So Penny is sort of
dead but not, sort of a ghost but not and Alice decides the best thing to do is
to take the key of Penny seeing to Kady. Also so she can get out of the
Physical House while everything is so weird
Unfortunately Kady
is… not in a good place. She can use the key to see Penny. The man whose love
and death drove her to nearly kill herself with an overdose and now be shut in
a mental institution. She describes herself as “broken” from trying to save Penny
and she blames him for her being in there. It’s not exactly fair, but it is
very human and she storms out. Penny is not happy
To make matters
worse, videos of her arguing with the air did not convince the people who run
the institution that she should be allowed outside - and when she tries to
escape, resort to drugging her against her will. Oh I hope she gets her magic
back and starts mauling people.
So that’s a
trainwreck. Which is Magicians.
In Fillory, Margot is
not having a great time. I mean no-one in Magicians has a great time but
the women seem to get it in the neck especially (see, well, every single scene
with Julia, ever. And Alice died. And while Elliot is having cruise, Margot is
having to deal with the fairy queen’s ever more annoying whims. And Kady nearly
died and has been imprisoned against her will).
She has her minion
Trick to prepare her fairy poison because she is SO DONE WITH EVERYTHING.
Except the fairy queen has decided to make things awkward again - by arranging
Margot’s marriage - she quickly sends a bunny asking for help to Elliot and
Quentin but, like everything else, pretty much has to deal with it herself
So the queen wants
her to marry the prince of the floating mountain. Only because magic has gone,
the floating mountain is no longer flying and it’s more like an island with
some issues. They don’t have a lot of resources, but they do have a huge army
Margot isn’t thrilled
- and nor is Prince Ess of Loria who kind of wants to know why their ally (due
to his dad’s marriage with Elliot) needs this army. He and Margot also have
issues over their failed
marriage and history. Also Margot is as diplomatic as a sledgehammer. Also she’s in a
really bad mood. So it doesn’t go well.
The fairy queen seems
to realise that Margot is 3 inches from done so introduces the Queen of the
not-floating mountain people (the Stone Queen), her future mother-in-law. Who
turns out to be super nice and wise and reasonable. She’s clearly in contact
with the Fairy Queen and decides Margot is having a case of nerves and decides
that it will help Margot to meet her son
First we have the
younger son Prince Fomar who she vetoes because child! But the Stone Queen
again shows some shocking reasonableness and introduces her older son, actual
betrothed person and he’s super searing hot. Margot is still suspicious and she
questions him to see any lurking misogyny - turns out the Stone people are
matriarchal (and have a lot of sex metaphors) and he expects to be submissive
and obedient to his wife. He doesn’t realise the rest of the world doesn’t work
this way and Margot is happy to keep that ignorance.
Things are finally
looking good - except there’s an assassination attempt on hot prince. Margot
does not react well and throws Ess in prison (along with awesome burn that he
isn’t even in her “top 50”) before moving on to the wedding. And this time the
hot prince is murdered
The perpetrator is
Fomar, the baby brother. And because of stupid tradition, not only does he not
get stabbed repeatedly for murdering his brother, but he now gets to be the one
to marry Margot. And Margot is actually visibly shaken upset and maybe even a
little broken at yet something else going awfully for her.
We shall return to
Margot after joining Elliott and Qunetin and my utter joy. And annoyance.
So they’re on a quest
for the next key and with Quentin’s knowledge of the Fillory books points to
them having to return there: they need to complete a mosaci that reflects the
beauty of all life (which Elliot rightly sums up as gloriously vague). In the
books, Jane Chatwin (she who later
had the time turner and dies horribly) found the mosaic - but found it completed.
While deciding what
to do they also get a bunny message from Margot insisting they help her with
her wedding woes. So to Filliory! Using their portal clock and one of the other
keys which are useful magical mcguffins.
They arrive in
Fillory - and can instantly sense magic. Which is awesome- but also means
they’ve come through a one way portal to several decades in the past. Oops.
They find the mosaic
and they can’t use magic to fix it. They have to manually make the mosaic, they
have no idea what it’s supposed to look like and there are literally decades
worth of combinations.
Elliot is
surprisingly positive about their decades quest here and they running through
many many many combinations in different ways, with some snark, some fun and
lots of giddiness. We also meet Ariel the fruit seller. After a year (yes a
year) of working on patterns together, Elliot and Quentin kiss! Yes, living
together they have grown super close and are in a relationship
I was so happy, I
couldn’t wait to see the montage of their relationship and at last a good
same-sex relationship on this show and… Ariel the fruit seller? No no no no,
why?
I’m not going to let
this ruin Quentin/Elliott for me - but I’m vexed that the show felt the need to
introduce a non-character (she’s female and sells fruit, she appears for 10
seconds) just because we simply couldn’t have had two men together. They did
this to Elliot with Fen - it’s the same kind of shenanigans that Da Vinci’s
Demons pulled. If you’re going to show a same-sex couple we need to quickly
bounce to an opposite sex couple to reassure the audience.
