Mike Myers was able to save a lot of pay cheques by playing eight roles in the Netflix mini-series, “The Pentaverate.” The story follows a secret society of the same name that was founded by five men in 1347 who were labeled as heretics by the holy church after they tried to argue the fact that the black plague was caused by fleas on rats and wasn’t a part of God’s punishment. But the holy institution didn’t listen then (nor does it listen now) and hence, to influence world events, their secret society, ‘The Pentaverate’, came into existence, which has been running in the shadows for 7 centuries or so. The society has 5 board members on its decision panel, and thus it got its name, “Penta-verate.” Each of these five members is kidnapped from the “normie” world, where their deaths are staged so that the rest of the world forgets about them and doesn’t try to find them, allowing them to do good to humanity in peace by dedicating the rest of their lives to the secret society.
Created by Mike Myers, “The Pentaverate” holds six episodes of approximately half an hour that try to explore the internet’s obsession with conspiracy theories and disinformation in the most comical way possible. While Myers is a genius in his own right, the series fails to create the same impact on the audience as Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat had on the audience, the mockumentary that deals with similar subjects. I think the production is splendid in all the series and Myers’s make-up to transform himself into playing eight different characters is impeccable.
Major Spoilers Ahead
The Pentaverate Plot Summary
As the series begins, a nuclear physicist named Professor Hobart Clark is kidnapped by Fimbra Intelligence and taken to the Pentaverate HQ in New York City. Soon he is introduced to the four members of the secret society (all played by Mike Myers): Lord Lordington, the oldest member of Pentaverate and head of the panel; Mishu Ivanov, ex-member of Putin’s oligarchy; Shep Gordon, Alice Cooper’s former manager; and Bruce Baldwin, former head of The Tabloid Group. The panel wants Hobart to become the fifth member of their board, a place that has been vacated due to the sudden death of their previous member, Jason Eccleston, a silicon valley tech genius who invented the supercomputer called Mentor, which even has a human soul within it.
At first, Hobart tries to resist the board’s decision and asks them to let him go when Baldwin informs him about his fake death in the normie world, and thus he doesn’t have much option at his disposal now. He can either join the panel and help them solve global climate change issue, or he can take a cyanide pill and end his life.
In the real world, the series follows Ken Scarborough (also played by Myers), a misfit Canadian news reporter, who works for CACA News Toronto. Ken is an old-soul righteous reporter in a world piled up with conspiracy theories all over the internet. But with such integrity comes boredom, and thus, due to his lack of viewership, his senior fires him and asks him to take a retirement and go for a vacation. However, to get his job back, Ken promises her to bring a hard-hitting piece for the channel, and soon he leaves to cover the upcoming Canadian Conspiracy Convention (CanConCon) with a camerawoman, Reilly Clayton.
Inside the Pentaverate HQ, Patty Davis, executive assistant to the panel, convinces Hobart to join the team and continue with his cold fusion research and develop his Lagrange Point Lens, which will act as a shield against the sun’s harmful rays and lower the global temperature by four degrees. If not the nerd talk, then Patty’s good looks do the trick, and Hobart agrees to an “Initiato” to finally become the fifth member of the Pentaverate.
Meanwhile, at CanConCon, Ken and Reilly meet New Hampshire’s conspiracy theorist Anthony Lansdowne, who informs them about ‘The Pentaverate’ secret society and requests they expose them. Ken believes that it is a newsworthy story and probably will help him to get back his job, and thus, without any further ado, he travels to New York City with Anthony and Reilly to infiltrate the Pentaverate HQ and expose them.
After his initiato, Hobart learns about Pentaverate’s global event called The Meadows in Switzerland, which is attended by all the world’s leaders. The Meadows is part celebration of the panel’s hustle so far and part discussion of their forthcoming strategies to tackle the world’s problems. However, before he can prepare for the event, the Maester of Dubrovnik arrives in New York to investigate the mysterious death of Jason Eccleston. Maester examines Jason’s body and notices that his eye color has changed to blue from brown, and thereby concludes that he has been poisoned with the sap of the Donette tree.
A day or two after Hobart’s initato, he is poisoned too, and the panel fears that The Meadows will be sabotaged or the Pentaverate will be exposed, so they take some impulsive decisions that pull Ken into their affairs. Ken accidentally touches a spare key called Parce Clavem that binds his DNA with it and makes him an extra member of the panel. The members call him a traitor and accuse him of trying to expose them, thereby locking him up in a cube glass prison. However, suddenly they find out that there is someone else among their core team who is trying to sabotage the secret society for his own greed. But who is it?
Who Killed Jason Eccleston and Hobart Clark? & Why?
The Maester of Dubrovnik was very close to finding out the identity of the murderer who killed Jason Eccleston and Hobart Clark when suddenly he was put to death along with his two minions. Their dead bodies were found by the head of the Liechtenstein Guard, Pikeman Higgins, and Ken Scarborough (disguised as Ken Doll). Near their dead bodies, they found the words, Parce Clavem, written in their blood and for some reasons, Higgins believed that they needed to secure the spare key before it fell into wrong hands.
