“The Greatest Gift” is episode thirteen of season three of Warehouse 13 and the season finale.
Just as with the season two finale, “Secret Santa”, this episode does not follow on from the precious one, “Stand”. Instead, it’s the Christmas special, and season four‘s “A New Hope” continues on from the previous episode.
It opens with a brief narration from Mrs Frederic as a popup book opens, then it goes to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a house that appears to have seriously overdone the Christmas decorations. These decorations are in the process of exploding, and the front door is knocked down – from the inside – by a reindeer. Myka and Pete are on the scene; they have come for the nose of Rudolph, as it’s an artefact. Pete gets towed away by a chain of lights and grabs onto a statue of a young carol singer, which comes to life and starts hitting him, but Myka manages to successfully bag the nose. The reindeer was actually the family dog.
Back at the Warehouse and Claudia has bought a new jacket for Artie, who is supposed to be going to Las Vegas with Doctor Vanessa. He has apparently been looking forward to this for some time, but now he doesn’t seem to want to go and is coming up with reasons to stay at the Warehouse instead, even though Pete is the one who has that duty. It seems that Artie’s father has invited himself on the Vegas trip, as has Hugo, Vanessa’s ex.
Pete goes to the Christmas aisle to store the new artefact but, after doing so, slips and falls in the snow and two artefacts fall of the shelves, a bundle of yarn and a brush. When he gets back to the office, there are two people there who he has never seen before, and the both draw weapons – Teslas. Artie is not there, nor is anyone else – and the person in charge of the Warehouse is MacPherson. Pete is first convinced that this is a prank, and then that MacPherson has done something using an artefact. Even at Leena’s, she doesn’t recognise him, and Pete is forced to escape from the other two Warehouse agents. Before he does so, he tells the agents that MacPherson is selling artefacts – and Mrs Frederic overhears.
Pete then contacts Myka’s mother, but she doesn’t know who he is either, and Myka’s father is dead. Myka herself is still working for the Secret Service, and she doesn’t recognise Pete either. Plus, his story sounds stalker-crazy. However, he does know something that no-one else possibly could, which makes her take him a bit more seriously – and agrees to take him to Artie. Who is in prison. Put there by Myka, for supposedly attempting to attack the President, during the bloodstone event that took place in “Pilot – Part 1”.
Artie did work for the Warehouse and is familiar with the effects of artefacts. He asks whether Pete touched any, and it turns out that the brush belonged to Philip Van Doren Stern, who wrote The Greatest Gift. This caused Pete to be swept from history, never having been born.
MacPherson is still a bad guy and, with Pete telling him he died in the other timeline, MacPherson wants to make sure that this one remains. Mrs Frederic, who didn’t trust MacPherson even though the Regents believed he had changed, gets Artie released into Myka’s custody, and then they go for Claudia. They need to break into the Warehouse and Artie has been injected with the same substance that caused MacPherson to disintegrate in “Time Will Tell”. Claudia has previously broken into the Warehouse, but in this timeline she is still in a psychiatric institution.
With the team back together, even though they don’t remember being a team, they need to get into the Warehouse and reverse the effects of the brush, with MacPherson in charge and using the Warehouse’s items and agents against them. A number of artefacts seen in previous episodes crop up again.