But fine, I can live
with this, I can focus on Elliot and and Quentin living together with the son
Quentin has by Ariel and even if we don’t show any more romance or particular
family moments - kid calls Quentin dad, a really easy touch to cement that
family. Or have them have more than one kiss or not follow that up with Elliot
saying “live your life here” with obvious implications for wanting to go
further and Quentin interpreting that as getting with Ariel. Look, there are
ways it could have been better, could have been more - but we still have a lot
of care and long life together and it is beautiful and we almost have a
complete Up montage here… especially when Elliot dies after they spend decades
together working on the mosaic until they become old men
And it is heart
breaking
When digging Elliot’s
grave, Quentin finds a special tile and it alone completes the mosaic (the
pattern representing the beautify of all life can very much be seen as a
reflection of their life together). He gets the key - and a young Jane Chatwin
arrives (and Quentin calls Elliot “a friend” and aaargh, no, you’re refusal to
commit to this, Magicians will not ruin this for me!). She says how much
she needs the key to power her time-turner watch will be later used to power
all those time loops. Quentin agrees to give her the key, but he has another
plan.
Back to a newly
married Margot who is putting off “consumating” the marriage by insisting on examining
all of her wedding gifts. Among them is a key (not the mosaic key, the first
key) with a note from Quentin basically saying he and Elliot are dead. But she
needs to go to see Jane in the clock barrens (where she’s alive because of
timey-wimey woo-woo).
Jane is there and has
the key but can’t give it to Margot because it powers the clock barrens. But
thanks to Timey-Wimey-ness there is another key out there - one on the body of
Jane Chatwin on Earth. Which means Margot has to go grave robbing. Because
everything is terrible for her
Jane does have an
awesome pep talk for her, especially how she will have her own story and it
will be fabulous and awesome. She isn’t doomed to be the secondary character,
she will be the hero. And Margot needs this because she is like 2 feet from
being broken (but can still snark about having to rob cradles and graves.
Because she’s Margot)
Margot gets the key -
and can then stop Elliot and Quentin from going through the clock in the first
place because she already has the key. So that whole beautiful (if not enough)
relationship, didn’t really happen! Or only happened in an alternate time line.
 |
| I have... feelings about this |
One redeeming feature
of this is mysterious appearing fruit gives Elliot and Quentin the memories
they had. And I’m going to need this to have some kind of effect on the show:
but I’m leery because when thinking their lives we get “I died” which makes
sense. “You had a wife”. Ok I can understand mentioning this. And “We had a
family” oookay, yes the son matters. But not “we were a family”? They had a
multi-decade relationship, we need a nod to this. It cannot be forgotten
Now to Julia doing
research into religion as much as magic - as Alice is possessed and whatever
possesses her says “help Alice”
Ok, not spooky at
all. So Julia drops the books and they go drinking to talk and get to the
bottom of Alice’s identity issues. She used to define herself as good as magic
- and she was, she was by far the best of them. But then magic turned on her
and she became a niffin. And no sooner did she find herself human again then
magic disappeared. She has no anchors or way to define herself.
They make a not too
difficult leap that Julia’s magic comes from Our Lady Underground and Alice
suggests she uses the truth key to figure it out. Using a mirror, Julia gets an
interview with the goddess and the truth about her magic
The magic that turns
her eyes yellow, like Renard’s
Yes it’s not good.
The goddess has planted a seed of Renard inside Julia - and while she makes a
big point about it being Julia’s power now, not Renard and how Julia earned it
with her mercy (aaaaargh); Julia is stuck on it being a piece of Renard, inside
her, without her consent and she is REALLY not happy about that
She tells Alice,
fuming - but Alice is focused on the fact it’s magic. She’d accept it in a
heartbeat.. To which there is a suggestion of transferring the magic to Alice
So wishes from here:
Quentin and Elliot
acknowledge what happened here. Because a one episode nod when they lived
together for, what, 50, 60 years? Raising a child together and at least one
hint to a romantic relationship? That should leave a mark
I NEED Margot to get
a win, because she has just been a victim for too long this season. I need the
Fairy Queen humbled at her feet. I need her new husband to be thoroughly
minced. I need her to win.
I loathe loathe
loathe that Julia’s power yet further comes from lack of consent and her rape.
But I’m not sure about her losing the powers either. On the one hand I
completely agree and cheer her rejecting anything to do with Renard on the
other I think I’d be happier seeing her truly making that power hers and making
all the gods take notice
I need Penny to be
back, even if he’s astrally around, fine - but give him power and involvement,
don’t let his astral nature be a way to sideline her
Kady needs to be
remembered by the others, like Penny, and not left in her prison.
