Here it is, the very last episode of season two of The Magicians juuuuuussst before season three drops on January 10, 2018. Whew!! Rolling S2:E13 We Have Brought You Little Cakes after the break.
We open with Ember explaining the entire history of Fillory
Aka Spillory’s Last Gasp wherein they try to stuff in everything that happened in the books in the season two finale. This is gonna be tricky!
We open with Alice (Olivia Taylor-Dudley) playing with a candle, or rather the fire. She misses the fire, she explains to Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph), although she probably instead misses the purity of purpose that a niffin has, all destruction all the time. He makes her drink something that keeps her from self-harming, which is a very good thing given her mood.
Penny Adiyodi (Arjun Gupta, so horribly and wonderfully miscast from the books: all the kudos for going this particular route) is not doing very well in the sick ward at Brakebills; he has “cancer plus” as diagnosed by Professor Lipson (Keegan Connor Tracy) and backed up by Dean Fogg (Rick Worthy). He has approximately three weeks to live and he’s not doing it in that hospital bed. C’ya!
Kady Orloff-Diaz (Jade Tailor) shows up in time to slow him down a little; she’s crying because Reynard the Fox (Sean Astin) is gone, but not how she expected and now Penny is dying too.
Eliot Waugh (Hale Appleman) finds Julia Wicker (Stella Maeve) weeping in her apartment, she’s got her shade back and can now feel all the pain and fear and guilt she’s been spared the last year when her soul was nicked during her godbortion. He wants her god-hiding amulet and help while he goes to beg Ember to save Fillory.
Kady and Julia aren’t speaking, it seems there is anger with Eliot and Penny too, but both dudes want to save Fillory. Eliot is headed to find Prince Idri of Loria, Kady has a plan to take Penny to the Bahamas which is derailed by his being recalled by The Order. The Librarian (Mageina Tovah) doesn’t care if Penny is dying, he’s got work to do! Knowledge is more important than any of them.
Kady does not agree.
In the Fairy Realm, High Queen Margo Hanson (Summer Bishil) and Josh Hoberman (Trevor Einhorn) have found Fen (Brittany Curran) but she won’t leave without her baby.
Backstory: the baby Margo sold to the fairies to fix the Wellspring because Ember had pooped in it.
Margo and Josh are brought before the Fairy Queen (Candis Cayne), who doesn’t want to hear any bs about baby-stealing.
She does have good advice, though, and gives them a plant that Josh can bake into little cakes, since Ember is a big, big fan of little, little cakes. She has to extract a toll before they can leave, what’s that about? And do they get Fen and the baby or what? These are definitely Hans Christian Anderson type fairies, not Disney.
Eliot approaches Quentin, who is consumed only by helping Alice. He gave her a non-suicidal potion so she can’t hurt herself, but he’s stuck. Eliot reminds Q that Alice made lots of her own choices and Quentin chose to be a king and he has an obligation to Fillory. Plus, he speaks fluent fanboy.
They’re off to see Umber (Nico Evers-Swindell), clearly! He takes Quentin to his new pocket world instead, formerly named Cuba.
Prince Ess (Arlen Escarpeta) has been sitting on Eliot’s throne, he’d like that back now peez! Especially since Prince Idri (Robert Leonard Jones) isn’t a rat any more. Speaking of him not being a rat…does that mean Eliot’s banishment has released them from his contract? He steps close to Idri and then..woo hoo all the kissing!!
Oh but it’s not all good news in the throne room; the toll for leaving the fairy land was one of Margo’s eyes.
They banter a little coz course but Margo is reeling. These are real consequences and she can’t pretend they aren’t anything. But first, they need to party like their world depends on it! A lame orgy and Josh’s little cakes!
The new world Umber is creating is super duper…linear. All cubes and blankness and no flavour. Umber is frustrated with Quentin’s dissatisfaction and insistence on talking about Fillory.
Ember came for the little cakes! Eliot and Margo pitch keeping Fillory as a disordered world full of shittonnes of dramz but the fraternal discord between Ember and Umber overshadows everything.
Suddenly both godbrothers are facing off in Fillory and once Ember realised that Umber must have traded his life for Ember’s banishment…it gets ugly.
Ember kills Umber (I fink) and Julia seizes the opportunity to imbue a sword with her god-killing energy. Before she gets a chance to kill Ember, he crushes her throat (using the force!) so Quentin grabs the sword and kills Ember (surprising Ember greatly in a whimsical way) and now we have TWO dead gods and a godless Fillory.
A new day has dawned on Fillory! Margo gets everyone to work on a new constitution and Quentin heads back to Brakebills South to tempt Alice back to life with bacon.
It works!
She contemplates with irritation that something as delicious as bacon must be paired with the reality of gross and greasy hands and now we’re into the secks! Which also can leave gross stuff on your hands.
Kady’s sought out Harriet (Marlee Matlin) for help with Penny; she offers his services as Harriet’s mole in the Library if she helps him not be dead. Deal!
In post coital chitchat Quentin mentions that he killed Ember, which freaks out Alice: what about the twins’ parents?! The Old Gods control everything and if they decide they don’t like humans any more…
We cut to Brakebills where Professor Lipson’s class is interrupted by the Plumber of the Gods (Kurtis Maguire) who shuts off all magical power everywhere.
Plumber
Of
The
GODS
2 Months Later
Dean Fogg is leading class, but it’s all the grown graduates; Quentin, Alice and Josh poring over theoretical works. Magic is gone.
Outside Brakebills lurks Joseph (Jamie Harris), looking for Alice. He’s dying but he’s here to warn Alice that one of her enemies are looking for her. When she was a niffin she did something mean to the Lamphrey and his family?
Eliot and Margo fight over the future; Fen shows up just in time to warn them that the fairies are coming.
So everyone is beseiged except Julia, who finds Quentin at the smoke pit to show off her ability to still cast spells. How?
And we’re out!
I have only just finished the books, it’s really interesting how they’ve switched around the sequence of things so that the second book happens after the third. I like how they managed to incorporate most of main elements while leaving things in such a way that they would be able to cut bait reasonably if there wasn’t another season renewal. But there is! In fact, the new series starts in just over a week, I will be there really, really late! Cheers you lot and have a fantastic New Year!
