of her online video stealing the relic, and in fact given we know there are shadowy people after this, the pair just randomly sit on a bus and start to uncover the puzzle without a thought that they might be being tracked too. ..

The show feels cheap and the language is clearly geared toward Gen Z, which is absolutely fine but also gives this a specific CW-vibe that’s going to alienate a good chunk of people going into this. And that’s before mentioning the story that’s incredibly poorly written. That scene featuring Jess just randomly getting a job is probably the worst example of a job interview and whoever wrote that clearly needs to “touch grass”.

National Treasure is a disaster because it’s a show that does better within the adventure genre.