With the Garden Shaft horizontal drilling program abandoned due to flooding, the team launches a new borehole program targeting the Baby Blob at depths of 80 to 120 feet, with locations selected by Ian Spooner and Dr. Fred Michel based on fresh groundwater testing. On Lot 5, Moya uncovers an unusual white metal button with a sunburst design while working at the stone foundation with Laird and Helen. Emma's analysis reveals a lead layer over a tin base, and Laird identifies it as a cast decorative button whose elevated status suggests it belonged to someone of importance. The only comparable examples he can find date from the 1600s to 1700s, with some reaching back to medieval times.
In Morimondo, Italy, Rick, Doug, Alex, and Peter tour the 12th-century Cistercian abbey with Emiliano Sacchetti and Professor Gaspani. Through interpreter Marzia Sebastiani, Gaspani declares he is convinced Nolan's Cross was built by a Knight Templar or a Cistercian monk, noting that both orders shared the same founder in St. Bernard of Clairvaux and that Templar scholars often studied in Cistercian abbeys. Before entering, Emiliano draws attention to exterior ceramic vessels, and Doug spots two four-dot crosses matching the H+O stone found on Oak Island's northern shore in the 1920s. Inside, the nave stretches 60 meters by 13 meters with eight large pillars on each side. The team finds a Templar cross on the ceiling, and in the scriptorium, mid-13th-century paintings by Cistercian monks reveal a Tree of Life symbol matching one seen at the Templar prison in Domme, with a four-dot cross on the reverse side of the same pillar. Rick notices oak leaves in one painting and wonders whether knowledge of foreign plants was being recorded, asking whether the monks' work was meant to be seen by only a select few.
At Bianzano Castle, believed to have served as the Italian headquarters of the Knights Templar in the 13th century, Professor Gaspani reveals that the castle's external walls align with the rise and set of the Cygnus constellation and point toward the star Arcturus, the same celestial references encoded in Nolan's Cross. He concludes that whoever designed the castle belonged to the same cultural environment as whoever placed Nolan's Cross on Oak Island. Inside, Doug notices an eight-pointed star that Gaspani identifies as Polaris in medieval iconography, a form used to design octagonal church structures and for celestial alignments. Emiliano then presents Gaspani with the Cremona Document and asks him to consider the devices it describes, particularly the Abetor. Gaspani demonstrates a reconstruction he built, showing how this navigational tool could guide a vessel across the Atlantic on a fixed route and could also have been used to lay out Nolan's Cross.
Near the city of Maastricht in the Netherlands, Corjan Mol and cultural historian Jacquo Silvertant lead the team through the 12th-century Caestert stone quarry, where limestone was mined for the construction of Catholic churches and abbeys. The quarry comprises thousands of tunnels totaling 15 miles of underground passageways running between the Netherlands and Belgium. Jacquo believes the Templars may have hidden their treasures here before transporting them to Oak Island. In a cross-shaped section, the team finds drawings resembling a menorah alongside four-dot crosses and circles with a central dot, both matching symbols on the H+O stone. Corjan suggests that these recurring symbols may indicate the direction the treasure was heading.
