Last week Julia was visited by the mystical Black goddess
of holy goodness. This could be a nice portrayal of power and strength if she
weren’t cryptic, completely undepicted and apparently dishing out goodies and
plot advancing useful shinies. Powerful POC who hand out shiny magical upgrades
to white people aren’t a good depiction. That includes the hermit who gets
Julia in touch with the goddess. Though I did like her counter that she wants
power, but hit back that having ambition is not a bad thing and definitely not
something the goddess would be against.
The goddess does come through and does give all of Julia’s
friends their shinies (and get them out of the way of the plot line) This being
Magicians I am quite sure at some
point she will eat everyone’s skin.
This does free her up to be useful to Quentin again. And,
let’s be clear, that’s exactly what happened – her friends conveniently
vanished, her goddess-given mission happens to somewhat coincide with what Quentin
wants
So, to Quentin and co who are terribly awkward after the
drunken, magical emotional threesome last week. Everyone is terrible, except
Penny who is surprisingly calm and supportive with Alice’s fury. And he has sex
with her. Which Quentin hears and is all hurt – he makes a comment which would
almost be good (he made a mistake while drunk and magically unable to make good
decisions, while she used sex deliberately as a weapon to hurt him). This would
be a point – a mistake, or being magically unable to make decisions – is a lot
different from sleeping with someone to hurt someone else. Except it’s super
narcissist and assumes Alice’s only motive for having sex with Penny is to hurt
Qunetin. Ok, I suspect it’s part of the motive, but let’s not forget Penny is
an extremely hot guy and Alice is seeking comfort.
Margot does her own dubious statement – announcing she
refuses to be ashamed for sex. Which is all sex positive and empowering and,
again, completely narcissistic. Sure she’s happy to have sex, but being unable
to see why other people may be concerned about sex they made while unable to
make reasoned decisions (which, subsequently means they had little real
consent), especially when one is in a relationship and the other is mourning
the boyfriend he just murdered. Yup, Margot keeps her narcissist crown.
They manage to hold their differences down long enough to
travel to the Neitherlands to head to Fillory to find the weapon to kill the
Beast – which all goes quickly wrong as they run into the Beast’s minions
resulting in Quentin being stuck in Brakebills (with the map) and the rest of
the gang being in the library with helpful, reassuring librarian. She spends
some time telling Penny how awesome Travelling is (which is also awesome)
before kicking them all out when Elliot reads Mike’s book, becomes depressed
about it and destroys it in depression and because Margot is still EPICLY
UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND
But, yes, Elliot’s endless grief again sabotaged the
group.
Luckily they run into another Brakebill’s survivor – one of
the missing year of students that disappeared (including Alice’s brother). He explains what happened, they had an
awesome Traveller who decided to take them all to Fillory for a holiday – which
was all good and fine until the Beast promptly massacred them. It also looks
like their awesome traveller is probably the woman that Penny keeps seeing
being imprisoned by the Beast. Thankfully the guy can also show them the way to
the fountain which will lead them to Fillory so long as they all keep within
Alice’s invisibility spell. Great idea
Except… Elliot. Because drunken useless character
sabotage, means they have to fight their way. Thankfully Margot brought a gun
because she can shoot 3 times in the time it takes a Magician to manage those
hand gestures and emotion control for battle magic.
Everything about Elliot is terrible.
Back to Quentin. He decides to go see the Dean (remember
him? The awesome character with big secrets who could have a very interesting
storyline as he adapts to his new disability but was then completely banished
to the Plot box for so long. And ye gods why is saving the world a task that doesn’t
involve anyone but students for crying out loud?! Whyyyyy?!) and not only do we
see this neglected character, but we then get him thoroughly abused and
demystified by a humiliating use of a truth serum (I’m sorry, are you seriously
expecting to convince me that Quentin can pull off a truth potion? Really? He’s
competent now?)
Anyway the truth serum means that we get a lot of exposition. The now deceased Jane has a nice time travelling magical artefact from the Fillory books. And, unlike Harry Potter, she is quite willing to abuse this over and over again to reset the time line to find different ways to bring down the Beast. Unfortunately she’s done this 49 times and in all 49 Qunetin has died (explain to me again why this guy is the Chosen One and matters so much? Did I miss this? Because I still don’t get it? I also don’t get why one of those 49 attempts doesn’t involve rallying every wizard in the world with sniper rifles to shoot the Beast until he stops twitching?). And this is the last chance because now Jane is dead so no more time travel (wait, didn’t she have an artefact? Can’t the take it off her body? Is resect for the dead more important than saving the world?)
I do like the Groundhog day joke, that was good.
Qunetin asks a good question – what did Jane change this
time round? This time round she kept Julia out of Brakebills assuming that the
adversity she faced would teach her new and shiny magic!
And why, it did just that! Yes, all of Julia’s storyline, perhaps the most important and interesting storyline in this show, was all reduced to Julia being a good tool for Quentin. This is why I drink almost as much as Elliot.
So we have a reconciliation – which is kind of good with
lots of acknowledgement of wrongness but still friendship. Together they figure
out a way to Fillory – it requires Brakebills, time travel, World War 2, and a
magical phone box… getting them into Fillory… At last.
