12 Monkeys Recap with Spoilers: “Arms of Mine” – Season 1 Finale

Here we are, at the season 1 finale. Away we go!

The end of last episode included Jennifer Goines taking over Markridge, the strange pale hooded men in 2043 led to Splinter by Deacon, Cole pardoxing himself back to health (but stuck in 2015), and things are not looking good.

2015: Cassie wakes up next to Cole, and smiles, while he has a little voiceover monologue. The strange red vines are still growing in 2043, and Katrina looks on. “What if you had a reset switch?” Cole says, as we finish on Ramse looking at the Project Splinter files and Jennifer Goines painting the 12 Monkeys emblem on the wall of her new company.

Cut to Cole, and he’s beating Aaron down pretty badly. Aaron just laughs. He blames Cole for everything that’s happened at this point, saying, “You’re just a savage.” As Cole continues to question Aaron, Cassie comes into view and asks him who he is working with. He tries to convince her that they can survive the plague if they just leave Cole behind. She doesn’t buy it.

2043: Katrina and Whitley are looking at the strange vines, and she thinks they can’t be random. Whitley volunteers to be the next subject of Project Splinter, but Katrina thinks “the mission is over.” He says they either need to proceed with the mission, or shut it all down and move on completely.

Deacon and the hooded pale men stand outside looking at the building, scoping out the defenses. The hooded men talk funny, and Deacon laughs at them for their affectations. They’ve made a deal that Deacon and his people will help take the Project Splinter facility, the hooded men get to do… something… then Deacon and his people get the building.

2015: More Aaron torture! He finally speaks up about The Striking Woman, aka Olivia, but says they can’t stop her or the army. “They’re preparing for something, she said it was the coming of the 12;” he mentioned the facility they’re planning to hide in, while he’s trying to break out of his bonds secretly. He tells them these people can be found at Markridge, and that she is an investor there. Just as they begin to make plans, Aaron breaks free and hits Cole, as he chases him, Aaron sets him on fire, and the fire quickly spreads. Aaron is knocked down and covered by a shelf, and they leave him to die in the fire.

Sometime later, Cole and Cassie are in a diner. Cole apologizes to Cassie, and she says, “he betrayed us, he betrayed me,” about Aaron. She’s focused on finding the woman; and as she looks up Markridge, she sees that the new CEO is Jennifer Goines.

The pair dress up and head to Markridge for the new CEO’s keynote address.

“Wind Beneath My Wings” plays as Jennifer talks about daddy dearest, Leland. There’s a bunch of obviously and badly photoshopped pictures that show Leland doing charitable and familial things. Jennifer takes the stage and says “We’re here not to eulogize, but to capitalize.” She gives a very business-y speech full of buzzwords. Then… she goes off the rails, talking about giving the world back to the animals and bringing extinct ones back to life.

After the speech, Cole and Cassie go find Jennifer, and she brings them to the board room to talk. Goines says she was off her meds when last they met and all the Night Room stuff was just crazy talk. She’s clearly still fairly, “cray” in her words. She mocks Cassie, and Cassie smacks her telling her she has no time for her crazy bullshit. Jennifer turns them to Ramse, now going by Ethan Seckie, who “has a gift, knows when to invest in things.” Cole thanks Jennifer for the info, which she eagerly accepts. A phone call comes through right as Cole and Cassie leave, and she says, “It’s done. He knows.”

Ramse is looking into a facility – the one that is building the Project Splinter device.

Cut to Ramse and Olivia. “Your longing for your son will soon be over,” she tells him. He’s going to the Raritan facility. Olivia talks about delicate balance and exposure, but says it’s time.

2043: Deacon and a veteran of Project Spearhead have a truck full of some kind of animals. They’re bats, and as he opens the doors, they fly out and swarm into the exhaust tunnels at Splinter – it overheats the core and everything shuts down. “This is it, they’re coming,” Whitley says ominously.

2015: Project Splinter, in the past. They’re putting vines on a table and splintering them, 28 years into the future. So that’s that question answered. The scientist in charge of the project mentions “It’s just like Kat always said…” so he has a connection to her. He’s prepping for a meeting with “the money” and he wants to start sending primates, not just plants, through.

