Magic – The Magicians S5 E9 Cello Squirrel Daffodil

Jason and Cristina talk about the SYFY announcement that The Magicians will end after this season and give their thoughts and feels.  They also give you an in-depth review and discussion of The Magicians Season 5 episode 9, Cello Squirrel Daffodil Totems, Tongue Twisters, Chatwins.

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Podcast Notes –

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Although this week’s episode of The Magicians was disjointed as hell with stories shooting off in completely different directions, each arc gave us plenty to sink our teeth into, and the news that season 5 would end the series added a certain amount of urgency to our enjoyment of this installment. The desperation of several characters in “Cello Squirrel Daffodil” therefore became our own desperation as we witnessed this buildup to the show’s swan song.

ARTICLE:

Syfy has announced that the current fifth season of the fantasy show will be its last. Season 5, which is scheduled to last 13 episodes, premiered in Jan. 2020, meaning that the series finale will air on April 1.  So far in season 5, “The Magicians” is averaging around 415,000 viewers per episode in the key adults 18-49 demographic after seven days of delayed viewing. The show peaked in terms of audience size in season 2, which averaged just under 900,000 viewers per episode.

“The Magicians has been a part of our Syfy family for five fantastic seasons. As we near the end of this journey, we want to thank John McNamara, Sera Gamble, Henry Alonso Myers, Lev Grossman, and our entire brilliant cast, crew, writers and directors for their beautiful creation. But most of all, we thank the fans for their tremendous support and passion. Because of you, magic will be in our hearts forever,” the network said in a statement.

Ahead of the news breaking today, TV Insider spoke exclusively with executive producers Sera Gamble and John McNamara about The Magicians‘ fate, why it doesn’t make sense to move it to another platform, and how they hope the show’s vibrant (and fearlessly vocal) fandom will carry on the lessons we’ve learned during our time at Brakebills University. 

Sera Gamble: And as the creators of the show, we understand that. We had the sense going into this season that Syfy, in particular as our first platform, was kind of hitting the point of “The cup is full and there’s no more room.”

McNamara: It’s not going to necessarily expand in terms of revenue, it’s not necessarily going to contract in terms of revenue, but it is going to cost more.

McNamara: None of them seemed in the end like a perfect financial or creative fit. And so we reluctantly just decided, “Well at least we have this season finale that was crafted to also be a series finale.” It was kind of always going to pull double duty.

NEW FACES/ PLACES/ MAGIC:

FACES:

• George          a man who turns out to be The Couple
• Rupert Sebastian Chatwin Martin’s brother = Dark King
• Hyman Cooper a student from the 1920’s nicknamed “The Pervert Ghost of Brakebills”, because as a Traveler, he practiced Astral Projection around the campus to places like women’s bathrooms.  As a prank, someone moved his body during and he couldn’t get back so his body died. 
• Lance Morrison: a McAllistair (one of oldest magical families in America) whose mother was on the Board of Trustees. Rupert Chatwin’s friend (secret love) from the war, who went to Brakebills in the 1940’s, he died because of a Code 7 (student suicide/magical explosion).  Haunted the West Dorm – Penny sees father saying Lance sullied the McAllistair name and he can’t blame the Truth Key; he chokes Lance to death and takes the key.

MAGIC:

• Time Bridge time travel machine with a Temporal Compass
• Totems items used by remedial travelers to help them picture their destination
• Stasis Charm holds the wearer in place in stasis
• Tongue Twisters a Fillorian insect that lives on the edge of the Burnt River – burrows in to your ear and cause symptoms like a stroke.

SYNOPSIS:

PENNY & PLUM – BRAKEBILLS (2020)

Penny knocks over a statue and sees the plaque that came off:  Winner: 198^th Annual Welters Games – Quentin Coldwater – “Physical” Team Plum is suddenly transported in and doesn’t realize she’s been gone 3 weeks. As Lipson (who’s back and okay) determines there’s nothing wrong with her, Plum shares the only thing she remembers was being in a room with no windows or doors and no one else around.  While he knows it’s dangerous, Penny thinks the only solution is to travel back there.  She is nervous and thinks the Chatwins have messed up enough of his life but he explains they aren’t all bad – Jane was incredible.  So he teaches Plum that she only needs to picture the room to get there.  He tattoos her so she can take him along.  Then he starts teaching her to practice by trying to travel to the other side of the lab into a chalk circle.  The distance is right, but the time is the past – October 1998.

