With Kevin (Kal-El Tuck) as our main protagonist traveling with the titular Time Bandits, one may forget that his parents being coal-ed affects his little sister, Saffron (Kiera Thompson), as well. Episode 3 of Time Bandits takes us into the superstitious chaos of Medieval England but weaves in the beginning of Saffron’s adventure as she sets out to find her missing family.
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The episode opens with Saffron returning home from school to an empty house, annoyed at having had to get herself there. After complaining loudly there’s nothing to eat while staring at an incredibly well-stocked fridge, she notices the smashed-in back door, rolls her eyes in disgust, and sets the robot vacuum to clean up the mess.
Time Bandits’s “Medieval”
Opening the door to Kevin’s room, she hears a noise from the wardrobe and opens it, thinking Kevin’s hiding inside. Instead, she discovers two Polynesian men rowing a woven reed catamaran on a large expanse of water. She closes the doors, comments, “Random,” and opens it again to find a typical wardrobe. The wall on the other side of the room starts to rattle and she turns to look at it.
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Kevin sits next to Judy (Charlyne Yi) in a forest and opens his fanny pack to look at the lumps of coal that used to be his parents. He asks the Time Bandits what was the creature that coal-ed his parents. Widgit (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva) explains that was Fianna (Rachel House), a demon known as The Huntress. They used to date.
Judy wonders if Pure Evil (Jemaine Clement) sent Fianna after them. Penelope (Lisa Kudrow) is terrified at the prospect and has no idea how they’ll escape The Huntress. Bittelig (Rune Temte) is foraging in the forest nearby for edible plants.
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Kevin asks if his parents are dead. Alto (Tadhg Murphy) comments they don’t look well (since they’re lumps of coal.) Penelope points out that with the map, they can try to time travel to before Kevin’s parents are coal-ed and stop it from happening.
Nesting Instinct
Bittelig returns, announcing that he’s found something to eat. As they follow him through the forest, Kevin spots a triceratops skull. On the riverbank, Bittelig shows the others some giant eggs. As they discuss how they’d like to eat them, Judy spots the layer of said eggs, a pteranodon that glides down from a nearby cliff and lands behind Bittelig. Penelope advises him to put the eggs down carefully.
The pteranodon picks Bittelig up and flings him about. The other Time Bandits run away, looking for the next portal. Just as they spot it, Kevin arrives, dragging the triceratops skull with him and pointing out that it isn’t a fossil, meaning they must be in prehistoric times. The bandits scream at him to leave the skull and run for the portal but he refuses to leave it behind.
Medieval England
On the other side of the portal, the bandits crash through the roof of a small hut which immediately collapses. Emerging through the still-standing front door, Penelope compensates the residents outside with a small candleholder. They take a moment to commemorate Kevin as they believe the pteranodon got him. Just then, he arrives, falling through the air into the hut’s ruins still carrying the skull. Penelope gives the resident another candleholder.
In his throne room, Pure Evil plays Monopoly with his minion. Damon (Jonny Brugh) arrives with intel on Supreme Being (Taika Waititi). He informs him that Supreme Being has a secret project but doesn’t have any details on it. Screaming starts and the minion answers the vid-call from Fianna. She tells Pure Evil that she doesn’t have the map but she did coal Kevin’s parents. Meanwhile, she has some clothing with Kevin’s scent and will continue to hunt him.
Witches or Dragonslayers
Kevin and the Time Bandits arrive in a town where the townsfolk are dancing around a maypole. They identify the newcomers as strangers and deduce they must be witches. Kevin steps forward to reassure them he is not a boy witch, still dragging the triceratops skull which the townsfolk think is a dragon skull. The bandits get a better welcome as dragonslayers so Penelope jumps on that. The Mayor (Shaun Micallef) tours them around the fair, raising the alarm when a cat is spotted. The Pope has recently declared cats to be instruments of Satan and should all be killed.
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In the tavern, Penelope points out a tapestry image of a man and tells Judy it looks like her missing fiancé, Gavin. Meanwhile, Bittelig and Widgit ask the Mayor if there’s anything besides acorns to eat. The Mayor explains there’s a famine going on and, also, they’d like to ask a favor of the dragonslayers. Penelope encourages the bandits to agree to whatever they need. She announces they’re ready to fight the town’s dragon, knowing that dragons don’t exist. The Mayor clarifies that they want them to fight the Sheriff (Con O’Neill) and his army. The Sheriff has been taking their food and torturing them when they have nothing to give him.
If You Don’t Laugh, You’ll Cry
Left alone together, the bandits brainstorm how to get out of this obligation. The Mayor arrives to offer them twigs as weapons. As the bandits prepare to run into the woods to hide, the Sheriff’s goon, De Plume (Matt King) arrives to collect the peasants’ harvest. The Mayor informs him the dragonslayers have agreed to fight his army on their behalf.
De Plume asks if Penelope and her crew are challenging his army there and then. Penelope defers to another day and he calls them cowards. She takes umbrage at that but with Bittelig apprehended, they are forced to go to the Sheriff’s castle.
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Locked up in the dungeon, Penelope protests to the others that it isn’t her fault while Kevin apologizes to his coal parents for making bad choices. When the guards come to take them to the Sheriff, Bittelig easily breaks out of his shackles and bends the bars on the cell door to show them which key to use.
