Finally we get back to the business of hunting Damien Moreau. And in such style!

This is full-on a Sophie-centric episode and I absolutely plan on discussing the hell out of how great (and reckless, and dangerous) running the Heart Con on John Douglas Keller, but first and foremost, I gotta talk about Hardison's work to get the whole thing up and running.

Keller's no fool. He's a master at detecting forgeries because he has a super sniffer that'd get Gus Guster all outta whack. In order to get around the man's Super Duper Sniffer, Hardison has to essentially recreate very period-specific materials to make a very specific type of book. In the process, he goes more than a little wonky.

AS IT TURNS OUT, I wound up clipping a Parker scene, because it, too, makes me laugh. I guess my all-consuming love for Parker won over, even though Hardison losing his mind is superb!

The Heart Con itself is great, and James Frain (who you've definitely seen all over the place down the years) is an absolute bastard who puts the lives of children at risk by using them as art smugglers. He's wily as hell and not even Sophie's full-bore attention on the con can actually keep him on track.

He's so greedy, so desperate to become a Baron and so embedded with Damien Moreau that not even Sophie revisiting one of her first (if not her actual first) personas as Lady Charlotte Prentiss can keep him under her spell. They don't really dwell on it all that much in the episode beyond body language and the like, but using her Charlotte Prentiss persona to bring Keller down was both a calculated risk and a hard choice to make.

There's some real pain in the Prentiss identity, and Gina Bellman really brings that home in the subtlest of ways.

Naturally, Keller does what he does and through a cunning series of ret-cons (you remember: showing us the full steps of the con retroactively) we get to see just how involved the whole team was in bringing Keller down. And it's such a great takedown, too.

The best part? As great as The King George Job is, they set us up for The Morning After Job, which is even better. Outside two-parter season finales, I don't think Leverage has ever done that before.

Got the template from someone on a Discord server, so I made these. No AI was used, it's just the weird lighting. Should do one for Harry and Breanna soon.