Coming off the devastation of Alice’s death, our heroes scramble to keep moving forward in their fight to save Fillory and magic itself in this week’s episode of The Magicians. Alliances are formed, loopholes are found, and they each face the consequences of their actions up until this point. Written by David Reed and directed by Carol Banker, here is what happened in episode four, “The Flying Forest”.
ADVENTURE DUO | Quentin (Jason Ralph) awakes in a centaur healing camp three weeks after the battle with the beast claimed Alice’s (Olivia Taylor Dudley) life. Margo (Summer Bishil) and Eliot (Hale Appleman) had to return to the task of saving Fillory but left him a note telling him where they buried Alice and that they left him a box of her things. After getting control of his teleporting long enough to run into Margo on earth where she gives him the bad news about Alice, Penny (Arjun Gupta) returns to Fillory to hopefully have the centaur healers fix his hands. Upon learning exactly who cursed Penny, the centaur healer turns tail and runs the other way (No I’m not sorry). That night, Quentin has a blink and you miss it spotting of the White Lady (guest star Emma Dumont) before he is treated to some paint-on-skin to hide his new wooden shoulder. Penny wakes up being choked by his own hands so he breaks his own arms to make it stop. With the help of a heaping of horse booze to numb the everything, he enlists Quentin to chop off his hands. Quentin devises a plan to bring Alice back by capturing the White Lady and using her to grant both his and Penny’s wishes. The two of them head off to “hunt the white lady” and find themselves in the aptly named “Flying Forest”. They misunderstand the meaning of the name at first but before long are both high as kites and having existential crises in the woods. They walk in circles in their blazed state but after finding Alice’s necklace, Quentin deviates from the path and they find their way out. The high wears off and all the emotions come crashing back down on both of them, especially Quentin. He breaks down but Penny reminds him that they are doing this for Alice and that she, and Penny, both need him to be strong. They catch up with the White Lady by nightfall and manage to put an arrow in her. She is all kinds of done with their human nonsense but agrees to one wish apiece. Penny asks for his hands back and she (painfully) regrows them for him. Quentin asks her to bring Alice back but she tells him that is beyond even her abilities. She offers to take his memories of Alice but instead he just asks to be sent home to Earth where he throws his bow in the trash and walks away.
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BEST BITCHES | Julia (Stella Maeve) tracks Kady (Jade Tailor) to a homeless encampment where she has seen better days. After a hot shower and fresh clothes, she is feeling much better and thanks Julia for saving her life. Julia needs Kady’s help with the freeze-dried Marina (guest star Kacey Rohl) she still has on her floor. Marina scratched a message on her arm before she died and Kady recognizes it as a locator number for a book in the Brakebill’s library. Julia has an alumni key but no knowledge of the school and Kady knows her way around but would set off alarms if she set foot there. Their solution is to combine themselves into a singular Best Bitches entity via a friendship necklace and a spell that involves an actual pinky promise. Now Julia can enter the school while Kady sees everything Julia sees and can communicate via a Beauty and the Beast style hand mirror. Kady gets Julia to the right book but there is a spell on it preventing it from being taken off school grounds so Julia sneaks into the Physical Kids’ Cottage to hand copy it all. Margo finds her there and is less than happy to see her after everything with the Beast and Alice. Margo tells Julia (and by proxy, Kady) about what happened to Alice and blames her. Julia stands up to her about the importance of what she is doing now about Reynard. Margo, while still angry, concedes and gives Julia a book mating box (I love this show) that will speed up Julia’s copying process. Back at Julia’s apartment, she and Kady go over the book and realize it is a necromancy spell. Kady is not happy about the idea of resurrecting Marina but Julia tells her the effects are incredibly unstable and Marina will only be back for a few minutes. They do the spell and Marina wakes up in a state of pure terror and begs Julia not to make her go back to wherever she was when she died. Julia encourages her to be strong and Marina passes along her knowledge on Reynard. There was a woman forty years ago who succeeded in banishing Reynard from this world and that they have to find her if they want to stand a chance. She manages to get the last of the message out before dying, this time permanently, in Julia’s arms.
TWO BIRDS, ONE ELIOT | Margo and Eliot are tasked with figuring out how to save Fillory now that the Wellspring is befouled beyond repair. Eliot is frustrated he is stuck in Fillory but Margo’s brain bulb goes off and she pops back to Earth to look into a loophole. She steals living clay from Brakebills and gets the golem spell from her ex (the one who made his very own living Margo doll). They make a second Golem Eliot who isn’t trapped in Fillory and find a way to put Eliot’s consciousness inside the golem so that while one is sleeping, the other can play. Margo and Golem Eliot pay a visit to the Physical Kids’ Cottage where they find Eliot has been replaced as king of the party by Todd. Determined to regain his shindig crown, Eliot sticks around to play barkeep. He gets his flirt on with a guy named Javier and the two of them end up in bed together. Right when he is living his best golem life, he is awoken in Fillory by Fen (Brittany Curran), who also wants a piece of the Eliot action. He is partially existing in both bodies and getting it on across two separate universes as only Eliot can. The next day he meets with Dean Fogg (Rick Worthy) to beg his assistance in the whole “saving magic as we know it” quest they have found themselves in the middle of. The Dean promises him that they will do everything they can and bring in everyone they can to help them save Fillory and magic itself.
OTHER THOUGHTS:
• Only this show would have a sloth named Abigail on the high council of Fillory. I certainly hope this is not the last we see of the almighty Abigail.
• The line of the night, “Let’s go hunt the white lady? People like me get shot for saying shit like that,” and its runner up, “Where are my stuff touchers?” go to Penny this week.
• I could have really used one of those book mating boxes in college. I could have saved so much money on textbooks.
So what did you think? What will Quentin do now that he’s in the non-magical world? Will he be able to stay away? How are Julia and Kady going to track down their mystery woman? Let us know your theories in the comments below!
em>The Magicians airs Wednesdays at 9pm on Syfy.
