Magic – The Magicians S5 E10 and E11

Jason and Cristina discuss The Magicians episode 10 Purgatory and episode 11 Be The Hyman!

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Podcast Notes –

OVERALL THOUGHTS

DEN OF GEEK:     “Purgatory” felt like a series of stories of people trapped in limbo, whether it was Penny and Plum in their room out of time, Josh in the Underworld, or Julia and Eliot in prison.  As a clearer picture starts to form of Fillory’s plight and how the Dark King’s obsession ties into it, The Magicians takes on a sense of urgency appropriate for both the end of the season and the series.

“Doesn’t this feel like the part of the story where the good guys are just wrong?” says Hyman to Fen at one point in this week’s The Magicians, outsider to outsider. That basically describes what it feels like to be a viewer at this point as well. As much as we want these final few episodes to give us a proper ending for the series, this already doesn’t seem like the right direction.

NEW FACES/ PLACES/ MAGIC:

FACES:

• Eliphas          A man who’s been trying to stop time travelers from messing with the order, powering himself with stolen plasma power.  
• Anna          Marina’s girlfriend who was part of The Heist

PLACES:

• Taker Realm guard dogs of the Underworld who prevent souls from escaping back to the World of the Living. 
• The Nave a secret hotel that only admits magicians and contains a vault that’s the securest place on the planet

MAGIC:

• Time Travelers mutation of a plasma factor in the blood that allows a finite capability to move through space-time
• Trance Healer like a magical hypnotist?
• Ark a temporary vessel in a pocket world built by Ember to transport Fillorians to another world
• Energetic Emanation ghost-like copies of the Ram Gods left to give messages to the High Kings in apocalyptic events

5.10 – PURGATORY

PENNY & PLUM – THE ROOM

Inside The Room, Penny says everything he casts is wrong here, circumstances are impossible to read, and the signal keeps pulling them back when they try to leave. Then, a man travels in – Eliphas or “Eli” – a Time Traveler like Plum.  It’s his job to protect the integrity of space-time (which they threatened by trying to save Hyman).  He produces a device that will quickly and permanently eradicate her abilities – they come from a mutation of the plasma factor of the blood.  The amount they’re born with is finite and when you traverse time, you reduce a fraction of it.  He will take the rest but she must consent to the spell or it won’t work.   He leaves them there, in his “space out of time”, until she chooses.

After what feels like a month, but they can’t be sure because there’s no sense of time, the sameness is becoming intolerable. Plum finally decides the only way out is to give up her power.  Penny tries to stop her but she sits in the chair.  Some time later, when she’s about to pass out, Penny becomes concerned.  Checking the back of the device, he sees a jar collecting the plasma and realizes he’s taking it.  Eli reappears and tells them he wasn’t lying about his mission – he’s been trying to stop time travelers from unraveling the universe.  In the beginning, he tried asking others for their help but eventually gave up and has been doing it alone ever since.  Penny strikes a deal that Eli can have what’s in the jar if he lets them leave now.  Reluctantly, he agrees but says if Plum travels again, he’ll find and kill her.    

ELIOT & JULIA – WHITESPIRE

In the Whitespire dungeon, Eliot reminds Julia that they’re stuck in a magic-proof cell, at which she starts to breakdown, thinking they’ll die in there.  When Charlton offers Eliot advice, Julia can briefly hear him. Charlton theorizes she had a psychic attack because of the baby’s father, leading them to the idea they might be able to harness the power.   Eliot vaguely remembers learning about transmitted powers in a class once but thanks to a lot of greenhouse cannabis, it’s foggy.  So Charlton goes into his mind and finds the memory of a class with Dean Fogg. “Do not assume your partner is a human – hybrids abound.”   He returns with the plan to do the opposite of Fogg’s advice.  The fetus detects the mother’s stress and reacts protectively – instead of cultivating a tranquil mind, they will need to scare the shit out of Julia.  Lying to a guard, Eliot secures supplies for a potion that will give her a huge shot of anxiety.  She imagines her water breaking and pictures herself outside the cell.  Realizing the deception, she becomes angry and harnesses the adrenaline to actually travel out.

JOSH – FILLORY

In Fillory, the Dark King captures Josh.  Chanting in Latin, he puts a medal on him, smeared with his blood and says, “Your death will not be in vain”.  He produces a Taker who drags Josh underground. 

Josh awakes in a strange world where he’s immediately attacked by another Taker, but the touch of the medal kills it.  A girl named Ash finds him and says her friends were grabbed by Takers and put in an elevator.  Gaining her trust, she leads him to the elevator where the only button is for the Underworld.

