“The World’s Columbian Exposition” is episode eleven of season one of Timeless.
In the previous episode, “The Capture of Benedict Arnold”, the mid-season finale, Flynn revealed that he had discovered that Arnold was one of the founding members of Rittenhouse, and asked Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus to help him destroy Rittenhouse before it got started, so that the future would be changed and Flynn’s family would still be alive, amongst other things, and Flynn would tell Wyatt who killed his wife (there seems to be a rather large assumption there that eliminating Rittenhouse would not have a huge impact on the future in every way; something that seems highly unlikely if Rittenhouse is so entwined with the United States).
Arnold revealed that Rittenhouse was, at that time, a person, a man who was forming a group to rule from the shadows. He wasn’t a very nice man either. Flynn did kill him, but before he did, Rittenhouse said that others would carry on. Flynn wanted to kill Rittenhouse’s son as well, but Lucy wouldn’t let him. At the end of the episode, Flynn had taken Lucy away with him in the mothership.
This episode opens with Wyatt and Rufus getting back to the present demanding to know where the mothership is as Flynn has Lucy. They don’t tell the truth as to how that happened though. Flynn is not happy with Lucy, as Rittenhouse is still in existence, and he blames her for not letting him kill the son. Lucy says that Rittenhouse’s followers could have carried on, but Flynn doesn’t believe her. Flynn is now going to go after every member of Rittenhouse individually. Flynn, with the nuke power source stolen in “Atomic City”, is able to make trips back in time much more often.
Flynn takes Lucy back to the time of the Chicago World Fair in 1893, where he is going to kill J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison – who he says are all members of Rittenhouse. Ford was working for Edison as an engineer at the time and Morgan was Edison’s financier. Lucy doesn’t want to help, so Flynn questions his earlier assumption that they will work together. If they don’t, Lucy is expandable.
Mason discovers that Rufus erased the recording, so that Rittenhouse wouldn’t know that they had killed their founder. Connor says Rufus needs to run, and he’ll take his family and be given a new identity and money, but Rufus won’t leave until Lucy is found.
Flynn gets Lucy to help, in order to protect the other two, because his men have lured them into staying at a place called the ‘Murder Castle.‘ He can’t get past the security guarding his three targets without her help, even in 1893. She has an interesting suggestion, a man who is an expert at getting out of tight spots – Harry Houdini. Lucy’s plan isn’t what Flynn thinks it is though.