On Monday night, the Syfy original series Warehouse 13 brought its third season to a close with the satisfying two-part finale, “Emily Lake” and “Stand.” In the past couple of years, and especially since its rebranding from The Sci-Fi Channel to Syfy back in summer 2009 (the same summer Warehouse 13 premiered, not coincidentally), Syfy has specialized in “sci-fi lite” programming. Both Caprica and Stargate Universe—two of the channel’s attempts at dark, edgy, mythology based sci-fi—have since bottomed out, while shows like Sanctuary, Haven, Alphas, and the channel’s current standard bearer, Eureka, have done very well for themselves. Also, not coincidentally, all of these shows have basic similiarities: groups of quirky, likable characters congregate because of shared characteristics or circumstances, and week by week solve weird mysteries and save people from the bizarre and wonderful items their worlds happen to contain. If you tune in to one of these shows and it just so happens to be your cup of tea, chances are you’re going to come out the other end buzzed on the happy, and that’s the general idea. But what I’m interested in discussing here at the end of Warehouse 13‘s third season is the ways in which it both follows and deviates from that standard, in particular the ways in which the finale has positioned the show for the future.

At the end of Warehouse 13‘s first season all the way back in 2009, Artie (Saul Rubinek) “died” in an explosion. This left some people saddened and upset, but I was never worried. I just knew something would happen, some mitigating circumstance of magical wonder, to bring him back from the dead. And lo! I was right. Last season, the show tried a different heartbreaking tactic by having main cast member Myka (Joanne Kelly) leave the Warehouse “for good” after a particularly trying incident involving bad guy/not-so-bad-guy-after-all because she’s just so heartbroken and it’s not really her fault/not-actually-a-guy-at-all, because she’s a woman, H.G. Wells (Jaime Murray), trying to destroy the world. Not even for a minute did I believe that Myka wouldn’t be back for season three. Both of these season-ending cliffhangers served to create only momentary tension, which was generally satisfied within the safe-zone parameters of the show’s first and second episodes, as the show then returned to its status quo of lovey dovey happiness: Artie was in fact, not dead, and Myka quickly rejoined the team. What Warehouse 13 has been good at is using those cliffhangers to propel a different kind of change, a slower, more evolutionary pace, rather than using them as “gamechangers” (for a good example of “gamechanger,” see the season three finale of Lost).

One of the things I enjoyed about season three was the way that it used Myka’s desertion to not only affect the other characters in emotional ways, and to change up the structure of the Warehouse, but the way that it took that one event and ran with some rather unexpected consequences throughout the season. In fact, I would argue that the watchword of season three has been “consequences” all along. Looking back, it has been almost singularly obsessed.

While the show may have mostly wrapped up Myka’s emotional hang-ups in the first two episodes of the season, her actions reverberated long after. There was a particularly nice moment in the second episode, “Trials,” where it became clear that while her partner Pete (Eddie McClintock) was outwardly glad she was back, her actions had hurt him in a way she hadn’t expected. Her months-long absence from the team brought Pete back to the same emotional space as the death of his father had. He felt abandoned. This was a nice character moment not only for Myka, who realized just how much her relationship with Pete meant to him, and for Pete, whose backstory had actually been pretty thin up until that point. Myka’s absence also lead to the introduction of former ATF Agent Steve Jinks (Aaron Ashmore), who stuck around to become Claudia’s new partner even after Myka returned. Also because of Myka’s absence, Claudia is promoted to full Warehouse Agent, something she had been wanting for ages, and which on a storytelling level, allowed for the show to try some new things both with the character throughout the season, and with the basic structure of how the show itself tells its stories.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this season’s fixation on consequences came in the way it treated Jaime Murray‘s H.G. Wells, or “Helena,” as I prefer her to be called. (Question: Does it annoy anyone else when people actually call her H.G.? Because it drives me freaking insane.) I expected the show to shelve the character for a while, if they even came back to her at all, but the show nicely subverted my expectations. Helena actually played a rather large part in the main arc of the season, and all of the emotional fallout her character had caused with the team (Myka’s emotional despair, Pete’s anger and mistrust) was a major underlying factor throughout. Even Helena’s own anger and depression, which had lead her to destroy the world in the first place, is dealt with. I didn’t believe that Pete would actually destroy the Janus coin in “Emily Lake,” effectively killing her, and I certainly didn’t think the show would “go there” in actually killing the character, but it did. Her death in the final scene of “Stand” was actually unexpected, and moving. It represented a redemption for that character that I didn’t think the show would actually ever give us. And while her death was unexpected, I don’t think it alone was necessarily a departure from the way Warehouse 13 usually does business, but add to it the death of beloved Jinxy AND the destruction of the Warehouse? Then yes, I’d argue major departure.