However, the entire plot was designed by media mogul Bruce Baldwin and his partner-in-crime and new member of the panel, Skip Cho. Bruce despised the fact that the Pentaverate panel kidnapped him at the pinnacle of his career, when he had complete control over the media through his The Tabloid group. For the time being, he kept his differences aside and tried to help humanity when suddenly the internet arrived and with it, the era of disinformation began. Jason Eccleston invented the supercomputer Mentor to fight against fake and false news, but after a certain time, Bruce got convinced that humans are addicted and obsessed with clickbait articles and wouldn’t dare check the facts, so they didn’t deserve to be helped nor they deserve a machine like Mentor, which was when he decided to sell the machine for his personal gains.
Bruce Baldwin poisoned Jason’s bong because he could have become a hindrance in his evil plan. Additionally, Bruce wanted to bring in his close associate, Skip Cho, to replace Jason in order to get a majority vote on the panel, as for any motion to pass, they needed three out of two approvals, hence to sell Mentor in the Meadows, he needed the three keys. He knew none of the Pentaverate members would betray the society, and thus he decided to steal the spare key to get the majority vote. However, Ken accidentally touched the spare key, which got bound with his DNA, and only he was able to use the key, which was why Bruce abducted Ken and took him to The Meadows to implement his plan to sell the Mentor and become the richest person in the world. Also, he wanted to get a Face/Off surgery so he could go back to the Normie world and drink ‘Peach Bellinis’ on a beach somewhere.
‘The Pentaverate’ Ending Explained: What Happened To Ken? Is He Dead?
Bruce and Skip Cho brought Ken and Reilly and locked them away. At that moment, Reilly revealed to Ken that she was a part of Fimbra Manus and was sent on a covert mission to bring Ken to the Pentaverate HQ. When she joined the secret organization a year ago, she noticed the lack of diversity in its decision panel, which was filled with white and whiter men, while there was tons of diversity in the lower levels, and Reilly understood the fact that they would never be able to climb the ladder or become a part of the core team, and hence she discussed the issue with Patty Davis, who had been fighting for diversity for a long time. She brought the issue to Lordington, who accepted the flaw in the system and sent Reilly on a secret mission to bring Ken to the headquarters. Ken finally realized that he had a larger purpose in life than getting back his job, and thus, motivated with a new zeal, they escaped Bruce’s captivity and motivated other Liechtenstein Guards to raise arms against the threatening Red Robes.
While Ken and the Liechtenstein Guards dealt with the Red Robes, Patty, along with the other members of the panel, arrived in the Meadows to stop Bruce, and before Bruce could sell the Mentor, Cho informed him that Ken had escaped and they wouldn’t be able to sell the supercomputer without him because the key was attached to his DNA/blood. At this moment, Bruce and Cho were surrounded by Ken and all his allies, and as soon as Bruce saw his dreams fleeting away, he decided to take a nasty turn. He pulled Reilly and pointed a gun at her head while threatening to shoot her if Ken wouldn’t turn the key inside the Da Vinci lock and confirm the deal with the highest bidder. Before Ken could turn the key, Anthony Lansdowne rushed towards Bruce to take revenge for insulting his existence and obsessiveness with conspiracy theories. The two men struggled and suddenly fell into the moon door, thereby making a grand exit.
As soon as Bruce and Anthony left, Lordington initiated the Demetrius protocol to dissolve the secret society for good. He believed that the Pentaverate had fallen into nefarious hands and thus needed a restart. However, before taking the cyanide pill, Lordington finally revealed his secret plan to bring Ken Scarborough to Pentaverate. He wanted Ken to transfer his soul to the Mentor so as to make the Mentor a kind supercomputer who wouldn’t turn against humanity and become a terminator. Ken felt that it might be his destiny and thus decided to sacrifice his soul to the Mentor so that he could save the supercomputer and help humanity at large. With Ken’s soul transferred to the Mentor, Lordington, Gordon, and Mishu finally took the pill and put themselves to death.
A year later, the screen opens in a white room where Patty informs the members of the new society, The Septaverate, about the success of their Lagrange Point Project, which was originally initiated by the Pentaverate. Due to the success of the project, they have successfully solved a part of that problem that affects the world’s global climate. And soon the team, of which Reilly was a part, was introduced to their supercomputer, Kentor, Mentor, with Ken’s soul inside it. According to the narrator, voiced by Jeremy Irons, the Septaverate was more representative and more inclusive, with much nicer people on the board.
The closing sequence depicted Bruce Baldwin, on a beach somewhere, who finally achieved his goal of getting face/off surgery to look like Rob Lowe (real-life famous actor who was brainwashed in the series and was used to conduct the orientation meeting soon after the arrival of Hobart Clark). Bruce had been obsessed with Rob Lowe since the beginning of the story and thus finally got what he yearned for. However, how he survived the fall from the moon door is still a mystery, and the lack of logic makes it more interesting.
A post-credit sequence points out that in his distinguished acting career, Mike Myers always wanted to play the role of a journalist, but with the help of Netflix and the power of television, he is finally able to realize his dream.
“The Pentaverate” is a 2022 parody satire mini series created by Mike Myers.