ALICE, KADY & MARGO – EARTH

Meanwhile, on Earth, Alice tells Kady that while her ghost fingers work, they’re still magically severed, so she can only cast a few one-handed spells.  Kady vows to pay the Couple back.  Fen’s emotional response to their friendship is cut short when Margo becomes sick, bleeding from the nose and fainting.  They bring her to the Brakebills lab where Alice can rely on the Circumstances and diagnose the issue.  Alice thinks they should sever the tether before it does permanent damage but Margo refuses to cut the connection to Josh. 

JOSH – THE UNDERWORLD

Arriving in the Underworld, Josh finds a waiting room and tells the man they’re not dead, so he retrieves someone to help – Penny 40.   Penny thinks there’s nothing he can do – most employees are gone and Hades is missing.  He cut their connection to the World of the Living before leaving.  Someone might be able to help but it’s the ‘suck option’.   He takes them to Benedict, who’s upset Penny keeps failing to RSVP to his brunches, but responds to Josh’s diplomatic request for help.  Benedict thinks he’s charted most of the Underworld except Hades’ private spot.  He takes them to a greenhouse that Hades uses as a spa bath.  The man inside tells them Hades is gone – when he left, he said he might never be back.  On a piece of paper, Josh writes a note for Margo.  

ALICE, KADY & MARGO – EARTH

Finally, Alice finds a solution, inserting a crystal into Margo’s eyes socket that stops the pain and projects the images onto a screen.  Josh mouths, “still alive, need help – find Hades”, then shows them an address in Queens.  Alice and Kady go and discover Hades, sitting in a garage, playing video games.  He says he quit ruling the Underworld and they realize he’s in mourning.  His wife, Persephone, was killed by the monster’s sister.  “When you die, you go somewhere, I know because I built it for you, to help you. There’s no Underworld for Gods.”  He doesn’t know what happens to them because they’re not supposed to die.

When Alice tells him Josh was in the Taker Realm, Hades thinks that’s impossible.  The creatures are guard dogs; they’re realm is a security measure, a barrier between the world of the living and the dead.  If a soul tries to come back, it takes them and returns them to the Underworld. If they’re in Fillory, someone opened a door that should not be open. “I leave for a couple months and everything goes to shit”.  Hades agrees to help Josh but they need to stop whoever is trying to get past the Takers or their world will be destroyed too.  If he manages to crack the last door, it wouldn’t just be his lost love to come through; all the dead could escape. It could be the end of everything.  

ENDING

Josh and Ash arrive back out of the elevator, in Fillory where they see the bodies of many Takers, who died crawling towards the door.

Finally transported out of the Room and back to the apartment, Penny sees a pregnant Julia who says, they should talk. 

5.11 – BE THE HYMAN

GROUP – REGROUP

Margo fills Josh in that Rupert needed to get rid of the Takers to break out his lover – so he used Josh to take them out.  She tells him she thought their relationship was over but he reassures her saving him buys them a clean slate. Penny tells Julia they broke up for good reasons that haven’t changed, but he wants to be there for the baby (unlike his own father).

HIGH KINGS – EMBER EMANATION

Eliot and Fen pass out in the elevator, and along with Margo and Josh, are transported to a version of Fillory where Ember summons them. “I’m an energetic emanation – a message left by the god to warn the former High Kings of Fillory of the impending apocalypse” (since the current ruler is the problem). 

The dead drain life, contaminating everything they touch.  They must stop this, whatever the cost – including destroying Fillory.  A knock brings Umber’s emanation to the meeting.  He was designed to intervene if his brother tried something apocalyptic.  Umber says after faking his own death; he escaped to Earth to build new worlds.  He intended to rescue his people so he created an Ark – a temporary vessel in a pocket world that could carry every Fillorian to a new world.  Slap fight. 

PENNY & JULIA – HIGH RISK

Penny brings Lipson in to diagnose the group (they’re just asleep) and she also check’s Julia’s baby.   Everything looks fine but she’s fast-forwarded through the first 2 trimesters.  Accelerated pregnancies can be more high risk and there could be dangers from the baby’s inherited powers.  Julia is dismissive of her urging to come to the lab for more tests.

GROUP – PLAN FOR NEW FILLORY

The group returns and relays the message, deciding the answer is a compromise, destroy this Fillory but take the people to a new one.  What happens to magic because the Wellspring is in Fillory? They are unsure but Alice thinks if they can find the World Seed, they could build a new Fillory.  They split tasks – Julia will work on deciphering the dead language; Alice will find the seed; Margo & Eliot will get the Ark.  Penny’s traveling is broken but he realizes Hyman can help.  Removing the Stasis pendant, Hyman is grateful to be restored and delights in the return of his senses (“I love fingering things”).

