Welcome back for another recap of shenanigans on The Magicians; we’ve lost somebody pretty important lately, do you figure they’ll stay gone or what? Let’s roll The Flying Forest and find out

We open with someone sewing flesh together with…wood? Yaaayyyy, good thing I wasn’t eating Chinese food just then (totally was and don’t curr: HONGRY) because Quentin (Jason Ralph) is getting his shoulder put back on! The Beast (Charles Mesure) sliced it off last week when he was trying to take out Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) who went Nifkin then DIED..

High King Eliot (Hale Appleman) and High Queen Margo (Summer Bishil) watch from afar as a centaur performs the fifth surgery on Q; he really does have the biggest dick, Margo, good eye! But, time to get going.

There’s dissent growing in the kingdom; the serfs aren’t paying taxes because The Wellspring can’t be un-defiled fast enough. Margo wants to use force but I’ll be honest: I just stared the whole time at the awesome sloth climbing around on his stick. He moves surprisingly quickly! I shall call him Samuel although he may be Abigail.

Eliot isn’t paying any attention to the dire news from advisors either, he wants to build a monument to fallen queen Alice, 100 feet in the air. Margo calls for a break. Bye Samuel / Abigail!

Eliot is just done, he hates the bureaucracy of running the kingdom, he wants to go HOME! After slamming Alice a bunch of times (whut Margo?? Come on, you were totally almost-friends with Alice), Margo lays it out square for Eliot: he’s the High King, grow the f*ck up.

 

But she has an idea! She’s transports oot, leaving a sad Eliot behind. Margo’s a little, uh, intense these days, yes?

Hey, Julia (Stella Maeve) found Kady (Jade Tailor)!! She’s passed out in a smack den, but it’s still great to see her!

Dean Fogg (Rick Worth) and Professor Lipson (Keegan Conor Tracy) compare notes; they’re starting to see the effects of the befouled Wellspring, between brownouts (not Xanax!) and Dean blowing everything up.

Penny (Arjun Gupta) makes it back to Brakebills to be met by Margo, she gives him the bad news about Quentin and Alice and yeah: intense Margo.

Fen (Brittany Curran) has brought Eliot a petition from the people while he’s IN BED, FEN. Come on!! Awww, Eliot sounds just like a parent

Just as Fen is making her move onto the marital bed to get something “huge”; Margo shows up! She found some living clay at Brakebills and they’re gonna make another him, yay!

Kady’s all washed up and cleaned up now, thanks to Julia, who obviously wants something. Kady thought she could just run and keep Penny safe, but she ended up turning tricks (selling magical miracles! Not the usual) for drugs to numb herself but anyway: Julia cuts to the chase.

She’s got Marina’s (Kacey Rohl) body freeze dried in her living room; Marina managed to carve something into her arm before she was killed and Kady recognises it right away. It’s the call number of a book at Brakebills, everyone’s going back to school today!

Quentin’s finally woken up, too, three weeks later. He’s tended to by a nurse (Bellina Logan who I recognised immediately as Fiona from Sons of Anarchy!!) who hands over the letter and box Eliot left for him. He cries over the news of Alice’s death while I stare at his weird new shoulder and poof! Penny is here to get his hands checked out.

Some yelling and male posturing later, they agree to convalesce privately. The centaur surgeon comes for a look at Penny’s digits (oh come on, we all looked); they’re the most accursed things he’s ever smelled! He can’t help anyone who crossed the Riverwatcher, it could spread to his own hands. Then he shits, right there, turning to say “you’re welcome!” to the nurse cleaning up his leavings.

Margo made a naked Eliot golem! Woo hoo nice bum! Eliot thinks so too, he wants a piece of himself, gimme five minutes to rustle up a raincoat and GO FOR IT! They’re sending golem Eliot to Brakebills, hope he doesn’t explode!

Julia’s made it into the Brakebills library while Kady guides her; they find the right book but they can’t take it out without raising alarms, so Kady sends her somewhere to hide while golem Eliot and Margo make their triumphant return to the physical kids party house.

I have to say: this golem Eliot business is probably the most ridiculous deus ex machina plot device I’ve seen; sending a “golem” to set around Eliot supposedly not being able to leave Fillory? Pfft

Eliot is enjoying his new sense of smell, Margo thinks that’s a byproduct of his “doppelbanger” not understanding re: cocaine just yet. Hey, Todd (Adam DiMarco) went from supernerd to party monster, awww. But in Eliot’s vest, ewwww. Eliot is much more interested in Todd usurping his fictional kingdom at Brakebills rather than the actual world he’s in charge of in Fillory.

