Hi everyone and welcome back to Fillory and much, much further on The Magicians. Who’s ready to see how Julia will be hookwinked on her own petard by the wily Beast? Me TOO! Rolling S2:E2 Hotel Spa Potions recap after the break.
We left the gang as the High Kings and Queens of Fillory
Except for Penny (Arjun Gupta) whose hand-reattachment went south because he opened his mouth (don’t do that) and Julia, who hijacked the Beast to get back at Reynard the Fox.
We open with Quentin (Jason Ralph), Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), Margo (Summer Bishil) and Penny at a fountain in the Neitherlands, the arrival of a couple of thugs sends Penny diving into the fountain: no time for figuring shite out!
We’re back at Brakebills with a still-blind Dean Fogg (Rick Worthy) practicing some fingercasting; yay, they’re alive! That’s not really a vote of confidence, izzit?
Q hands over the notebook they found in the Armory, which signifies a couple of things: one, they aren’t the first students from Brakebills to become royalty in Fillory and two: there is a spell that can help them, but of COURSE it isn’t written in the book. And hey: if the Beast gets free of Julia and goes to The Wellspring and manages to drink the rest of it, all magic everywhere is gone.
HURRY
Penny’s hands are still messed up, yay! Let’s get that fixed too, while we’re at it, yes? The Dean is onnit!
The Beast (Charles Mesure) is doing his level best to drive Julia (Stella Maeve) mad and since Little Miss Sunshine is but a hair away on a good day…it’s totally working. I like the show tunes and he has a great voice! Julia does not. He’s bored, so he taunts her with the news that her friends won’t be her friend for very much longer (well after the shenanigans in Fillory) and he’s done something nasty to the castle as well.
He’s hidden dead rats everywhere and dead people and there’s a test! That nobody has ever passed. My money’s on Eliot (Hale Appleman), all hail the Champagne King!
The gang tries to go back to the cottage, but, er, it’s hidden and it was even Margo’s idea, she just doesn’t know where exactly. Penny hates all of them.
Why have Julia and Penny not hooked up? They could Eeyore and sarcastically mope their way around the f*cking WORLD!
Woot, Eliot’s had them make the very first bottle of Fillorian champagne! It tastes like rat pee though. His wife doesn’t care about that. Fen (Brittany Curran) wants to be obedient, but…Eliot stops her there. Nobody WANTS to be obedient. Eliot doesn’t want to lead a cult, speak up, Fen! There hasn’t been a good leader since Rupert and the people are starving, Eliot! Not just for wine: FOCUS.
Margo et al find the house!
Hey, Josh Hoberman (Trevor Einhorn) is there too! He wants to shake Penny’s hand, whose traitorous digits do so while he kicks Josh squarely in the wobbly parts. Still got his legs!
Dean Fogg is laying out the curriculum for Professor Pearl Sunderland (Anne Dudeck); Fillory is real, Penny, Margo, Quentin and Alice need to be taught Battle Magic STAT. That’s technically illegal, since The Messy Incident, but Bigby (who wrote the spell Alice was referring to in the Brakebills notebook) disagreed vehemently with that decision and was fired and escorted off campus. She hid a bunch of spells all over the place because nothing can ever be simple on The Magicians.
Margo makes Penny spit in his drink…for a hangover cure? I dunno man, that seemed wrong.
Hey, the Beast has brought Julia a present! It’s Marina (Kacey Rohl) whom he wants to cast the spell to catch Reynard the Fox because she has less intimate connection to him. You could say that. Marina has no interest in going after Reynard, she wants OOT.
Alice’s god-juice is starting to wear off, the trinket from the Wellspring is starting to burn. Quentin tells her to take it off, but “not everything that hurts is bad.” Q hates that she has to bear the brunt of this alone, he wishes he could help.
Marina’s found someone else to be bait for Reynard or she’s trying to help out other hedge witches; she’s on the horn to Arleen (Kristen Robek – Canadian represent!) and on her way to the west coast.
Fen takes Eliot to show him what she means; there is all kinds of farmland, but since the Beast has been draining the Wellspring, they can’t use magic to do it and nobody knows how to farm by hand. Eliot does his best to pass out but nobody’s buying it. You see, Eliot’s big secret is that he grew up on a farm.
Fen’s ‘CITED, coming in for a kiss for her king. Eliot stares at the hunky guardsman behind them, this is gonna be a tricky marriage.
