Magic – The Magicians S5 E1 Do Something Crazy

Jason and Cristina give you a in-depth review and discussion of The Magicians Season 5 opener Do Something Crazy! Too Much Magic, Choose Your Quest, Clockwork Heart.

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Podcast Notes –

QUESTIONS FROM LAST SEASON:

1. Are Fen and Josh still alive?
2. Who is the Dark King (Fillory)?
3. What’s next for The Library?
4. What’s next for the hedge witches?
5. Are the Old Gods paying attention?

 

SEASON 5:

Last season, magic was saved, but at a terrible cost: the life of Quentin Coldwater, who died heroically to save his friends— and the world. Julia, Alice, Eliot, Margo, Penny and their friends must learn to navigate a world without him. Now, a new threat has arisen: in freeing magic, the balance tipped the other way and there’s too damn much of it, and as the excess builds, an apocalypse looms. Can the magicians get their shit together to save the world without Q?

Gamble told Den of Geek the theme of grief is something that will drive the story in Season 5:       “Quentin’s death touches every character on the show in unusual and unexpected ways. It will bring some of them closer together; it will put some of them at odds, and it brings things out in these characters that’s really deep and specific. And it’s stuff we were really looking forward to writing.”

Besides the main group returning, there will also be guest appearances this season from Sean Maguire, American Gods actress Yetide Badaki and others.

The confirmation of Season 5 was accompanied by the news of a new co-showrunner to serve alongside Gamble and McNamara. Henry Alonso Myers, who has already served as executive producer for the series in the past.

PREMIERE:

TVLINE:      All in all, the Season 5 premiere was fine, welcoming us back to a fun world that’s more of the same.  On the one hand, things that work for the show – the quests, the relationships, the fun Fillory world, are still in place and great to see.  On the other hand, it’s hard not to wish that there was something more, something different enough that really explains the purpose of Quentin’s death and introduces us to how exactly the season will work without him.   

AVCLUB:     If it can find a way to tie together these various mourning, screwed-up heroes, and have them keep battling their way toward the best versions of themselves, there’s probably always going to be a good reason to watch The Magicians. 

Several different story threads that seem separate but will most likely come together – will Julia’s story of trying to honor Q with magic, Eliot’s deferred grief, Margo’s time quest, Penny’s signal, Kady’s hedge advocacy, Alice’s library connections and Golem. 

POSITIVE:   Quests, new creatures, magic of Fillory, too much magic

NEGATIVE: Straight forward exposition (telling other characters, story in a play)

NEW FACES/ PLACES/ MAGIC:

FACES:

• The Dark King Ruler of Fillory for last 300 years.  
• Sir Effingham Questing Creature
• Clockwork Heart Dwarf Runs Clockwork Heart at center of Fillory
• The Takers invaded Fillory

 

MAGIC:

• Library Medical Manual Spell book
• Library Branch Index shows location of every book & how to access
• The Great Unshackling Dark King deposed Children of Earth

 

SYNOPSIS:

OPENING – Adams St.  Octopus in center, moon behind.  Stars with keyholes.  Two whales.  2 ice axes.  Mushrooms.  Library Order sign askew.  Pocket watch – bees.  Cockroach/beetle?  Graffiti – ?

EARTH – JULIA

It’s been a month since the end of last season.  Julia is debating over a dress for a ‘date’ when Penny comes to pick her up, giving her his jacket so she’s prepared, and takes her to a place where they are able to watch a magical meteor shower – courtesy of his friend Seth, who’s regained the ability.  “There’s a lot of ways to use magic to make the world a better place.”  They’re interrupted with the meteors start exploding – a byproduct of magic surges they’ve been getting.  No one knows when one is coming and they’re getting worse.  Julia becomes frustrated, thinking she only has magic because she lost Quentin, so she needs to figure out a worthwhile cause for it, such as fixing the surges. Penny reassures her it will take time. 

She goes to see Alice trying to recruit help for a séance to contact Q, but Alice tells her talking to the dead is wild magic and too dangerous.  Alice confesses she misses him everyday and doesn’t know how to move on without him.  But that’s what they need to do.  Julia then offers him the book she found – “World in the Walls” – Q’s copy with his notes in the margins.  She gives it to Alice so she can feel close to him. 

When she returns to her apartment, she finds a hog creature raiding her fridge.  Sir Hargreave Mcgrubney Cubbins Archibald Brian Effingham III or Sir Effingham.  He’s been on a long journey from Fillory with a dreadfully important apocalyptic mission – the fate of both their worlds lies in the balance.  Julia rightfully guesses he’s there to bestow a Quest, but not for her.  He was looking for Quentin and is distressed to find he died.  Julia offers to help save the world herself but he thinks she’s not the ‘right kind of hero’ – she’s a woman.

