“Terminal City” is episode twenty-one of season three of First Wave.
Three Gua acolytes are chasing an armed woman through a damaged area. Two go in pursuit whilst the third scans the location. The pursuers enter a building, but have lost the woman, even though the third says she’s right in front of them. One realises she went underneath, just as she appears behind and shoots them. Three more capture the third. The woman says to call the commander; let them know what they have. The commander is already there. He doesn’t want to interrogate the Gua and shoots him. The commander is Cade, looking rather the worse for wear.
Cade is in Eddie’s trailer. The fourth and final omega quatrain says the Twice Bless’d Man will go into the void and seek the hammer again. The hammer is the Hammer of Thor, which was lost in “Unearthed”. Eddie is working on something to generate a wormhole and Joshua is helping. Joshua had intercepted a Gua transport with a locator that would track the Hammer. They need to find it before Mabus does.
Cade asks Eddie if this will work or light him up like a Christmas tree. Perhaps both. The device should create a portal and Joshua says the locator will lock on to the Hammer. Only the Hammer will bring Cade back. Joshua asks Cade if he’s ready, to kill Mabus in Jordan’s body. As a lost option, but yes.
Cade steps through the portal and arrives in what looks like, and probably is, the place from the beginning. He uses the locator and stumbles across a sign. He’s in the future. Then Gua acolytes open fire.
In the past, Eddie wants to shut the portal down because the power drain is noticeable. Joshua wants it to stay open. Because if Cade isn’t bank in an hour, Joshua is going through as well. He has a second locator.
In the future, Cade is about to shoot at the acolytes when the woman form earlier, Taryn, grabs him. She turns him round and says he’s Foster. She takes him to the others; they think he’s an assassination clone. Cade insists he isn’t; he came through a quantum tunnel from the past to stop the invasion. Taryn says his programming is messed up; the invasion was nine years ago. The commander, Future Cade, shows himself at that point.
Joshua is about to head through the portal. Because the fate of the world, and not just Eddie’s world, rests on this. Eddie says that, if the only way back is with the Hammer, then if Joshua goes, someone isn’t coming back.
Future Cade is telling Cade that the Gua haven’t seen him for a while; it makes their clones stand out. Taryn says Cade was looking for something called the Hammer. Cade tells his future self that, if he’s Cade, he knows Cade came to stop the Second Wave. Taryn wants to kill Cade but when he mentions Mabus coming in Jordan’s body, Future Cade pauses and starts questioning Cade. Future Cade has the omega quatrains. He looked for the Hammer. It didn’t defeat the Gua. He failed, just as Cade will. Future Cade breaks the locator.
Joshua and Eddie both arrive through the portal. Joshua realises they are in the future. They then see another portal opening in a building and realise that Mabus has arrived.
Taryn is helping Future Cade, who is clearly ill. She says that Cade isn’t a clone, and Future Cade admits that’s true. It really is him from the past, the way he used to be. But the Hammer won’t defeat the Gua. If Cade is helped to find it, he’ll do the same thing Future Cade did, make the same mistake and history will repeat itself.
Future Cade is desperate to prevent Cade from doing something that Future Cade did. Something he rally regrets. Things are looking pretty grim, but time travel is a funny thing.