Time to look for the spells; Professor Bigby sounds like a riot! “Brilliant, impatient, stubborn, mercurial and a 500 year old pixie who more or less saw humans as children to be toyed with.” Yaaaay. She left the title of her book of battle magic, it will be very difficult to find, to the books!
Much fingercasting ensues
And a list of anagrams is compiled. Professor Sunderland recognises “Hotel Spa Potions”! That’s a book! And it’s really titled Last Hope Options and has a chapter missing BECAUSE OF COURSE IT DOES. There is a nah-nah-boo-boo note to Dean Fogg, though, so there’s that. Margo immediately knows that Bigby is referring to Rhode Island
Marina’s made it to see Arleen and oop, too late. Much too late, Arleen has very little time left to live.
Eliot’s figured out how he wants his wedding night to go, there will be naked couples everywhere that he can watch while he and Fen do their thing. She protests, but really: let the girl know what she’s up against. Nobody wants to be caught unaware by an unexpectedly homosexual partner in what they thought was a heterosexual partnership. She stares him down and he grudgingly dismisses all the nekkid people; “life is about new experiences and I’ve never been pussy-whipped, so.”
The team works late into the night, except Penny who is still struggling with his hands. Professor Sunderland really thinks she can help.
Dean Fogg is called to his office; there’s been a security breach and we know who that is! Marina needs asylum.
He refuses; she can keep her memories and he hopes that keeps her safe but he can’t have her at Brakebills again, infecting the students with her bad character.
They’re off to see Bigby (Amanda Brooks) on Rhode Island. Wow, her and the Dean go way back, don’t they? What with all the kissing and “do you have time to go to bed with me?” Some human-baiting later, she zooms in on Alice: she’s the one casting because her power is almost god-like! Did she f*ck one of them? Hers was wonderful, she glowed for weeks! She doesn’t just give spells, though, she doesn’t give ANYTHING. So… convince her.
Eliot apologizes to Fen for their presumably disastrous wedding night and their subsequent talk leads to the heart of the farming problem; not enough shit. The farmers in Fillory don’t fertilize!
Side note: I can’t tell if Brittany Curran as Fen is being directed to act as though she’s in an off-off-off-OFF-OFF-OFF Broadway play or if it’s her choices, but her overbright characterizations and stagey mannerisms are grating and stand out in a profoundly bad way.
Bigby won’t stop playing around, preferring to talk about sex under a juniper tree with Dean Fogg than teach them the Rhinehold Something spell. Finally she relents and hands it to Alice with a warning. She’s the only one that can be within twenty feet of the blast, which will kill everyone nearby, including the Beast. Alice is stronger than him now, but not for long.
Eliot is rallying the masses for Farming 101
Royal Dung for all!
Alice is practicing the spell, but it’s taking too long. She won’t be able to stop the Beast in time, which means that Dean Fogg is gonna have to bring out the goodies he’s tucked away too.
Professor Sunderland is helping Penny with his hands, which turns into sexy times after about 10 seconds. Penny’s a complete and flaming dbag most of the time, but I still would. Professor Sunderland will think about it after Penny graduates.
Julia and Quentin are meeting. You can tell they’re meeting up because she has her boobs out. He warns her to stay away from the Beast when the blast comes, but she wants clarification. AFTER she gets Reynard, right? Um, NO, Jules, as soon as possible and he needs her to see this is bigger than her. I’m sure she’ll understand. Or she’ll threaten Q, one of those.
He storms away, to be stopped by Julia offering up the information about the Beast cursing the castle and all the royalty in place.
Penny’s hands are better, yay! And he’s still shirtless, double yay!
I am so old and creepy, my bad.
Dean Fogg leads them through the preparation for the battle ahead, it starts with them all getting very drunk and getting really painful-looking carving / tattoos on their backs. NOW for the painful part!
Professor Lee drags this out of the fire
Which each person will get, along with a control word so they can aim the firey little critters at the Beast. Now Quentin, lift your shirt and turn around. Margo’s right, those words never lead to anything good.
EWWWWWWWWWW OUCH!!!! EWWWWWWW!!! OUCH!!!!
The kingdom’s crops are flourishing, but don’t thank the high king, thank the hell that was his childhood. The gang arrives just then, long live the Reign of King Shit!
Marina’s gone back to Julia’s apartment, where the Beast is STILL singing. Are these three gonna go kill a god? “Yeah, for starters” snaps Julia, who is clearly at her wit’s end. And we’re out!
Okay. So this side story of Eliot as the King Shit can end at any time, I love that we’re getting more screen time with him, but he needs to be with the gang! He’s part of the A-Team! Until next time!
