Jace, our tragic traitor of treachery has now been locked
up in the City of Bones – which contains lots of medieval decorating, some nice
flickering torches (you know they’re gas and just pretending to be fire) and
someone’s even pulled out their sound track of ominous screaming
Y’know, the Shadowhunters may actually have a better job
of selling themselves as good guys if they don’t have a torture dungeon.
There we run into Hodge who is also imprisoned and tries
to make common cause with Jace as they’re both evil traitors of treason-ness
but Jace isn’t having that because Hodge is totally a worse traitor (and no, I’m
not arguing Jace’s innocence. By all interpretations Jace has supported Valentine).
In between the spooky Silent Brothers torturing Jace
while he sleeps (even before he’s been tried because these are the good guys, folks!)
and him suffering still further when Clary visits and attempts to act. Jace
would like her to stay away from him. I can understand that – the only thing
worse than Clary’s acting if Jace and Clary trying to act together – please, please
bring on Magnus. He’s been to drama school!
Anyway time for Jace’s trial where he holds the big scary
sharp sword of please-don’t-murder-the-prosecution aka
the-sword-of-my-gods-why-does-our-court-rely-on-violent-criminals-being-given-fucking-huge-weapons
(deployed before the Hand Grenade of Plea Deals and the Bazooka of Self-Advocacy).
This sword prevents him lying when Victor, incompetent and more than a little
evil head of the Shadowhunters of New York (this character needs a moustache to
twirl because he’s such a caricature of incompetent evil) starts questioning
him. About wanting to fuck his sister
No, really, most of Victor’s questions are about how Jace
totally gets all hot and bothered about Clary, his sister-but-he-didn’t-know
it. Nice to see Victor has his priorities in order. He also asks whether Jace
can fully pledge himself to the Clave… which Jace can’t. He can’t because he’s
not sure whether the Clave is doing enough to take down dangerous Downworlders.
He is sentenced to life imprisonment with lots of torture.
While I want to point to all the evil torture and killing
is another good reason to not want to pledge. I’m picky like that.
While he’s being sentenced Valentine moves in to “rescue”
him, in the process killing lots of the torturing Silent Brothers (should I be
sad about this?). Hodge also dies but Jace refuses to leave with his evil daddy
because, y’know evil. However when given a choice between stopping Valentine
portalling out (he still has a pet enslaved Warlock) with the Special Sword or
saving Cartoon-Villain Victor’s life he chooses the latter
Oh Jace, that was a bad decision on so very many levels.
Even Clary would have difficulty beating that one and her decisions in the book
were so poor that we named
a trope after her.
Let’s drop in on the oh-so-hyped relationship of Alec and
Magnus. They actually talk about Jace
About how important Jace is (but Alec kind of remembered
you Magnus, sort of)
Yes Jace is very important
Shall we talk more about Jace?
Hey, how about we get coffee some time?
Yes. Then we can talk more about Jace.
It’s riveting stuff.
Vampire Camille is still running around killing people
for funsies and Cartoon-Villain Vinc- waait a minute, was his name Victor or
Victor? Bugger, Victor now I’ve got to find and replace this whole damn review.
Anyway, Cartoon Villain Victor decides the best way to
deal with Camille killing people is to brutally torture Rafael. Because Victor
is evil and incompetent and apparently there are laws about this but no-one
actually cares
This ends up with Rafael and Simon snarling at each other
over who should be hunting down Camille and so they turn to Magnus who has
absolutely no life of his own and his entire purpose in existence is to be on
call to help whichever straight person rocks up at his door demanding his
services (which was
the same in the books as well). We have a wonderfully
convoluted reason for why Magnus is everyone’s uber-powerful errand boy (he
can’t have a family of his own so he’s become like adoptive uncle to all waifs
and strays which would be sweet if it weren’t also a deeply homophobic trope
reducing LGBT people to peripheral servants in other people’s families.
Especially since there has been zero effort to actually portray Magnus as
having this kind of extended family network) so of course Magnus is happy to
help them
As he uses his woo-woo to capture Camille we learn that
she’s pretty much his one true love, the woman who has been there to support
him through his period bouts of angst and generally that imprisoning her and
handing her over is going to hurt him badly. Of course he does it anyway (and
shows up everyone else’s acting in the process since, y’know, he can) because
Magnus sacrificing and serving is what he does
Back to the Clave and we have Clary/Jocelyn drama. They’re
still fighting but Jocelyn is being banished to Idris on account of not being
trusted (because, y’know, the relationship with Valentine, hiding they had
children and stealing one of the Clave’s most precious artefacts and hiding it
for several years… actually far be it from me to defend Cartoon Villain Victor
but she doesn’t actually look all that trustworthy. I think I’d ship her off to
a different content as well). She wants Clary to come with. Clary is not a fan
of that because different continent and all and she hasn’t finished pouting
over her mother and Reasons.
Luckily a demon starts killing people so they can put
that on the back burner for a while. Because of her complete lack of any kind
of experience with demons, the supernatural et al, they decide to take Clary
with them. Because of course you do. Who doesn’t want a complete rooky of
dubious loyalty on a demon hunt? They find Luke covering the crime scene and
generally being a useful little servant of the Clave. He also wants Jocelyn to
know that despite him already spending the last couple of decades pining after
her from afar and generally getting nowhere, he’s quite willing to abandon his
life, his job and his pack to come with her to Idris
Luke, really, no. This lady’s not good for you Luke, and
no amount of playing the Nice Guy is going to get you true love. And can we
have one minority on this show who doesn’t exist to selflessly sacrifice and
pledge their service to others? It’s tiresome and unpleasant.
The demon has killed people but is nowhere to be found –
because it’s apparently a new Valentine demon which is capable of possessing
people, even Shadowhunters. It’s also completely undetectable to wards, sigils
and other defences so possessed Shadowhunters can just wander in without
setting off an alarm, saying a password or anything. It’s a pretty major
security flaw
Once in the Institute it starts getting the Shadowhunters
to kill each other, cutting a nice swathe through the extras, injuring
characters which are a bit more important before possessing Alec (the
Shadowhunters respond to a monster that can possess them by wandering around
alone. Of course they do.
Possessed Alec kills Jocelyn which nicely solves any more
conflict from Clary over whether she has to go to Idris or not. It also spares
us any more scenes of Clary trying to act with her mother because ye gods those
are agonising. Now if something can eat Jace?
It also means Alec is going to have even more angst,
think he’s even more ineffective and be even more of a trainwreck. It doesn’t
help that Clary saves him from possessed Izzy so now he’s going to owe her and
feel super guilty for not liking her and fawning at her feet like everyone else
does
Oh joy.
I’m going to have to start drinking watching this show.
