Okay, let’s go steal a royal title.
- Nate

After my recent ranting, it was great to get a Leverage episode that actually dealt with the Moreau storyline. Indeed, "The King George Job" hit the ground running, as Nate and his team went after one of Moreau’s top men.

I recently asked when we would get an episode featuring Sophie. While not as obvious as Parker or Eliot’s episodes, if you peel back the layers of tonight’s installment a little, you will see this was absolutely what I had in mind.

Overall, it was very good episode; actually, it was on the verge of being one of the best of the season when it looked like the Baroness persona that Sophie was using was actually her real identity. Sadly, the show missed the mark when too many things went unanswered.

I was disappointed that the only reference we got about Sophie’s baroness persona not being real was Sophie saying her real name is not Charlotte; it is only a stage name. That single comment was so vague it left me with several questions:

• Who was Auntie (The Countess of Kensington)?
• How did Auntie and Charlotte (Sophie) have shared stories going back more than seven years?
• Who was William that Auntie mentioned?

Even worse, depending on if you think the entire persona or just the name was staged, you get different answers to these questions:

FAKE: If the persona was truly a fake, then Auntie would be another Grifter who worked with Sophie. William might have been a mark Sophie went after and fell for. The timeline I picked up was that Sophie said she spent seven years building the persona, but Auntie said that William had been “gone” (assuming died) for eight years, we have no way of knowing if those are the same years or added together.

This would mean the “royal scandal” was that Auntie told Keller about was specifically so he would leave Sophie behind. However, I cannot account for the personal stories or how much William meant to Auntie.

REAL: If the persona is actually real, then a few things change. “Dear William” may have been Uncle William and/or Auntie’s husband. Auntie’s mention of “he loved you fiercely," “he never blamed you” and “he had the drink to console him” make much more sense in this context as he was protective of Sophie growing up. 

This would explain why the persona would check out; because it was totally legit. However, the comment that Keller make’s about “I heard about your little royal scandal” doesn’t seem to fit into this well. But, given how cryptic it was I think it might be why Sophie became a grifter.

The bottom line is this: unless Leverage revisits this portion of Sophie’s story, we may never know.

I will leave you with my take: I think that we just met Sophie’s real aunt and Sophie is trying to distract Nate and the others by saying “Charlotte was a stage name," as it could also be her middle name, just not her “real name."

One last thing I took into account is how much Sophie was worried that the cons she ran might have hurt kids like Keller did.  Sophie said it herself that she always stole from those who would not miss it and never thought about what happened afterwards. This sounds like someone who is doing it for the fun, not for the money. 

What do you think?

Jim G. is a TV Fanatic Staff Writer. Follow him on Twitter.