I do want to acknowledge that the presence of the whole Walter Sykes (Anthony Michael Hall) season long story arc was actually kind of predictable in and of itself, and Sykes himself rather boring as a villain. But even if it was predictable, thematically it was a nice companion to what the other characters were going through (that consequence thing again), and it provided some nice moments: the opportunity to explore the mythology of the Regents, and in turn Pete’s family history as we discover that his mother is actually (gasp!) a Regent; the opportunity for Jinks to go undercover, which led to some really nice character moments for Claudia; and of course, that ending.

The reason that I keep coming back to Warehouse 13 as a show—and why I always enjoy myself when I do, despite the presence of sometimes predictable stories or shallow villains—is that core group of cast members, and the chemistry they have with one another. I very much enjoyed what Steve Jinks brought to the first half of season three, and I’d hoped he’d stick around for good, which is exactly why his death was so effective, and something I did not see coming at all. About five minutes into “Emily Lake” I realized what a lot of you probably realized a couple episodes before, that Jinxy was actually undercover, and that we as viewers had actually been tricked just as much as Artie, Myka, and Claudia had been by Mrs. Frederick and her tricksy ways. This realization soured the episode for me; it seemed too predictable. So when Pete walked up those stairs and found Jinxy dead, my heart dropped out through my butt, which I guess was the idea all along. That entire five minute sequence was probably the best thing Warehouse 13 has ever done. It was quiet and devastating, and Allison Scagliotti owned every inch of that screen. Jinks’ death would have been enough to impress me in the finale—after all, this isn’t something the show can just fix and pretend never happened—but when the team failed to defuse Sykes’ bomb, and we watched the Warehouse burn to the ground, and Mrs. Frederick decompose and crumble to dust before our eyes, I was completely and utterly flabbergasted. I was shocked by this not just because it was completely awful and heartbreaking to watch, but because of its future implications. Could Warehouse 13 have actually been brave enough to give us a gamechanger?

With Eureka in for its final season starting next summer, Warehouse 13 inherits the position of Syfy standard bearer. Combine that with that whopper of an ending we just witnessed, and I firmly believe that if it takes the chance, Warehouse 13 is in position to officially rock our freaking socks off in a way that it never has before. It has the opportunity to transcend its sci-fi lite boundaries and become something completely new, a hybrid of feel-good humor, camaraderie and genuine emotional stakes. Sci-fi lite with an edge. I’m trying really hard right now to imagine a way in which the events of this finale can be unwritten and cheated away, and it’s worrying me because I not so secretly hope that these events won’t just be written away and reversed. How awesome would it be if next season was entirely about rebuilding the Warehouse from the ground up? If Artie, Claudia, Pete, and Myka actually had to deal with these awful events? It would effectively reboot the show in a way that would allow us to keep the things we love about it, but give us something new in the process. I’m going to be honest here and tell you that I don’t think Warehouse 13 is that brave of a show, or that Syfy is that brave of a network (at least, not anymore), but I’m going to hope for it anyway, and hope I’m not disappointed.

What do the rest of you think? Do you agree with me, or do you just want things to go back to normal? Because despite all that stuff I just said up there, I wouldn’t be disappointed to see Jinxy’s face again, or Mrs. Frederick’s. Rest in Peace, Steve Jinks. So awesome, so young.

Tags: aaron ashmore, allison scagliotti, andrew seklir, anthony michael hall, ashley williams, c.c.h. pounder, d. brent mote, drew z. greenberg, eddie mcclintock, genelle williams, jaime murray, jane espenson, jeri ryan, joanne kelly, kate mulgrew, lindsay wagner, mark winemaker, rené auberjonois, sasha roiz, saul rubinek, season three, syfy, warehouse 13