Elliot is in his
dream world and yes he is still alive. He’s in the Physical Kids house,
enjoying his time and memories with Todd and especially Margo - yes it’s
classic “you’re locked in your happy memories prison” trope
But there’s a
persistent knocking on his memory door and we’re introduced to Charlton.
Charlton was the Beast’s original host (and now dead) and has a convenient
source of knowledge (and being beaten up by Margot). He tells Elliot that
everything but he and Elliot is a memory - but there’s a bunch of monsters
around as well - monsters which were the Monster’s old hosts. Which were
monsters locked in a prison which is a lot of awfulness… they’re only safe in
the happy place.
Which is fine but Charlton reveals the door out of this is in Elliot’s worst possible moment which he will have suppressed
There follows an
exploration of Elliot’s worst memories. Starting with the truly moving and
tragic - Elliot bullied as a child and his first use of magic to kill his bully
which deeply traumatised him. It was moving and painful. But no door. Then
there was the him becoming the bully which was just damned annoying because the
whole “homophobe bully is actually gay” trope is nauseating, homophobic, has
horrendous real life implications and is generally awful.
Still no door
Step back and it’s
time to try Elliot’s many many many many hilarious suppressed memories. Because
happiness and self-awareness don’t go so well together and Elliot chose
happiness.
Through his many many
sins (all dicks and daddy issues) Elliot realises what is his biggest regret
and suppressed memory - Quentin
After their epic, beautiful, 50 year relationship (which was never mentioned again AAARGH HOW?!) we finally get a scene where Quentin and Elliot discuss this - specifically Quentin pointing out they’d just had a super awesome 50 year loving relationship, they know they work together as a couple so why not go for it? Elliot objects (he’s cut off but he seems to be suggesting that Quentin is not gay or bi which… uh doesn’t seem to be the case? And I’d rather they not continue that thought because they idea that being gay or bi has no relevance to a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex is annoying and has trope implications) claiming it definitely wouldn’t work and it was always lack of choice. Except our Elliot reveals how this was all lying and Elliot was afraid and now deeply
OH MY GODS MAGICIANS!
I don’t know whether to love you eternally for finally doing this scene or be
so damn angry that you left it this late and until Elliot may die. Gah gah gah
gah. You better remember this The Magicians, when Elliot is saved (WHEN
NOT IF) and he and Quentin are back together (THEY BETTER BE) you better not
play any damn “oh hey let’s be friends” moment. Elliot’s darkest, most
regretted and suppressed memory is TELLING QUENTIN NO - you’ve done this now!
The Magicians, you’ve gone there - you cannot walk this back.
Now to the monster
Elliot in the real world who is tired of Quentin’s grieving and wants to get on
with his nefariousness. He briefly follows up on a random comment by Quentin
and leaves Quentin Julia and Shoshonna with the latter trying to figure out
exactly what Julia is. In doing so she briefly removes Julia’s cloak which
allows the goddess Iris to get in touch
Iris was quite supportive of Julia before but is now Not Impressed. She and all of the gods are now hiding from Monster!Elliot which Julia released, hence the whole Not Impressed, Not a Fan thing. She does freely explain what Julia is - beyond a terrible failure - she is the worst of god and human: a human with no power, but with the immortality which means she will see everything and everyone die. How nice. Oh but gods can still kill her and Iris totally will if Julia doesn’t do as she’s told (I think Iris is getting coercion wrong -I mean saying what a curse immortality is then threatening death is somewhat backwards)
Anyway there’s a
magic rock that produces magic blood which they can throw at Monster!Elliot and
this will freeze him so Iris can then whisk him back to the prison from whence
he came. Sure it will mean imprisoning elliot but everyone thinks he’s dead now
anyway. Since the choice is imprison Elliot and save Julia or save a dead
Elliot and kill Julia the choice is obvious
So while Julia and
Shoshonna work on stalling the Monster (fairly easy since the monster has zero
social clues) by pretending to research the stone heart he’s ripped out of
Bacchus.
Switch from here to
Alice - she’s escaped the Library but worries about Quentin’s upcoming death.
She’s still being followed by Plover who is trying to self-justify by
appropriating good messages about “apologising for what you did but you can’t
for what you did” which, like everything he ever says, would be a good message
if not from the mouth of a self-serving paedophile.
Alice sabotages his escape and instead dumps him into a realm of horrible poisoned death, So we don’t have to deal with that any more
She then runs to
Quentin to warn him. Quentin greets her with all the enthusiasm you could
expect - absolutely none. He doubts her, doesn’t believe her but is eventually
convinced to let her help (the idea is to bleed the magic rock faster so they
disrupt the timeline). She claims she isn’t looking for redemption but
she kind of is. Quentin isn’t having it and only agrees to her help if she then
uses the book-of-finding-where-you-belong on Alice to send her anywhere but
here.
They bleed the rock
and make their plan - distract the Monster, throw blood, Iris appears and YAY
all is solved
So time for the plan
and everything is working except… this is when Elliot breaks free, just for a
moment, and proves to Quentin that he’s alive! Quentin aborts mission, leaps in
the way of the blood to save Elliot. At which point a not very smart Iris
appears to god-kill Julia for screwing it up and gets a self-sacrificing
Shoshonna instead
Her second shot is
stopped when the monster grabs her which she really should have predicted.
There’s a reason you’re in hiding, remember, Iris? The Beast kills her and
pulls out some squsihy part of her as he does
He then turns to our
heroes to basically say they’re all going to get a good killing for messing
with him…. But everyone thinks quickly and claims they intended all this!
They’ve totally set it all up so he could kill Iris - aren’t they awesome? And
look, Julia’s research (which Shoshonna did) reveals that maybe these body
parts he’s claiming are the Monster’s real body - the body he could occupy
again and release Elliot.
Which brings us to
Margo, back in Fillory she is hilariously not especially enthusiastic about
telling the bad news about Elliot. Fen is inconsolable and goes through the
many many many many increasingly hilarious rituals which Margo dismisses quite
rudely. But as it goes on, Fen asks Margo if she’s even cried and we get some
painful truth from her: if she starts crying she will never stop. And she
refuses to be crying and useless when she has a kingdom to run. She has to be
on her game, she cannot afford the luxury of grief
Yes, that was the
impact.
She’s in Fillory
because she’s decided to check out her birthright box… except inside after she
finally opens it, is a talking lizard
Except all the talking
animals of the kingdom have all gone silent. Just typical!
Oh and someone
kidnaps Penny
