Everyone is dealing with the aftermath of the bank heist in this week’s episode of The Magicians. Quentin must deal with his promise to let Alice take his body out for nightly test drives all while keeping her a secret from the team. The complication from Julia’s abortion has left her a changed woman and even though she would disagree, not in a good way. Margo is back to worrying about the fast approaching war and juggling her Queen responsibilities along with trying to bring Eliot back from dying while inside a golem. And if that isn’t enough on their plate, Kady and Penny and Quentin take on the task of hunting down a demigod. “Word as Bond” was a whirlwind of events and emotions setting up some serious plot lines for next week. Here is what happened.
BACKSEAT DRIVER | Quentin (Jason Ralph) holds up his end of the bargain with Niffin Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) to allow her to have control of his body for 30 minutes a day in exchange for her helping them save Penny (Arjun Gupta) during the bank heist. The first time she takes over his body, he wakes up surrounded by books on niffins and thinks she is looking for a way to reverse it. Penny starts to notice that there is something going on with Quentin’s head but Quentin does everything in his power to keep Niffin Alice a secret. When the group hits a road block on the search for the demigod son, she once again uses the fact that Alice was the most well-read of them all to bargain for more body time and Quentin begrudgingly agrees because it is the first lead they’ve had in a while. She uses that extra time to pay a midnight visit to a playground where she finds a little girl (guest star Bracken Hanke) playing alone at night (which is the first sign to run the other way). She propositions the girl, an Anglerbeast (sign number two to RUN AWAY), for information about a master magician named Friar Joseph. The girl demands fresh meat, newborns to be specific and creepy, but Niffin Alice doesn’t have time for that and decides threatening the giant sandbox fish monster is a more efficient use of her time. Quentin wakes up face down in the sandbox next to the body of the little girl (who was the dangly light at the end of a nightmare monster) and Alice standing above him, proud of herself for finding a monster loophole in his “can’t hurt anybody” clause of their Word as Bond.
Fed up with waking up not knowing what fresh nonsense Niffin Alice got into while he was out, Quentin tries to find a way to break a Word as Bond but as Niffin Alice reminds him, the point is that you can’t break it no matter what. He can’t stand keeping it a secret anymore but Niffin Alice reminds him that if he tells anyone, not only will they box her up, they’ll mark Quentin as crazy and lock him up too. The next time Alice takes the wheel, Quentin wakes up in the back of a taxi in Dublin. He demands the cab driver take him back to wherever he picked them up from ignoring Niffin Alice’s pleas to stop. When he gets inside what looks like an abandoned house, he accidentally sets a Rube Goldberg machine of sorts that Niffin Alice constructed. She used reverse psychology to get him to go back there because while she can’t do magic inside his body, that doesn’t mean she can’t trick him into doing it for her. Her ruse is successful as it works to summon the Niffin of Friar Joseph (guest star Jamie Harris) who is able to see both Quentin and Niffin Alice inside him. It turns out that Friar Joseph is the one niffin who is incapable of being boxed and Alice wants him to teach her how. He laughs at her because how could she hope to be powerful enough to do what he does when she can’t even free herself from someone like Quentin? He tells her if she can get free, then they can talk. He disappears and a furious Niffin Alice turns on Quentin, giving him a nosebleed. She realizes that his body can’t handle keeping a niffin locked up and it is going to kill them both. Quentin finds his way back to Brakebills where he runs into Kady (Jade Tailor) and Penny who is tired of Quentin lying about what is going on. Quentin tries to blow them off but Kady (as good friends do) knocks him out with a sock to the jaw so that Penny can “incept him”. Penny goes into Quentin’s mind where he is immediately accosted by Niffin Alice who tries to kill him. He snaps out of it and tells Kady what he saw and they add “saving Quentin from a literal inner demon” to the list of problems they have to solve.
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NOT A TREE HUGGER | We learn the details of the “complication” that happened during Julia’s (Stella Maeve) abortion last week and it turns out that in the process of getting the demigod out of her, they also destroyed her Shade meaning that the part of her that allowed her to feel feelings is gone. Julia is delighted to have the heavy weight of emotions lifted off her chest but Kady and Quentin recognize the gravity of the situation. When she wanders off into the real world in search of Dana’s demigod son and walks right into Reynard (guest star Mackenzie Astin), Quentin whisks her away to Fillory where she will stay put until they can find a way to hide her from Reynard on a more universal scale. She is not happy about sitting around and decides to assist Margo (Summer Bishil) in dealing with the upcoming war to pass the time. They learn that the Lorian army, along with their own master magician, is camped out on the other side of The One-Way Forest full of intelligent trees that have a history of hating Fillory. Julia, being knowledgeable from her days of reading the adventures of the Chatwins, suggests they meet with the Dryad ambassador to strike up a deal with the trees. Margo decides this will be Plan A and brings Julia along as Royal Ambassador to meet with the Dryad (guest star Grey Damon). Unfortunately, the trees are also sexist and view the act of sending women to negotiate as an insult and because Margo can’t tell them that the High King hasn’t woken up from a golem body swap kerfuffle, they are forced to leave without a truce.