Julia goes to relay the experience to Penny, thinking, “In real life you don’t get chosen, you choose your quest”.

BRAKEBILLS – PENNY

Meanwhile, Penny is having issues of his own.   Dean Fogg comes to ask for his help at Brakebills. When Everett exploded, magic went everywhere and there’s too much of it.  More people have been able to pass the entrance exam so there are more students than they can handle.  The school is overcrowded, rampant with discipline problems, a few students have blown themselves up (surges).  But there has also been a rise in the rarer disciplines – he wants Penny to teach the Travelers.  After all, he’s uniquely qualified as the only Brakebills educated traveler currently alive.  Penny is terrified he could get one of them killed but Dean Fogg is sure their risk is greater without instruction.  He has him sign a waiver and get started.

In his first, Introductory Psychic Translocation.  Penny bluntly tells the students being a Traveler is a curse and they should all just get anti-traveling tattoos.  But Dean Fogg goes to talk to him after, with sober message (he stopped drinking).  What Penny signed was actually an Employment Contract (forbidding him from quitting). 

So Penny returns to tell the students both sides of being a traveler and the choice they have about their path.  After scaring them about the risks, he now takes them to see the good side, traveling them all to a place not on any map.  “When you master your powers, you can go anyplace in any world.”  While they are awed by the beauty, one student goes to speak privately with him, saying she’s been hearing not voices but a signal.  Penny takes down his wards so she can psychically show him.  As soon as he does, an energy overwhelms him, he’s unable to put the wards back up, and loses control of his traveling momentarily.  When he comes back, she didn’t even realize what happened.

HEDGE WITCHES – KADY

Kady is receiving requests for help from hedge witches trying to remove Reed’s Marks – one tried getting help from a friend who accidentally blew off his arm (she reattaches it).   After, Pete thinks that while the Library promised to remove them all, they’re falling apart and not helping the hedge witches desperate to get magic back.  Kady thinks now that magic’s back, they can do it themselves.

They seek help from Gavin who says the Neitherlands Library Medical Manual should have the ritual they need.  Even though he used to work for them, he has no allegiance now and will tell them where to find it for enough money.   They need to access a former Library Book Deposit that hasn’t been robbed yet (without getting decapitated). 

When they go to the location, the building is gone.  Kady thinks someone might have stolen it, though Pete imagines getting through Level 5 Wards would take extreme magical skill. 

FILLORY – MARGO & ELIOT

In Fillory, Eliot and Margo are drinking and falling into despair – thinking of their former kingship and missing Quentin.  They tried getting into the castle for a week but the New King has high security and everyone seems terrified of him.  They sent a bunny with a warning to Penny 23, telling him not to travel there.  And they can’t leave until they can figure out what’s going on with the time shift.  While wondering at their next move, a group of partiers in costume march by on their way to Castle Whitespire for a celebration of the Great Unshackling.

It begins with a play about Fillory’s history – Ember and Umber create the world and think it would be funny if it were ruled by Children of Earth (Elliot – drunk all the time, Margo – angry, Q – dissatisfied, Alice – died, sort of).  No matter who was in charge, Fillory remained shackled to them.  Last, there was Josh the Fresh Prince and High King Fen the Toeless.  When The Takers came into Fillory, the borderlands became overrun, people fled for their lives.  No one knows where they came from, but they were everywhere.  The people asked for help but the rulers didn’t do anything.  Finally, a humble wizard came to help save them – he was made the Dark King and promised to rule them justly (would live forever).  He executed Fen and Josh – declared it the day of the “Great Unshackling”. 

(emblem – bird (with crown, inside circle) 

Margo runs from the room, upset and tells Eliot it’s not over yet.  In the center of Fillory is a Clockwork Heart built by dwarves (who taught Jane how to do time magic) – they’re going to go back 300 years to before this and fix it. When she was High King, she started excavations to reach it – she blasts a hole in the wall and they jump down the deep hole. Hitting the bottom, they discover a cave-like room where the Dwarf works (several astrolabes).   He says that if he leaves, there are massive disruptions in the flow of time magic (so he mostly feeds on cave mushrooms that get him high). 

Margo asks for help as Earth and Fillory fell out of sync.  He admits the large surge of magic skipped the fears forward and he had to crank down on it before it went to far.  But they aren’t meant to go backward – trying to travel to the past would be apocalyptic and destroy Fillory.

Returning to the castle, Margo is angry and become frustrated with Eliot’s seeming lack of emotion – she thinks the only reason he isn’t as upset is that he’s medicated and in denial.  He insists he doesn’t remember anything from his time in the Monster but admits Q’s death hurts and he doesn’t want to talk about it.  Margo finally says if he won’t be real with her, she needs some time.  She storms off down the hall, is accosted by man who knocks her out and puts her in a prison cell.  There, she sees a ghostly version of Josh, scared of his impending death and missing Margo.