The Diagrams of Torture
When they arrive in the Sheriff’s Great Hall, he shows them pictures of the different tortures he’s come up for them as punishment for being bandits who dared to stand up to his tyranny. Before he leaves, De Plume tells him they also claim to be dragonslayers. Some guards bring in the triceratops skull.
The Sheriff declares the skull is not a dragon’s skull because it doesn’t look like the one he has from when he slayed Fyre-Tongue, the Dreaded Wyrm. His dragon’s skull has been made by tying together various animal bones, antlers, and horns with twigs. Re-enacting his dragonslaying moment, he cries out, “Fafnir!” referencing a dragon of Norse mythology.
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Kevin points out that the skulls do not look alike because his is a dinosaur skull and the Sheriff’s is a random DIY project. Stunned to be challenged like this, the Sheriff calls Kevin forward. Penelope tries to stay close, apologizing for Kevin’s impudence. The Sheriff explains that he is a very cruel man and intimidates Kevin into silence. He then declares his intention to return to the village and burn it to the ground if their harvest isn’t ready to collect in the morning.
Saffron’s Progress
Meanwhile, Saffron’s now on Madame Chung’s (Katlyn Wong) ship, showing her and her sailors pictures she’s drawn of her family. They recognize Kevin.
Escape
After a discussion with a local witch in the dungeon, the Time Bandits escape and return to the village to gather their belongings. The Mayor catches them sneaking back in and asks if they’ve beaten the Sheriff’s forces. Penelope and Alto deliver the message that the Sheriff plans to burn down the village.
When asked to help, Kevin suggests they should try. Judy wonders if they could use fear as a weapon. When the Sheriff and De Plume return at dawn, the village square is empty. A flash grenade is detonated and the villagers all wander through draped in white clothes, looking sickly. Penelope appears and demonstrates how she can separate her thumb from her hand. Kevin is next, trussed up with animal bones and showing how he’s trapped people in his cell phone by playing a video. The soldiers are cowed and frightened but the Sheriff is not impressed. Distracting Kevin, he takes it away from him and orders his men to tie Kevin, Judy, Alto, and the witch to the maypole and build a pyre.
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Penelope and Widgit stick their heads out of a latrine hole and tell the others they plan to use the map and enlist the help of the Hun warriors.
As the soldiers prepare to light the fire, Kevin reminds them that they don’t have to do everything the Sheriff tells them to do. They find this hilarious because if they don’t, the Sheriff will order someone to torture them. Kevin points out that if they all agree not to do any torturing, no one will get tortured. This results in a mind-blown moment.
Epiphany
When De Plume returns to give the order to burn the people on the pyre and the whole village except for the pub, the soldiers pass on their new enlightened thinking about torture. De Plume processes it and throws down his sword. He orders Kevin and the others untied and admits that all the torturing he’s done in his life has victimized him as well as his actual victims.
De Plume finds the Sheriff playing a game on Kevin’s phone. He takes the phone away and tells the Sheriff they need to talk.
Saffron Takes a Leap
On Madame Chung’s ship, they’ve brought Saffron to the place in the water where the Time Bandits leaped into a portal. Saffron, sitting in a rowboat, completely misinterprets their warnings and plans to leap in herself. Chung and her sailor comment that Saffron’s much nicer than the demon that visited last.
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In the village, Kevin’s explaining evolution and how dinosaurs became birds. The villagers comment that it all sounds like heresy. Kevin reiterates there’s no such thing as dragons so they shouldn’t be afraid of them. Or witches. And they have nothing to fear from evolution either.
Penelope, Widgit, and Bittelig return. They’ve been gone for weeks. The Huns did not agree to help fight the Sheriff’s men, having discovered Penelope had stolen from them on her last visit. Bittelig carries two pteranodon eggs for the villagers. Kevin tells them he’s being forced to get married the next day since they thought the others weren’t coming back.
The Mayor thanks them for the peace the village enjoys now. Penelope requests payment for their services. He says they can have anything in the village. Penelope shows them she’s already stolen the bit of the tapestry with the man she thinks looks like Gavin.
Just a Large, Winged Reptile
De Plume comes strolling in, expounding on the beauty of the natural world and how everyone is part of a collective consciousness. As he’s talking, one of the eggs Bittelig brought back hatches a baby pteranodon. As he’s admiring the miracle of new life, the mother pteranodon’s head descends on him, picks him up, and eats him while perched on a nearby rooftop.
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The villagers scream that dragons are real and accuse Kevin of lying to them as they scramble for safety in a panic. As the adult pteranodon leaps from rooftop to rooftop, it causes most of them to collapse under its weight, destroying the village.
The Time Bandits run out of the town and hide under a stone archway. A gargoyle statue falls to the ground, narrowly missing them. Looking up, they see a cat watching them and discuss whether it just tried to kill them. Through the eyes of the cat, Mr. Boots, Pure Evil praises the cat for the attempt. He demands to know where Fianna is since he’s found the bandits.
On the Hunt
Back in Troy around 1,200 BCE, Saffron peeks into the city where it’s still being sacked. She sneaks in. In the middle of the fighting, Fianna stands holding a sweatshirt with a large unicorn and rainbow printed on it. Giving it a big sniff, she looks straight at the camera with a smile(?).
Time Bandits streams on Apple TV+, with two new episodes dropping every Wednesday.
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