Julia returns to the woods later with two royal guards and snatches up the Lorian master magician (guest star Everett Shea). He thinks she is there on behalf of Fillory but she quickly corrects him that she is there for Julia and Julia alone. She needs him to make her a totem capable of hiding her from even a god and offers to let him go scot free as soon as he does. He enchants a stone for her to wear around her neck that will hide her from Reynard and true to her word, she releases him. Next she calls out to the Dryad who was eavesdropping and offers him a box to pass along to his tree leaders as a token of peace. He is wary of her but takes the box anyway and returns to the woods. As she is walking home, said ‘token of peace’ explodes in the distance and sets the entire forest ablaze. Margo is furious at her because now all the trees in Fillory are calling for their heads. Julia is confused as to why Margo is angry because from where she’s standing, she did her a favor. They can now march through what’s left of the forest and beat down the Lorians and as an added bonus, Margo didn’t have to get her hands dirty; she can just blame it on Julia. While she is weirdly impressed with Julia’s moxie, that doesn’t stop Margo from calling in the guards and throwing Julia in the dungeon while she tries to figure out what to do next.
DEMI GOD SCAVENGER HUNT | Kady and a Shadeless Julia continue their research on a way to kill a god and figure that the one thing they know for sure is they are going to need a major power source to pull of whatever spell they find. The realize that Dana’s demigod son might just have enough power tucked away in his oblivious body and set out to track that baby, now man, down. After they send Julia to Fillory for Margo to babysit, Kady and Quentin team up but keep hitting dead end after dead end. Penny is still running an endless list of errands for Mayakocsky and is getting fed up with it. On one errand to get a book from the Super Library, the Librarian (guest star Mageina Tovah) informs him that Mayakovsky isn’t his only option for getting magic back. If he signs a contract with them, they can teach him. The only catch is that contract is for eternal servitude and it doesn’t end when he dies. He laughs it off but keeps it in the back of his mind all the same. He joins up with Kady and Quentin to help them with their demi god search and it leads them to a hospital where a newborn they think just might be the one was surrendered all those years ago. They use a tricked out version of one of those viewfinders every kindergarten classroom had for looking at Disney movie stills but used theirs to look into the past. It could never be that easy however, so they find to their dismay that Dana took precautions to scratch out the identity of the man who came to take the baby away and they are, “back to square nothing.” After an argument with drunk and frustrated Kady where she tells him she is not his problem to solve, Penny decides to take the deal with the Librarians and effectively signs his soul over to them. He uses his newfound access to hunt down Dana’s life book where sure enough, the name of her son is written. He brings that information to Kady who upon realizing what he did to get it, yells at him for doing this for her. He counters with the fact that he gets to decide what or whom he spends his time and energy on and that he loves her.
MENTAL DATA TRANSFER | After his Earth golem was slaughtered during the bank heist, Eliot’s (Hale Appleman) mind has yet to make the journey back into his real body and everyone is worried he never will. The royal Healer has taken to building a mind bridge between the golem and Eliot in the hopes that they can successfully transfer his brain.rar files back over but with the constant magical brown outs happening all over Fillory, she is concerned. Fen (guest star Brittany Curran) is particularly distraught at the thought of losing the father of her child and her High King but Margo takes the time to reassure her that she will be there for her no matter what. In a moment alone with Eliot, she lets her brave façade slip to beg him to wake up because she doesn’t want to do with without him. When the Healer begins the mind transfer, it appears to be working but just when it looks like they could have a win, a brown out short circuits the transfer. Fen starts crying but Margo puts on a brave face and promises her that she will deliver on everything Eliot promised her, sexist hierarchy be damned. She won’t have to do it alone though because it is at that moment that Eliot wakes up and is reunited with both his wives, literal and platonic.
OTHER THOUGHTS:
• Line of the Night goes to Penny and, “Stop singing Imagine Dragons to get me off track.” It brought back fond memories of the Taylor Swift musical from the first season.
• I would like to give major props to the actors and camera crew for the group scenes where Niffin Alice is accosting Quentin while nobody else is the wiser. From a technical perspective it is shot perfectly and the acting by Jason Ralph and Olivia Taylor Dudley is suburb.
• Fillory is lucky to have High Queen Margo and they do not deserve her.
• Would you want to read your life book from the Super Library? I would make them hide it where I could never find it so as not to tempt myself.
So what did you think? Will they be able to separate Quentin and Niffin Alice without killing either of them? Will the war with Loria end before it begins or will our motley crew have to armor up? Now that they’ve found his name, how long until they track down the unknowing demi god in person and how will be take the news? Let us know your theories in the comments below!
Be sure to catch The Magicians Wednesdays at 9/8c on Syfy!