BRAKEBILLS (1998)

Hidden in ski masks, Penny and Plum go to see Fogg (who can’t imagine ever being Dean) and explain they’re trying to avoid a time paradox.  He thinks he can help and gives them a machine – a Time Bridge (it was set to travel to a specific time but you can remove and adjust the Temporal Compass to navigate back). They do travel but this time further back – 1920.   

BRAKEBILLS (1920)

Plum thinks if they can figure out what went wrong with the settings on the Compass, then maybe they can fix it and get back.  When they start encountering racism, they worry about being able to get to the Library and find the answer, but Penny remembers there is someone who might be able to help – Hyman. 

EPISODE 4.11: “THE 4-1-1”       Hyman is here because Penny 40 changed his life.  When he died, Hyman needed to figure out what happened next ‘in his story’, so he finally left Brakebills; Penny 40 had taught him how to ‘be things’.  He witnessed the ritual with Julia and wants Penny to get together with her. He knows they both sacrifice their own joy to help others and it’s time for them to be happy. 

Penny introduces them, Penbrooke and Prune, visiting mystics.  When Hyman isn’t helpful, Penny bribes him with revealing his secret that Hyman is the Pervert Ghost of Brakebills. So he takes them to the Library and they find out that while Time Bridges haven’t officially been invented yet, Hyman knows Professor Sato is working on them.  In his lab, they discover he’s built on that day – this can’t be coincidence.  Plum realizes she was holding two items when they traveled (one from 1998 and the other 1920) and Hyman explains they are Totems.  They need something from their time to help them get back.   

It’s then that Hyman returns with the news he’s been expelled for helping them, and is about to leave Brakebills.  Penny thinks this change can’t happen; they need Hyman to stay in order to help future Penny, so they can save magic.  He needs to be the one to trap him.  Penny cons Hyman by enticing him to psychically eavesdrop on the fictional secret Women’s Welters Match that night.  Once he leaves, Penny brings him back to Plum and thinks they need to kill him to secure the timeline.  But Plum convinces him to use a Stasis Charm instead – he’ll still be trapped. So they put the charm on him and stuff him in a cabinet.  Penny figure out the way to get them back home – when he dropped the plaque, the label became a new thing from 2020 and they can use it to return. It seems to work but then they are suddenly transported somewhere else against their will – The Room – and they can’t leave.

ALICE & KADY – LIBRARY (THE COUPLE)

Meanwhile, Kady tells Alice she knows a guy that might be able to help with the magic problem and he wants to meet at the Library.  They go to see George who needs to find another guy.  As they wait, Zelda explains they are rebuilding.  After her interaction with Alice, she realized she needed to change things.  She started by healing hedges with Reed’s Mark and they were so grateful, they stayed to help.  However, because this branch is kept running by specific spells, the improper casting by hedges is causing malfunctions.

Sign:  “Le but ultime de l’humanities est le savoir”  (The ultimate goal of life is knowledge)

Zelda asks for their help with a difficult job – she pulled some highly dangerous volumes from the Poison Room to find a way to fix magic. Kady and Alice set to researching and deduce that they can make a new moon.  In the book, they find a missing page she recognizes as the one she has about the World Seed.  This looks like the perfect solution but it all seems too easy; it must be a con.  So Alice goes to confront Zelda, saying she knows they must actually be on Earth (because the glitches are happening during Lunar intervals).  It’s then George appears and reveals the truth – he is The Couple.  This is a Psychic Spell (like the Matrix) that he has trapped her in and they’ve done this 18 times. At an impasse, he brings her back to the real world, where they’re tied up in a warehouse. 

Alice wonders how she can know it’s real and he begins cutting off fingers one at a time (a huge loss to a Phosphoromancer).  When she still doesn’t reveal anything, he threatens to kill the unconscious Kady.  She finally agrees, but when he turns his back, she sees Kady is awake.

MARGO & FEN – EARTH (CHRISTOPHER PLOVER)

Margo and Fen are escaping through the woods and worried about the others.  Margo left her Fairy Eye with Josh so she knows he is okay and hiding out, but Julia and Eliot were captured.  They manage to evade the Centurions and return to Earth, where they find Christopher Plover in the apartment.  Disoriented and disheveled, he is speaking in word salad.  But Fen realizes he’s trying to tell them about Fillory.  She thinks he has Tongue Twisters – insects that live on the edge of the Burnt River and get inside your brain (symptoms like a stroke).