2043: Deacon and the hooded pale men go through an air vent into the Splinter facility. Armed with nothing but a knife, one of the hooded men takes out the first guard in a blink of an eye.

Katrina starts to prep the bomb they had disabled when Ramse tried to blow them up the first time.

2015: Raritan National Laboratory, or as Cole calls it, “Home.” He plans to go in with Cassie through the exhaust tunnels (Interesting parallel there!).

Ramse comes into the lab and talks with the scientist in charge of things, and it is: Dr. Jones, Katrina’s ex-husband. He relinquishes full, unauthorized (and unsupervised) access to the machine to Ramse and leaves the lab.

2043: The hooded men are easily dispatching of all the guards. They say they “need the woman” but the rest can die. Katrina has prepped the bomb and says, “Marcus, I failed.”

2015: Cole and Cassie are trying to infiltrate Raritan, and are forced to split up because of an obstacle that isn’t there in the future. Cassie stumbles upon a room full of red time-travel-affected vine plants. She remembers the story Olivia told her, “You’re walking through the red forest,” and sees a vision including red skies and lightning.

Cole comes into the room where Ramse and his henchman are prepping something. Ramse is surprised to see him. Ramse starts talking to him, “It took time travel to create time travel. I want to go home to my son” – indeed, as the one who funded Raritan, he’s right. He wants to go back to the future to be with his son, and try to find another cure.

“Is that what you’ve become? Someone who would kill 7 billion people to save one?” Cole asks, and Ramse says he’d do the same – that in fact he has been doing it, for Cassie, who he loves.

2043: Deacon, the Spearhead guy, and the hooded men enter the map room. One soldier remained to try to ambush them, and is taken out quickly. Just as the core reboots, Katrina and Whitley stand nearby with a detonator – the bomb is on the machine itself.

“You’re looking at someone who has nothing to live for,” Katrina says. “We represent the future, madam,” one of the hooded men says. She tells him that if the people at Splinter can go, he can have the machine. “We can’t change the past. Nobody can,” she says, clearly defeated. “All that matters is what happens here, in this time.”

2015: Our other standoff. “You were my brother,” Cole says. “I know, I thought I killed you, and I lived with that guilt for a long time,” Ramse replies. Cassie comes into the room.

She calls Ramse the Witness, and he tells them he’s not, swears he isn’t. Cole tries to get Cassie to listen to him, and to put the gun down – she wants one of them to shoot Ramse. She starts to lower it, but then says, “He made his choice,” and shoots him. Ramse’s bodyguard shoots her. Cole shoots the bodyguard. Ramse and Cassie are both bleeding and we get a blackout.

2043: The hooded men agree to Katrina’s deal, saying “Disarm them and let them go.” They do, indeed.

2015: Cassie was shot in the gut, and there’s no exit wound. Ramse pushes across the chest he had – it has the injections in it! “Send her to Jones – we’re both going to die here, she’ll save her, she won’t save me.” Cole injects Cassie, to her protest. He carries her over to the table, and she says “goodbye.” He says, “I’m gonna see you soon,” and she replies, “I don’t think so.”

He fires up the machine, and they look into each others eyes as she… splinters!

As Ramse lies dying, he says, “You make it back there, you find my son. Tell him I tried to protect him. I tried.” He lays back and dies, and Cole leaves.

Still in 2015, we jump to Olivia at her home. A man comes in and says, “The 12 are ready.” “All 12? All healthy?” and he leads her to them. It’s 12 babies. “How beautiful, at last the next cycle has begun.” In 28 years they’ll be ready, and as they say these words, the hooded men are shown in 2043, getting the detonator.

“You’re sure?” Olivia says, “The witness has spoken.” Is she the witness? She also claims that Ramse will be found, dead on the floor of the facility, and that Cole will go into obscurity, and that they can’t defeat fate.

But just then, Cole goes back and gets Ramse, telling him that no one needs to die.

2043: They’re taking Katrina into custody, and the machine fires up – it’s Cassie, with gunshot wound. Katrina recognizes her instantly.

2015: Olivia and a man are talking, she says, “The release of the virus is out of our hands.” Jennifer Goines is getting on a plane, ready to visit 12 cities around the world in a few months. She says the trip isn’t for pleasure: “I have work to finish.”

And that’s season one, folks. What did you think of the big finale?