NOTE: This post contains spoilers for Lockwood & Co. season 1 episode 1, “This Will Be Us.”
Lockwood & Co. is a British Netflix series set in London, in a world plagued by ghosts, where giant corporations employ psychic teens to battle the supernatural. But one company operates differently, without adult supervision, and its name is Lockwood & Co.
Run by Anthony Lockwood (Cameron Chapman), a young entrepreneur with a mysterious past, his brilliant yet eccentric sidekick George (Ali Hadji-Heshmati) and a newly arrived gifted girl called Lucy (Ruby Stokes), this agency uncovers a terrifying mystery that will change the course of history.
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Let’s take a look at how Lockwood & Co.’s first episode introduces us to a world filled with danger.
Haunted house
The story of Lockwood and Co. starts without missing a beat by introducing viewers to two of the main characters of the show: Lucy Carlyle and Anthony Lockwood. The pair are chatting about their plan to tackle their next job, which viewers soon learn to be helping Mrs. Hope rid her house of a Visitor, aka a ghost. Indeed Lucy and Anthony may be teenagers but they have a very important role, and their job is to hunt ghosts.
In the world of Lockwood & Co. teenagers have special abilities which allow them to battle the nefarious forces of the supernatural. There are procedures in place, weapons and tools they can use (iron, silver and salt are the top 3), and these teens know what they are doing. Anthony’s ability revolves around his Sight (he is able to visually detect traces of ghosts), while Lucy turns out to be a Listener (she can hear them). But once inside Mrs. Hope’s house, where her husband died falling down the stairs, Lucy and Anthony soon find out that the threat they are about to face there is not to be taken lightly, and when Lucy is attacked by a spirit, things go from dire to really dangerous.
The show’s opening credits interrupts the action to tell us a little bit more about the background of this world. Newspaper clippings appear on screen to highlight that a wave of unexplained deaths started what is called the Problem, which has been going on for over 50 years. It was discovered that the touch of a ghost could kill so to protect the population a night curfew was put in place. The talented youth capable of sensing ghosts were trained to fight them.
Origin story
Before letting viewers know if Lucy will make a deadly fall down the Hopes’ staircase, Lockwood & Co. pauses the story to tell us about the young lady’s origins. Three years earlier, we meet 13-year-old Lucy and her mother as the latter is forcing her to take on a job at the Jacobs & Co. agency. Lucy is scared and wants nothing more than to be normal rather than put herself in danger to hunt ghosts, but her mom does not give her much of a choice.
At Jacobs & Co. Lucy learns everything she needs to know, along with other gifted teens, to find spirits and neutralize them. There she also meets Norrie, and the two girls start becoming best friends. Years go by and Norrie wants them to move to London and leave their small town and the Jacobs agency behind, but Lucy wants to wait until she has passed her Fourth Grade and is fully trained before making such plans.
That’s of course when things go south. Lucy, Norrie, and the rest of their team are sent to an abandoned building to find a Visitor, its Source, and contain it. But things go very wrong in there and this ghost is not a Type One threat (Type One are easy to deal with and Type Two are more dangerous). While Lucy goes to alert Jacobs (who dismisses her worries by telling her to just do her job), the others are attacked. When she rushes back into the building, Lucy finds Norrie “ghost locked” and hears the screams of the other operatives dying.
Later on, during an investigative hearing, Jacobs states that he was never aware of what was happening in the building, therefore avoiding taking any responsibility for the death of his operatives. Meanwhile, Norrie is in a state of persistent paralysis, a sort of coma, from which she might never wake up.
London calling
Blamed for the death of her team, Lucy is devastated. When her mother confronts her and tries to force her to go back to Jacobs & Co., Lucy decides to leave. She packs her bag, and off to London she goes. Once there, she applies at all the “psychical” agencies but with no papers and no adult to vouch for her, she cannot get a job. Eventually, she comes across an advert for a “prestigious” agency looking for a new field operative and decides to try her luck.
When she arrives at the location of Lockwood & Co., Lucy is greeted by George, and he takes her to meet Anthony Lockwood. He takes a look at Lucy’s CV and she tells him she has completed her training, which is not true since she left before completing grade four. They move on to the test part of the interview, where Anthony has Lucy take a look at several objects to test her abilities and knowledge. She passes all the tests with flying colors but feels like the two boys are making fun of her. After Anthony apologizes for their behavior and assures her that while their agency might be small and a bit unorthodox (it is run without adults) it is still legitimate, Lucy gets the job.
Once settled in the house, Lucy tries to get to know Anthony better. She confronts him about the fact that the ad stated his agency was prestigious when it has only been active for three months, and he brushes off his exaggeration by comparing it to the fact that she lied about completing her training. He assures her he wants her to be part of the agency, no matter her past, but while Lockwood is rather enthusiastic about having Lucy on board, she cannot help but wonder if she can rely on him.
Back to the future
Jumping back to the opening sequence of the episode, we find Lucy and Anthony back in the Hopes' house, with Lucy barely hanging on top of the staircase while Lockwood fights the Visitor. He manages to push it back and catches Lucy before she falls to her death, and she tells him that when she connected with the ghost something strange happened: it was like she could feel what the ghost was feeling, although ghosts are not supposed to have feelings. But they are in danger, and Lockwood doesn’t have time for what Lucy is saying.
They follow the ghost’s trace and find a corpse buried in a wall. As they are investigating the Source, the Visitor comes back and attacks them. Lucy throws a salt bomb to protect Lockwood but it sets a stack of books on fire, and as the fire spreads the duo has to make a hasty escape. Before leaving, Lucy takes a ring from the corpse, feeling that it is related to what is going on with this ghost. Their client’s house turning into an inferno, Lucy and Lockwood have no other choice but to jump off the balcony with more questions about this case than they had before going in.
That’s it for the first episode of Lockwood and Co. What is going on with this Visitor? What secrets are in Anthony Lockwood’s past? Tune in for the answers.
Lockwood & Co. is now streaming on Netflix.