Margo calls a friend to help; a less than brilliant doctor who diagnoses Plover has thousands of twisters that will take a while to remove because each has an Energy-Meridian Tether (like being possessed).  So Margo comes up behind and hits him with the Ice Axe while Fen traps the bugs in the container. 

Able to speak for the first time in centuries (after their reign ended to today), Plover tells his story about the Dark King.  When he showed up, Plover was curious and sought him out, only to realize he knew him.  Before Martin Chatwin became The Beast, he had another plan to make sure he was never sent back to Earth – a Conduit Spell to tie himself to Fillory.  In Fillory though, there aren’t many trees but one.  The roots intertwine and are tied to the land itself; anyone tied to that can’t be killed by cutting a tree or a whole forest, only by destroying all of Fillory.  However, Martin’s plan was thwarted by Rupert – Rupert Sebastian Chatwin. Knowing what Martin would become, he sacrificed himself by tying himself to the Conduit before his brother could.  When Martin discovered the betrayal, he cursed Rupert with eternal sleep; the Fillorians thought he was dead.  When our group brought back surges of magic so big, it woke him up.  He brought the Takers and when he held them back, the Fillorians made him High King.  But Margo wonders why he did that; why turn evil?  Plover explains while he slumbered, he lost the one thing he cared about – the man he loved. 

He says Fillory can never be free as long as the Dark King reigns.  Rupert, who always disliked Plover, cursed him with the Tongue Twisters.  Finishing the story, Plover says his plan is to leave and write more books.  At this, Margo releases the bugs back on him and tells Fen he was a pedophile.

JULIA & ELIOT – FILLORY (RUPERT)

In a dungeon, Julia and Eliot wonder how Seb is still alive.  Julia reveals her pregnancy to Eliot but their conversation is interrupted when the King arrives.  He says he’s not going to execute them because he needs their help.  There is a Communication Spell that requires all 3 of them. 

Privately, Eliot wonders why bother because he’s bound to kill them after.  But Julia is sure he cares about Eliot and won’t do that.  Recognizing the messenger charm sigil, she deduces Seb wants to perform a séance, dangerous dark magic to contact someone who’s been dead a long time. 

As Plover is explaining, we see the ritual Rupert is performing to communicate with his lost love through Eliot’s body.  Lance Morrison thinks Rupert abandoned him but Rupert says he’s been trying to get him back and he finally knows what to do.  Just wait by the door; he’ll be able to leave soon.

Afterwards, Rupert wants to know if Eliot’s okay; it was never his intention to hurt him.  Julia says she knows the pain of losing someone, but it’s not an excuse to hurt people to bring them back.  Rupert thinks she must not have loved him that much; she doesn’t understand.

QUESTIONS

• Where is the Room that Penny & Plum are in? How does this tie in with the rest of the Group (especially which Chatwin she’s descended from)? Will Penny get his powers back?  
• What Door is Lance supposed to wait by? (one at the end of the world? The Underworld?)
• It can’t be a coincidence that Lance is a McAllistair right? Will that bring the storyline back?
• What do the Couple want with the World Seed? Who actually are The Couple?
• Where is Zelda and will she come help? How does the Library factor in?

CLOSER LOOK

RUPERT CHATWIN

BOOKS:  Author of “The Door in the Page” and the great-grandfather of Plum Purchas. He features in “The Girl Who Told Time”, “The Flying Forest”, and “The Secret Sea”. He witnessed Martin giving his humanity to Umber in Castle Blackspire, after which he stole a spell and a knife capable of killing gods. He left the spell, the knife, and a memoir called “The Door in the Page” in a briefcase that could only be opened by one of his descendants before he was killed in Africa in World War II; this memoir is included in The Magician’s Land.

TV:  In the show, he is the oldest (instead of Martin).  After Fillory no longer accepted him, Rupert married and purchased a large house in Penzance before he was drafted into the British Army in 1939. He was deployed to North Africa as part of the 7th Armored Division, where he fought in the Battle of El Alamein in August 1942. He petitioned Ember and Umber for power during the Battle of the Bulge in 1945, allowing him to use the Rhinemann Ultra to win World War II.  And he comes back, though with a limp.

In the show, Rupert retrieved the Truth Key to show his real feelings to Lance.  The most recent mention of his talks of him returning to fight his brother Martin, and you see his gravestone in Fillory – leading the audience to believe he died fighting Martin.