He agrees to help travel them.  But privately, he notices Fen is upset and thinks she wants to tell the others their plan is crazy but they wouldn’t listen to her. 

“Doesn’t this feel like the part in the story where the good guys are just wrong. Their hearts are in the right place but they haven’t learned the lesson of this morality play they’re in yet.  So they have this crazy plan that makes them almost as bad as the villain.”

HIGH KINGS – POCKET ARK

After traveling them to Ember’s house, the group dismisses Hyman.  They find a “ghost” version of Ember guarding the house and need to figure out the riddle to get inside.

“In the beginning there was nothing, until a tigress, blind in one eye, came to a lonely shore.  The tigress looked upon this raw world and…”

Fen is the only one to realize it isn’t random nonsense but Fillorian Scripture, the story of Ember and Umber’s birth. She finishes:

“The tigress waded into the ocean and drowned herself.  As her body disappeared beneath the waves, two shells washed ashore.  From the shells came Ember and then his shadow, Umber.”

However, once downstairs, Eliot finds the shelf with the pocket worlds empty.  The emanation informs them they were removed for security purposes, so the next challenge is identifying the true Ark from among several globes. They push Fen to find the right choice but fed up, she tells them to figure it out for themselves.  Eliot apologizes for the way they’ve been treating her and asks for her help.  She thinks if it were Earth, they would try to harder to find a better solution.  She can’t just watch as they destroy it.  Eliot thinks – “You can still love something even after it’s gone”.   As the others explode, Fen quickly grabs the one with the Seahorse, explaining that’s how Ember and Umber first brought people to Fillory – they chartered the Great Seahorse to carry them in his pouch. 

ALICE & KADY – MARINA’S HELP

Meanwhile, Kady and Alice learn that Marina is the only person who knows about the Couple and may be able to help.  They go to her house, finding a much changed and strangely kind Marina.  She explains she went to a Trance Healer who put a block on all parts of her personality that made aggressive and self-destructive choices.  When Alice divulges they’re looking for the Couple, she immediately thinks this is an “Old Marina” decision and would be very dangerous.  She knows the Couple has the World Seed – that’s what she wanted to steal when they stopped the Harmonic Convergence.  They’ve hidden the seed in a hotel called The Nave – a secret place that only lets in magicians and has a vault which is the most secure place on the planet.   She hired partners that spent months constructing a break-in (Heist Book) that turned out to be a suicide mission.  One was killed and the other, Gavin, is in a full body cast in the hospital.  They threaten him with taking down his psychic wards until he admits Anna took the book after things went bad.

Anna, Marina’s former girlfriend, is angry and ready to turn them away.  Alice realizes they have to remove the Trance, turning her back to old Marina.  But she first makes her sign a Word as Bond spell, ensuring she can’t betray them. Marina then convinces Anna to give them the Heist Book. 

PENNY & JULIA – EFFINGHAM’S WARNING  

Back at the apartment, Julia is trying to decipher the language when she hears voices.  She brushes off Penny’s concern, telling him it’s just aftershock, but clearly worried, Penny steals the Circumstance Control Panel from the Lab.  He thinks that without it, the Couple can’t do anything.  And now Lipson can run scans on her.  Frustrated at his pushing, Julia leaves.   It’s then that Hyman admits he’s now frustrated with the limitations of being human and wants to return to stasis.  Before, he was a part of everything; now, he’s a minor character in his own story.  Penny convinces him it will take time but it’s a better tradeoff to make your own connections (than spy because you’re lonely). 

Julia finds Sir Effingham who is about to bestow the Quest on her, when he realizes she is one from the vision intent on destroying Fillory and stealing her people.  It comes with a consequence – “they will lose the ones they love”.

Julia shares the news with Penny who reveals something he’s never told anyone – after his dad left, his mom started having episodes – getting disoriented, hearing things that weren’t there; and it got worse after he was born.  She burned down the apartment and he got put in foster care.  Every time she got him back, she’d get sick again, until the state eventually took him in for good.  Julia understands and agrees to the treatment.  But at the Cottage, Psycho Fogg punches Hyman, and escapes with the Control Panel.  “Don’t make too many enemies, they might find each other”. The Couple just got the last thing they need – The Seed, The Page, and The Panel.

QUESTIONS

• Plum has some limited amount of time traveling powers – will she need to use it for something important?
• Now that Julia is back on Earth, will the pregnancy slow down again? Will she continue to harness the baby’s traveling powers – maybe work with Penny?    
• Can Gods die and if so, where do they go?
• Will the Wellspring being in Fillory effect magic if they destroy the world?
• Will Effingham’s prediction come true?
• Are we turning into the bad guys?