“Queen For a Day” is episode four of season three of Warehouse 13.
This episode opens in the Warehouse with Artie running out of the area where they are dealing with the artefacts from Warehouse 2. He’s chasing after a scarab – this activated and jumped out of its box in “The New Guy”, and burrowed into the floor. It’s proving to be a tricky little thing to catch.
Pete gets a call from Jinks – and Claudia. They are looking for a flask. At, as it turns out, Shiloh National Military Park in Tennessee. Where there is a Civil War re-enactment going on. And where there are many, many flasks, as everyone has one. Claudia is not happy. Artie also has a cold. Pete is not really helping. Pete then gets a call from Leena – there’s someone there to see him. It’s Amanda, Pete’s ex-wife (played by Jeri Ryan, Voyager‘s Seven of Nine) and a Marine Major. So, it looks like Pete was married. This doesn’t seem to have come up before. Myka, who has just rolled into Leena’s with an artefact, certainly didn’t know that Pete was married, so she’s surprised when Amanda has the same last name (Pete’s drinking may have caused problems).
Amanda and Pete actually seem to have a fairly decent relationship. Even though she thinks he’s been sent to South Dakota as punishment for something. She makes out that she’s there to give Pete a comic book, but she’s actually there to tell Pete she’s getting remarried. Tomorrow. She wanted to tell him sooner, but talking to him was classified. Amanda isn’t there to invite Pete to the wedding, but to get back her grandmother’s ring. Whilst Pete is getting the ring, Amanda picks up Myka’s artefact. Which has not been stored yet. This is a bit of an oops. She rubs it and it activates, releasing a metal bee which doesn’t seem totally functional. Amanda knocks it into her bag accidentally as she leaves.
After Amanda leaves, Artie discovers that the artefact – apparently housed in Warehouse 2 (it has what look like Egyptian hieroglyphs on it) – is missing its bee (it’s a beehive. A metal beehive, but a beehive). Back at Leena’s, they go looking for the bee – and Leena realises that it fell into Amanda’s bag. Not that they have any idea what the artefact does, but Artie says that it’s probably deadly. Amanda is having a fairytale wedding at a (rented) castle in the Poconos. Pete tries to get hold of her, but she doesn’t answer – and, when she goes in her bag for the ring, the bee stings her. When she shows the sting to her bridesmaids, they touch her finger and get affected, suddenly becoming very devoted. Then some Marines in uniform arrive and Amanda hugs them and they also start falling over each other to be helpful.
When Pete and Myka arrive, they wants a private word with Amanda – so she asks her Marines and bridesmaids to keep her future parents-in-law away, no matter what they have to do. So they restrain the parents of the groom and abduct them. Pete and Myka can’t tell Amanda why, exactly, they are there. Pete finds the bee and he and Myka deactivate it – thinking that everything is now sorted. Unfortunately, they don’t know that the bee has already activated.
When they try to leave the castle – after Amanda’s honour party and bridesmaids have heard her say that no-one leaves the castle, because the groom’s parents are missing (and they appear to dislike the groom now as well) – they soon realise something is wrong. The honour party may only be armed with swords, but Pete and Myka haven’t brought the Teslas, because it’s a wedding. The beehive belonged to an Egyptian pharaoh and apparently things went badly for her. Amanda is now the queen bee, and those who touched her will do anything for her. Stalkerish levels of devotion. Amanda’s fairytale wedding is turning into one of the more original types of fairytales.
At the Civil War re-enactment, finding the flask – Ulysses S. Grant’s flask – is not going well. Jinks wants to shut down the whole place so that they can find the flask – before someone drinks out of it and is affected – but Claudia says they need to be stealthy. Fast stealthy, but stealthy. So they join the re-enactment on the Confederate side. Unfortunately, Claudia gets ‘killed’ by the Union side.