The draining of the Oak Island swamp continues, though progress is slower than expected and one of the two pumps fails shortly after starting. While the team waits for repairs, Norwegian writer and filmmaker Petter Amundsen arrives to present a theory he has spent over a decade developing. In the War Room, Amundsen claims to have found a coded treasure map concealed within the 1623 First Folio of William Shakespeare's collected works. He explains that the Folio was financed by Sir Francis Bacon, a scientist, explorer, and reputed leader of the Rosicrucians, a secret intellectual society with ties to the Knights Templar. Amundsen demonstrates how strangely capitalized letters, deliberate misspellings, and misnumbered pages decode into a celestial map involving the constellations Bootes and Cygnus, the latter also known as the Northern Cross. When the position of Cygnus is mapped onto a globe, it corresponds to Oak Island and specifically to the formation known as Nolan's Cross.
Amundsen argues that Nolan's Cross is not merely a cross but the foundation of the Tree of Life, an ancient Hebrew symbol comprising ten points called sephirot. The Tree of Life was adopted by the Knights Templar, later by the Rosicrucians, and eventually by the Freemasons. Overlaying it onto Nolan's Cross, Amundsen identifies a sephirah called Mercy as the critical point, and it falls directly into the swamp. He cites the final page of Shakespeare's The Tempest, where the audience is told to "pierce Mercy," as confirmation. The treasure, he believes, is the golden Menorah from King Solomon's Temple, looted by Roman Emperor Titus in 70 AD and never recovered. Amundsen theorizes the Knights Templar found the Menorah beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, brought it to Scotland, and that the Masons later transported it to Oak Island for safekeeping.
The team is divided. Rick is uneasy about an outsider influencing their plans, while Marty sees potential value. After a vote, the group agrees to investigate the Mercy point. To test the broader theory, Marty, Alex Lagina, and Amundsen set out to locate the tenth sephirah, Malkuth or "Kingdom," which should sit exactly 282 feet south of the base of Nolan's Cross at a 60-degree bearing. After initially digging up the wrong stone, Alex spots a much larger one nearby. The team uncovers a boulder that is flat on one side as though deliberately cut, with the other side rounded. Three carved indentations forming a triangle are visible on the surface, a shape that mirrors both Templar symbolism and the triangular outline of the Oak Island swamp.
Rick and Marty hire a helicopter to survey progress from the air. The bird's-eye view reveals the swamp appears man-made, with a distinctly triangular shape resembling a pyramid, a form with deep connections to Freemasonry. Stones arranged in a diamond formation are visible near the Mercy point. The aerial perspective offers a vantage the brothers have never had despite years of studying maps on the ground.
Before returning to Norway, Amundsen leads Rick and Marty on plywood boards through the half-drained swamp to mark the Mercy point's exact location. Rick then returns with metal detection expert Steve Zazulyk and Charles Barkhouse to investigate. Wading in with a detector, Steve picks up multiple strong signals in the area Amundsen identified. Rick and Steve feel a solid, flat object beneath their feet where the readings are strongest. Rick jumps into the swamp to get closer, emerging covered in mud but convinced they are onto something. Steve notes the signal registers in the range where he typically finds silver and gold. The team resolves to return with heavier equipment to excavate whatever lies beneath the Mercy point.
