'Timeless' showrunners preview midseason finale

Timeless might have a traitor in its midst — and not just because the TimeTeam is about to meet Benedict Arnold.

In the midseason finale of the time-travel adventure drama, Lucy (Abigail Spencer), Wyatt (Matt Lanter), and Rufus (Malcolm Barrett), travel to the Revolutionary War in 1780 while chasing Flynn (Goran Visnjic), who, in turn, is chasing a clue he discovered inside the clock at the end of episode 8.

The usual cat-and-mouse game, though, will take a turn when Flynn’s mission calls for help from the TimeTeam members themselves — and leaves Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus wondering if they’re being true to their mission. “We wanted, for the first time, [to see] our heroes and our antagonist team up to face a larger threat,” executive producer Eric Kripke says. And that larger threat turns out to be Rittenhouse, which Kripke and co-EP Shawn Ryan say will be explored more thoroughly in the episode than in any previous ones.

“We’re going to learn a lot about the origins and the operational theories of the organization, and we’re going to put some faces to it,” Ryan says. “We haven’t seen much of how and who Rittenhouse is in the past and who they belong to, so this episode really does take a quantum leap forward in terms of explaining that.”

But how will the team survive working with Flynn? Kripke isn’t spilling but warns that the team may have to figure out what to do in case they do work well together. “If they do stop Rittenhouse here and now, that’ll be the end of their missions entirely,” Kripke points out. “How will they feel and what will they do when they return, if they’re successful? In some ways they want all of this to end, but at the same time, they’re growing so close.”

Timeless‘ midseason finale airs Monday, Dec. 12, at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.