LIBRARY – ALICE

Alice’s mother comes to wake her with another letter from the Library – she says she is okay with her living there and letting herself go (sleeping into the afternoon, not doing anything) but asks for her help with something.  She shows her the multitude of perfect orchids she produced (the surplus in magic has made them just keep growing) – and needs to pick one for her Garden Club Perennial Orchid Competition.

Desperate to get out of the house, Alice contacts Phyllis (Jewel Staite) from the Library.  She insists that she still isn’t accepting a job and the woman reassures her she only needs a phosphoromancer for the afternoon.  Taking her to the Library, they find it in a state of disrepair – everyone’s abandoned them, they lost most of their branches, and can’t even reach their people in the Underworld.  Zelda is a mess; after Alice refused her help, she said she couldn’t be trusted to lead and ran off.  The woman doesn’t know who’s running things; she just keeps doing her job.   She shows her the book she needs help with – Library Branch Index – it shows the location of every volume and how to access it.  Her problem is the phosphoromancer who did a certain section of books is dead; she needs Alice to unlock it.  Alice seems to delay a while until the woman leaves and then unlocks the page, finding the volume she wants, she runs to the stacks and reveals a section of hidden books.  She grabs the book of Quentin and leaves.    

At home, her mother comes and shares a cigarette with her.  Alice thinks she’s judging her as usual, but she says no one can tell her how to grieve.  If she needs to do something crazy to get through it, then she should.  After the conversation, Alice takes the book and begins a spell of body shaped of clay (that’s where the Living Clay went that Dean Fogg was missing) – she’s making a Golem.   

QUESTIONS

• Are there further ramifications to this Penny 23 now also signing an Employment Contract (much like Penny 40)? Does Dean Fogg know anything about that?
• What is signal he starts receiving – from who? Why does it override his wards?
• What’s going to happen with the Library falling apart? Why are they out of contact with the Underworld? Where’s Zelda?
• Where did the Library Book Deposit go? How will that tie into the main storyline?  Is there a bigger reason the don’t want to remove Reed’s Marks? 
• Who were the Takers that came to Fillory? Will Margo go back in time – is that why there’s an ‘apocalyptic event’ that Sir Effingham thinks will destroy both worlds?
• Is that Golem Quentin? What will happen? 

CLOSER LOOK

DWARVES

Dwarves are known as expert craftsmen and builders.  They can craft magical items and possibly hold a greater understanding of time magic and how to manipulate it.  They were known to have created the pocket watch that enabled Jane Chatwin to create time loops, and when this object was destroyed by her, she retired herself to the Clock Barrens to study time magic with them.  They have also taught Jane how to create Clock Trees.  They dwarves helped build Castle Whitespire and based its design on Blackspire (in their opinion, that was the most perfect design they had ever seen). 

(go back in time using pocketwatch instead of clockwork heart?  go back to the timeframe with Elliot & Q?)

• Horomancy – also known as Clock Magic, it’s an obscure discipline that deals with the creation of magical clocks for various effects – manipulation of time, weather, optics (Jane used for temporal manipulation)

MARGO & JANE – TIME

Jane was gifted a magical stopwatch by the dwarves after Martin went missing. She used it to try, time and again, to rid Fillory of the Beast that Martin had become, until she was finally successful. Then she destroyed the stopwatch so that Quentin couldn’t go back to save Alice or undo her work. While she was learning to use the watch in the beginning she caused some hiccups in the timeline of Fillory and became the Watcher Woman.

A Day in the Life – in search of the Key to Greater Magic (3^rd Key), Q and Eliot live a life and create the Mosaic (Jane had tried to do it, as the dwarves told her the watch needed the key to power it – but found someone had already completed it).  When Q realized she needed it to stop the Beast, he gave it to her.

After destroying the stopwatch, Jane rapidly ages and retires to the Clock Barrens where she studies with the dwarves. Margo visits her there to inquire about how to save Fillory.

She told Margo she only died on the Linear Plane (not in the Clock Barrens, a place outside of time, her key there keeps the Barrens stable) – and sends her to her body at Brakebills to get the Key.  Margo rushes to the moment before Eliot and Q enter the clock to stop them so that exists as a separate timeline, saving their lives on the Linear Plane.  Key is later destroyed by Alice.

GOLUM

Transforms Living Clay into a Golem of someone. 

(Season 3: Episode 4 – Todd created a “Margolem”)

Later on, Margo would have the idea of using this spell to create a Golem of Eliot, so that he can deal with all of the problems he faces both in Fillory and on Earth. Using a mind-control spell originally taught by Professor Mayakovsky to First-years, Eliot swaps consciousness with his Golem while asleep, allowing him to be in two locations at once, though only one body can be conscious at a time.