I'm not Cassandra, but I've been her sometimes

you understand this is essentially lena walking away from an explosion like an action movie protagonist. this is her moment. she IS the moment. she said "you want me out? i'm gone baby. don't come crying to me when the weight of responsibility that i've carried with me for years threatens to crush you <3"

she's iconic. she's everything. the entire rest of this show is going to be one huge "i told you so" from her.

and an even bigger "i told you so" from yours truly.

Listen to The Magnus Protocol, we have:

Samama Khalid, not yet killed by his curiousity because he is the main character

Alice Dyer, who is okay, trust her

Celia Ripley, a single mother with no secrets whatsoever

Colin Becher

Gwendolyn Bouchard, expertly handling her new externals liaison duties

And Lena Kelley, who has to somehow manage this shitshow

actually obsessed with Mr Bonzo and Lena being best friends

Lena losing her patience and furiously berating Gwen for potentially endangering the staff members of the OAIR is quite literally the opposite of how Elias ran the Archives.

Elias used the Archival staff—as well as his Archivist—as pawns that can be readily replaced as needed. His patron offered them minimal protections at best (the Archivist’s privileges notwithstanding), and even then, he would never actually intervene to save any of them if they were in danger, much less take precautions to protect them at their headquarters. They are used as bait, as sacrifices, as currency, as objects. The listener knows, eventually, how easily he could discard them if his plans called for it.

But Lena. This episode showed us that Lena keeps her entire organization running through keeping her subordinates hidden, safe, and unnoticed by the Externals. It’s quite clear through her conversation with Gwen that such a safety risk has never happened before.

As far as we know, Lena has successfully kept all of her employees alive, watched them come and go, bemoaned the turnover rate, and then got them to look the other way while they documented and dutifully filed the horrors.

But most impressive of all, she’s kept her real work hidden from her subordinates, and her subordinates hidden from her real work—a feat Elias had no interest or desire to accomplish.

if jonah and lena ever met jonah would think "fantastic, finally someone who shares my passion for spreadsheets and toxic workplace environments" and lena would think "this man seems to have experienced real pleasures in his life, we can't possibly associate, it would be against my principles." if martin and lena ever met martin would experience a category five mother issues event and pass out.

i've seen a lot of people talk about the whole "glitches in the audio means someone's lying" theory, and one thing i find really interesting about that is that apparently there's been only one glitch when lena's talking? which means that there's only one thing she's been lying about, and that's about colin being able to resign.

now, to me, this makes sense. it seems like someone other than lena is in charge of colin's employment, or at least making sure he can't leave. we had both of these lines way back in episode 1:

so, if the glitch theory is true, the only intentional lie lena has told thus far is that colin can leave. which means

things lena kelley has NOT been lying about:

the genres everyone thinks they are in

Alice: Office comedy

Gwen: Shitty office drama

Sam: Mystery

Celia: Fanfic

Lena: Horror

Colin: Puter Horror (mystery)

Teddy: not in something

Bonzo: It’s Bonzo Time!!!

I can't help but make a parallel between Lena sending Bonzo names and addresses of people to "deal with" to Jonah sending Jared Hopworth letters with names and locations of people with "good bones"

Once again office bosses are the comically obvious bad guys in every universe