The Librarians: The Next Chapter (fantasy TV series trailer).
Librarians. Keepers of ancient tomes, shushers of the unruly, warriors against chaos… Wait, what?
Yes, The Librarians: The Next Chapter is dusting off its Dewey Decimal demons and returning to screens with a brand-new series on May 25th, 2025, courtesy of TNT. This new instalment of the beloved fantasy-adventure franchise gives us an overdue return to the world where artefacts are enchanted, myth is real, and the card catalogue might just bite back.
This time, the bespectacled baton is passed to Vikram Chamberlain (played by Callum McGowan), a decidedly Victorian Librarian who’s been rudely yanked out of 1847 and deposited in our modern age. One can only imagine his dismay at self-checkout machines, TikTok witches, and the ghastly modern notion of decaf coffee. Not that he’s got much time to lament the death of empire or decent tailoring—because he’s gone and accidentally released untamed magic across Europe. Well done, sir.
Our time-travelled hero returns to his ancestral castle in Belgrade—only to find it’s now a museum, presumably complete with school trips and laminated signs saying “Do Not Touch the Dragon Skull.” In true Librarian fashion, he manages to unleash long-dormant magic that spreads across the continent like a plague of rogue bibliographies.
To fix this colossal whoopsie, Vikram teams up with an eclectic crew: a savant in world history (because knowing when Julius Caesar sneezed is suddenly very useful), a scientific genius (presumably someone with a lab coat, a drone, and questionable ethics), and a Guardian who can presumably fight, banish, or at least sternly lecture magical threats into submission. They’ve got six months to tidy up the mess. No pressure.
Here at SFcrowsnest, we’ve always had a soft spot for The Librarians. It’s a franchise that never takes itself too seriously, leans full tilt into the absurd, and cheerfully pillages mythology, folklore, and pseudoscience like a dragon hoarding ancient trivia. With a tone that dances between Doctor Who, Indiana Jones, and Warehouse 13, it’s always been fantasy’s answer to that one eccentric uncle who won’t stop talking about Atlantis at Christmas.
Before The Next Chapter dusts off the shelves, let’s revisit the gloriously bonkers crew who first made libraries sexy, dangerous, and only occasionally cursed.
Spinning off from The Librarian TV movies (starring the ever-bemused Noah Wyle as Flynn Carsen), the 2014 series The Librarians gave us a full ensemble of artefact-wrangling oddballs. Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets The Da Vinci Code, but with more enchanted globes and fewer existential crises.
Flynn Carsen (Noah Wyle) – The OG Librarian. With 22 degrees, the social skills of a caffeinated hedgehog, and a tendency to get distracted by glowing artefacts, Flynn was Indiana Jones by way of an overachieving quiz champion. While he didn’t stick around full-time in the series, he popped in like a magical uncle when things got properly weird (or someone had touched the Philosopher’s Stone without gloves).
Eve Baird (Rebecca Romijn) – A NATO counter-terrorism agent turned Guardian (i.e., magically sanctioned bodyguard and reality-check dispenser). She was all roundhouse kicks, stern glares, and the occasional moment of existential despair when the team brought a cursed singing sword on a plane.
Jacob Stone (Christian Kane) – Cowboy hat, Oklahoma twang, secret genius. A rough-and-ready art historian fluent in 20 dead languages and 50 live ones. Spent most of his time punching golems and rolling his eyes at magical nonsense, but secretly the heart of the team. Also could probably break down a wall with a glance.
Cassandra Cillian (Lindy Booth) – A maths savant with synaesthesia and a brain tumour that occasionally acted like a psychic antenna. Endearing, eccentric, and prone to accidentally opening portals to hell dimensions because she was curious about how the ancient runes felt emotionally.
Ezekiel Jones (John Harlan Kim) – Master thief, hacker, charmer, and human embodiment of “What happens if I press this button?” Often selfish, occasionally brilliant, and secretly quite heroic when no one was watching. The kind of person who’d steal the Holy Grail just to drink Red Bull out of it.
And let’s not forget Jenkins (John Larroquette) – the immortal caretaker of the Library’s Annex, who grumbled his way through each week’s chaos with the weary tone of someone who once dated Morgan le Fay and still hasn’t emotionally recovered.
Together, they tackled magical artefacts, mythological monsters, cursed objects, and the occasional time-travelling cult. All while learning the true value of friendship, teamwork, and never, ever, opening ancient scrolls during a solar eclipse.
The series ran for four seasons of delightful, low-budget, high-concept fun. It was a love letter to pulp fiction, myth, and magic—with enough cheese to qualify as a dairy product, but all the charm of a Saturday morning cartoon crossed with a dusty old tome that whispers your name at midnight.
This latest incarnation promises more of the same: magical MacGuffins, portal-hopping shenanigans, and probably a morally ambiguous artefact or two. If they keep the tone light, the stakes high, and the CGI vaguely respectable, it could be a fun, family-friendly adventure in a genre that too often insists on being grim and gritty.
Whether Vikram can adapt to Wi-Fi, indoor plumbing, and Gen Z slang remains to be seen. But if anyone can keep the mystical shelves in order and stop reality from unravelling, it’s a Librarian—preferably one with a snappy waistcoat and an enchanted bookmark.
