After a journalist is killed searching for buried pirate treasure, Charlie and Rex dig deep into the competitive world of treasure hunters to unearth his killer. Meanwhile, tensions arise when Charlie's ex-wife Julia Tillman returns to St. John's.
Tropes:
- All Myths Are True: The treasure is real.
- Bribe Backfire: After being outed as Kirsch’s killer and having his true intentions for helping with Julia's dig exposed, Barrett tries to convince Charlie to look the other way by bribing him with gold coins from Easton’s hoard. The detective predictably refuses, leading to Barrett trying to escape off his boat with the rest of the coins and losing all of them when Rex knocks him into the ocean.
- Drowning Pit: Kirsch’s cause of death was from being drowned in a pool of water near Julia’s dig site, which, to Charlie’s dismay, ends up making his ex-wife a suspect. Afterwards, his body was ferried over to the opposite shore and was buried in the sand for days before being dug up by Donovan and Reggie.
- Frame-Up: The metal detector that Kirsch was buried with is revealed to belong to the Birch tours, making them suspects in his murder. Meanwhile, the gold coin combined with her whereabouts being unknown at the time of death suggests Julia to have had a hand in it. All of them are innocent. Barrett planted both the metal detector and the coin after killing Kirsch to frame them, which was around the same time Julia was out having dinner with Miranda.
- Gentleman Adventurer: Leon Barrett, a Silicon Valley tech investor and antiquities collector known for funding various archaeological digs around the world and is the founder of multiple charities. He’s the one who gave Julia her research grant that allowed her dig to happen, with Barrett having been working with her to help find Easton’s treasure for academia to study after investing thousands into the expedition. However, he’s also a controversial figure in that he’s been accused of being a con artist by Kirsch who had covered him extensively for years and has been labelled by the Birch twins as a thief who disrespects their family’s history by trying to hire them for their knowledge on the legend and allegedly only funding digs so he can add whatever is found to his collection. Turns out Barrett’s real reason for helping Julia was so that he could swoop in and take the treasure for himself once they were close to finding it. There’s also him being guilty of embezzling his own charities to finance his treasure hunting exploits, which was the topic of Kirsch’s latest article before Barrett killed him for it.
- He Knows Too Much: The reason for Kirsch’s trip to Newfoundland was because he had been working on an article for months about how he discovered Barrett to be embezzling his own charities to fund his treasure hunting exploits. On the night Barrett snuck out to Julia’s dig site to try and steal Easton’s treasure for himself and instead ran into Kirsch threatening to expose him with his findings, events led to Barrett murdering Kirsch and burying him with a gold coin and a metal detector belonging to the Birch twins to frame them and Julia.
- Intrepid Reporter: Ira Kirsch was a journalist working for the Toronto Sentinel who published an article about the treasure a week prior, saying that the whole thing is a hoax and that the Birch twins are nothing but frauds who lure customers to their tourist attractions with folk tales. The last time anyone heard from him was when he contacted his editor days ago claiming to have been on to something big, with implications that it was about the treasure being real due to Kirsch having been found buried with a metal detector and a gold coin in his hand. Nope. Kirsch never had any interest in the treasure from the beginning. The story he was actually pursuing was about how he discovered Barrett had been embezzling his own charities to fund his treasure hunting exploits, with Barrett murdering Kirsch to keep it and his true intentions for helping with Julia’s dig under wraps.
- Ironic Echo: Barrett's "theory" that pirate treasure attracts pirates. It’s ironic in that Barrett himself is one of the aforementioned pirates, with him being guilty of trying to steal Easton’s treasure from underneath Julia and academia’s noses and killing Kirsch when the journalist approached him threatening to expose him for his embezzling of his own charities.
- Manipulative Bitch: Frances initially disregarded her grandfather’s stories about Easton’s treasure, until Julia’s crew setting up their dig on the southeast end made her realize that there was truth to them all along. After spying on them for over a week and secretly digging up a coin from their site, Frances came up with the idea to trick Julia and Barrett into leading her to the treasure by selling them Easton’s wayfaring tool and then later hold Julia at gunpoint once she was alone at the site to force her to find it for her, with Frances refusing to let her or anyone else walk away with it for any reason even when promised it back after it’s been studied by academia. She also had a run-in with Kirsch the night she dug up her coin, but left him alone when he claimed to be more interested in pursuing Barrett than the treasure.
- Pirate Booty: The treasure of Peter Easton, a pirate admiral said to have used Newfoundland as his home base. Although not everyone believes in the legend, there are those like Reggie who say otherwise. There is also the Birch family who has been digging for the treasure for three generations, with twins Frances and Griffin running a tourist attraction. They aren’t too pleased with Kirsch for calling them frauds, though they do thank him for giving them more business. However, while the hunt occurs on the northwestern shore because of the information contained in Julia’s book, Julia is instead digging in the southeast due to found artifacts giving her clues. The only problem being that her dig site turns out to be the place where Kirsch was murdered, making her a suspect. That and dealing with claim jumpers like Frances and Barrett once she gets close to finding the treasure. She turns out to be right, thanks to Rex finding and unearthing it.
- The Reveal: In this episode we finally meet Charlie’s ex-wife Julia Tillman and the details of their divorce. The two of them used to be married until Julia cheated on him, with the aftermath having been extremely messy according to Donovan.
- Stealing from the Till: Barrett turns out to be guilty of secretly embezzling his own charities in order to finance his treasure hunting exploits. Kirsch had been writing an article about it and came to Newfoundland to see him personally and threatened to expose him, which led to Barrett murdering Kirsch to keep it and his true intentions for helping with Julia’s dig under wraps.
- Treasure Hunt Episode: The episode revolves around the legendary treasure of pirate admiral Peter Easton, which was supposedly buried somewhere on the shores of Newfoundland centuries ago. Dozens of people like Buck Emery have spent their lives trying to find it, with even more joining the hunt thanks to the Easton biography Julia wrote. Donovan and his friend Reggie Fillmore are also two of the many hunters who search for it every year, except their latest hunt has them inadvertently unearthing the body of murdered journalist Ira Kirsch. While the discovery has everyone shaken, there is also excitement among some of them due to Kirsch being found with an authentic gold coin in his hand, it being proof that the treasure is indeed real.
- Working with the Ex: Julia returned to St. John’s after scoring a university grant for her expedition to find Easton’s treasure for academia to study. Charlie however isn’t very thrilled about seeing his ex-wife again after what happened between them, even less so when she reveals that she had visited his aunt Miranda without him knowing. The situation worsens when the collected evidence starts to suggest that Julia might be involved in Kirsch’s murder, with Charlie reluctantly working with her to try and find the truth. She isn’t. Fortunately, the two of them end things on better terms after the treasure is found and Barrett is arrested.
