TV Review: ‘National Treasure: Edge of History’ Season 1, Episode 7
by Frank Martin
National Treasure: Edge of History has done a fairly decent job at navigating its various twists and turns. The movies were never really built off of twists; it didn’t need them as the riddles and puzzles were enough to withstand a full feature length story. But the show has been much more plot driven, and while the riddles and puzzles have been nice to use as plot devices, they were never a driving factor the same way that the twists have been. This makes sense as there is much more screen time, and this episode shows that the twists still have steam to keep the show engaging.
The ramifications of last week’s episode are in full swing as the FBI has an arrest warrant for Jess (Lisette Olivera), believing her to be Sadusky’s (Harvey Keitel) murderer. The team heads to Mexico to question the villainous Salazar. It turns out, Salazar isn’t in prison. It’s actually just Jess’s father (Jacob Vargas) believed to be Salazar. She is hurt by this, but they still follow his clue to find the final box in a convent. When Jess goes back to question her father in prison, she sees Billie (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is already there. In order to keep her father safe, the episode ends with her declaring that she’s going to break him out of prison.
Until now, the adventure side of the series has been fairly lacking in comparison to the film. This episode changes that somewhat as they leave the country for Mexico. There isn’t any real adventure, but the change of scenery was much needed, and the promise of breaking her father out of prison leaves hope that there is more action and suspense to come. Also, her declaration to do something so impossible was eerily reminiscent of Nicolas Cage declaring he was going to steal the Declaration of Independence. Regardless of whether this was intentional or not, the feeling of Edge of History is doing a good job trying to hold on to the feeling of the original films.
National Treasure: Edge of History streams Wednesdays on Disney+.