SYFY’s The Magicians hit us with another fantastic episode this week! Not only did we find out about a character’s pregnancy, we also got to see a hilarious body swap! ‘Garden Variety Homicide’ was written by Jay Gard and Alex Raiman, and directed by James L. Conway.
Red Monkey Month | Six children have been kidnapped in Fillory by Takers. Margo (Summer Bishil), Eliot (Hale Appleman), Josh (Trevor Einhorn), Julia (Stella Maeve), and Fen (Brittany Curran) get together to discuss their options. They know the Dark King (Sean Maguire) is only to stay in power because he’s the only one who can summon and defeat the Takers. They all know they need to kill him, but they have to find his weakness first, he’s already survived 7 assassination attempts in his long lifetime. Eliot is the closest to the King, so he needs to be the one to find his weakness, but Margo promises him that he won’t have to be the one that kills the King.
Julia has a feeling there’s something going on with her body and decides to confide in Fen. After holding a bunny it’s confirmed, she’s pregnant with Penny’s baby. But since things between her and Penny aren’t great right now, she wants to keep it a secret for a while.
Eliot finds the Dark King in his chambers, in distress over the missing children. Eliot gets the King to open up and reveal that his life is tied to a conduit. The King kisses Eliot and Eliot ends up seeing a tattoo of a tree on his chest, but the King suddenly stops things and tells Eliot they shouldn’t see each other again.
Eliot fills the group in on the conduit info and they all agree that they think the tree is his conduit. They come up with a plan to find it and chop it down. Margo has a clever way of holding up her side of her promise to Eliot, they swap bodies so she can be the one killing him. But there’s a catch, they can’t reveal that they’ve body-swapped otherwise the swap will become permanent. And let me tell you, watching them play each other was a hilarious treat! Margo can now also see Charlton (Spencer Daniels), which may be a good thing since he knows everything Eliot knows and has seen.
Fen and Julia discuss Julia’s pregnancy more, and Fen gets really raw and emotional about it because of what she went through with her own pregnancy and baby. She also drops a huge bomb on Julia, it’s Red Monkey Month, meaning her pregnancy will be sped up.
Josh and Margo [who’s really Eliot] look for the conduit tree. Josh confronts Margo and tries to have “the talk” Margo has been putting off, and Eliot panics and says some un-Margo-like things about forgiveness and stuff. Josh doesn’t buy it and demands answers. Margo eventually goes off on Josh and starts to really sound like Margo, but it was very hurtful towards Josh. He tells her where the tree is and to cut it down so he can send Eliot the signal.
Eliot [Margo] has been working with the Dark King on a spell and really begins to see what Eliot sees in him, she doesn’t understand why he’s summoning the Takers. When they’re alone, Eliot gets the signal that the tree is down and draws a dagger on the King, only the King is faster and stronger and fights back.
Julia and Fen see guards head towards the King’s chambers and know they have to do something. Julia is the one who ends up killing the Dark King, she stabs him with a sword.
Back in their own bodies, Margo and Eliot reflect on the events of the day. Eliot misses the Dark King already. But not to worry Eliot, or probably a lot to worry about, because the Dark King doesn’t stay dead long.
Spores | At Brakebills, Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) took the circumstance control panel from the greenhouse and put it into a classroom so that magic can be performed correctly there, but this pisses off Hamish (Aaron Jennings). He ends up dumping her purse out, and his eyes fall on the plant page Alice got from Quentin’s stuff. He thinks he knows someone who can identify it, but when they approach Penny (Arjun Gupta) on the topic they are shut down because that man is on the Dean’s Do Not Admit list, meaning he can’t come on campus because of where he’s traveled. But after a bit of convincing Penny relents to let this man on campus, but only after he’s been tested and they know he’s not carrying any strange other-worldly diseases.
The man passes the tests, but something seems off about him. Alice finds Hamish unconscious and the man trying to get away with the page. She hits him with a spell to stop him and he explodes into millions of spores. It turns out he merged with some sort of fungus many years ago on another world. They know the spores will want another host body so they go to shut the air vents, but it’s too late. The spores jumped into two students who still want the plant page. They hide in the Clean Room with Fogg 17 (Rick Worthy), who desperately tries to trick them into letting him out. But Fogg 17 accidentally lets some helpful information slip and Alice knows how they can stop the spores, they just need to go to the school library for a book.
Alice does her best Arya Stark impersonation and sneaks around the library staying away from spore-people. She gets the book and almost gets out when one spore-guy spots her, but Penny punches him out real quick. Now they have a test subject. They make a potion using the book and pour it into spore-guy’s mouth, forcing the spores out of him. It worked, but now the spores need a new host, so they jump into Penny.
Hamish and Alice are hiding out and discussing their options. Hamish thinks Alice should just give the page over, it’s too dangerous not to. he also opens up to her about his wife’s death five years prior. Suddenly, Alice gets an idea.
Alice has Spore-Penny meet her alone on campus and offers to give him the page, she just wants to know why the spores want it. he explains that it’s an instruction manual for the World Seed. Alice gives him the page and Spore-Penny turns to leave, but he suddenly gets very weak. Alice explains that’s because Hamish is out spraying spores on all the students, spreading its consciousness too thin to effect their hosts. Penny 23 is back, and he quickly tries to remember the information he learned from the Spores. All he can really recall is something about The Couple, who are very dangerous and want the page. He knows all sorts of things will come looking for the page now that they know Alice has it.
Ba sure to watch The Magicians on SYFY Wednesday nights at 10pm!