It’s back
This is not a happy feeling. After the utterly vile
nastiness of the last season and the
unrelentingly awful portrayals, I cringe to see what terribleness this show
will bring us in a second season.
At least the only way is up, I guess. Please tell me that
was rock bottom
So let’s start climbing out of that pit.
After some running through the woods, randomly giving up
vials of blood to people they run into in the middle of the forest (as you do),
the gang finally meets up again. It terms out that chugging god semen (Magicians that sentence is something I
will never ever forgive you for. Ever) and god like powers are good for
something. Everyone is now alive. Penny has not hands but, given the givens, is
relatively chill about it.
They’re all very unhappy with Julia betraying them,
though Quentin is quick to defend her as having some pretty good reasons to be
following her own agenda. But now they need Plan B to bring down the beast. To
the Fillory books! Quentin remembers there’s an arsenal full of super scary
dangerous magical stuff which they need to access. And the king has complete
access. Fortunately Elliot is king
Except while Elliot is king h hasn’t actually been
crowned yet so no-one’s believing the whole monarchy thing.
Back to Fillory, they need to go to a special place so
they can be crowned – Elliot as high king and everyone else except Penny as
lesser monarchs. I’m not impressed with Penny being left out but apparently
there are plans for him
He and Margot take a time out to go to a healy river to
get his hands reattached which goes well. But then he’s a complete arsehole to
the guy who helped him with the sewing and ends up getting his hands cursed
which leads to his magic going wonky.
Everyone else finds an undead zombie knight (he died
waiting for kings to show up but didn’t let that stop him working) who demands
they prove they are from Earth and worthy of being kings and queens. By testing
them on the knowledge of 90s pop culture.
It could be worse. It could be 70s
Elliot wins with a Patrick Swayze impression
I honestly don’t know if Elliot is being sarcastic or
just stoned right now.
They are all duly crowned with little ceremonies which
also comes with some reconciliation with Alice over the whole cheating drunken
orgy thing.
This has an especially important moment with Alice and
Quentin with Alice confessing that her main anger with Quentin is that she lost
him – not as a romantic partner but as such a major important part of her life.
They reconcile and cover Alice’s other worry – that she will freeze again the
next time they’re under pressure – so she practices growing a tree and kissing
Quentin
Oh Alice you can do better.
So to the castle for the powerful magic
Except the armoury is kind of empty except for a book
that basically points to Brakebills which is where they came from in the first
place. So everyone has to go back to the real world again
Well, except Elliot because high king. Also a long time
without a monarch means Fillory now has enemies to the north and south,
infrastructure is terrible also the beast sucking up all the magic has caused
problems
I actually quite like the idea of a commoner becoming
monarch like a fairy tale but rather than “happily ever after” they actually
have to run the kingdom they’ve just been thrust into. Elliot isn’t loving it.
To catch up with Julia, she and the Beast make a deal (with
loop holes for future betrayal) to hunt down and murder the god Renard who
raped Julia.
Beast is willing to go along with this to save his own
life and for Julia to give over the stabby-dagger-of-can-actually-kill-him
They track Renard while the Beast makes attempts to
convert her – drawing on their mutual horrific experience of being raped.
Though his recruitment comes with encouraging her to remove her “shade” –
basically her emotions to stop being a “martyr” to her pain. How his own pain
was so destructive to him. How this develops from here will be curious – how they
deal with the pain and trauma, the options Julia is faced and contrasting that
with the options the Beast chose. I suspect it may become very very very messy.