Quentin is poring over the box of Alice’s things they left for him when a vision in white brings his head up. The nurse interrupts (RUDE) to tell him that he saw The White Lady (Emma Dumont), who he must have seen while she was offering herself to some centaur’s sight…right. The nurse paints skin over his wooden shoulder and I am okay with that!

Penny wakes up by trying to strangle himself; he breaks his arms and gets Quentin: the Bronies can’t help him. Now go get an axe

Er

Quentin chokes at the last minute, so Penny has to unload one of his specials: “you floppy-haired, limp-dicked, dork” and so on and so forth and Quentin chops his hands off. Then just keeps chopping and chopping and chopping

Haaaayyyy Jai Rodrigues is at the party!! I know him from Kingdom! He’s Javier here and hawt AF, which has not escaped golem Eliot’s attention and WOO HOO!! We have hot dudes making out in bed! And just as Javier makes a move below the sheets (WHY ARE THERE SHEETS???!! Move the linens!!), Fen wakes Eliot up. GODDAMNIT WOMAN, COCKBLOCK ON YOUR OWN TIME.

Sorry, sorry, so now he can have sex with Fen because he’s also having sex with Javier and ah! He tops, which makes sense, given the circumstances.

Q starts his physical therapy, which is archery? Penny comes in with some mental birdflipping and casting advice so Quentin tells him about The White Lady, who has to do the bidding of whoever catches her.

Have you ever realised how rapey old fairytales were? Honestly

Quentin wants to hunt The White Lady with Penny, whose response about his kind of guy chasing white ladies makes me think of

Which makes me laugh every single time I see it. That movie.

Quentin says The White Lady can help get Penny’s hands back; he wants to ask her to bring Alice back to life. They start off in the Flying Forest; they’re so so soooooooo high. “Where are my stuff-touchers??” I am so using that later.

Eliot is trying to explain what happened with The Beast, but really he just wants help from Dean Fogg. He’s in over his head! Dean Fogg doesn’t want Fillory dying due to a perceived Earth Privilege problem, so he offers to help Eliot find his way. Let’s get some experts on this dying planet! We’ll call it Eliot’s thesis project: How To Save An Entire Goddamn World

Julia runs into Margo at Brakebills, oops! The High Queen is still pretty torqued about the whole taking the Beast to kill Reynard thing, yeahhh. But she has to admit that maybe she doesn’t have friends either, pretty much everyone is just friends with her because they’re afraid not to. Okay, maybe NOW, but Margo was glorious and amazing last season, I so would have tried to be her friend if I was 25 years younger when it would have been age-appropriate. Margo decides to help Julia anyway, showing her how she can copy the book she needs.

Quentin gets tired of walking in circles in the Flying Forest and they finally make it out into the open, yay! And then Q realises he’s been carrying around Alice’s necklace and grief drops him to his knees. Penny has to bolster him up (in the douchiest way possible), come on Quentin (I mean Quincy?), you got this!

Julia must have had quite the effect on Margo, she’s gone back to Fillory to agree with Eliot: they do need to build a monument to Alice, and yeah she said they weren’t friends (and that she was just part of the Quentin Package Deal) but maybe that’s why they owe it to her. Because they weren’t her friends and they should have been.

I dunno, man, Alice was kind of a twitchy pill, always mad and shite. They’re gonna havta build the monument themselves.

Julia has sussed out what they need in that book from Brakebills; it’s a necromancy spell to bring Marina back to life. Kady doesn’t wanna, Marina killed her mom, after all. Marina comes back from the dead just long enough to hang Reynard’s appearance on Julia and mention a girl from a few decades ago that had him banished and then she’s gone again.

Penny and Quentin have trapped The White Lady with an arrow to the collarbone; Q crowing that he hit her with his arrow, she has to give him what he asks! Her response “obviously, you turd” made me laugh, so maybe I’m not age-inappropriate after all! Then, after, while Q and Penny are squabbling “you can both each have one wish or you can f*ck off” makes her the best fairytale creature so far. She really sold that.

Quentin asks for Alice to be brought to life; she can’t. They can’t pierce that veil. She can heal Penny’s hands, but the screaming bugs her so she knocks him out. Quentin can’t think of what else to ask for; happiness? Loss of memory? Finally he settles for asking to be sent home: which is in New York, with a quiver full of arrows and a cool questing outfit. And we’re out.

Well. I don’t believe Alice will stay dead long, I’m sure we’ll still be milking that storyline for quite some time. So who was the girl from 30 or 40 years ago that was able to banish Reynard the Fox? Let’s find HER! Fingers crossed it’s Bigby and Dean Fogg gets a little tension relief as well as a lesson on how to fix his magic.What do you think about Quentin going home? I think it is high time he gets back in the real world, enough of FIllory and it’s confusions and literal shite everywhere.

Until next week, you guys!