With Margo’s return from Fillory and her quest to get her new God-draining axe’s, they come up with a plan to bottle the gods. Requiring the use of an incorporate bond, and the only man who ever successfully created one.. W e get a blast from the past (along with a literal time travel trip to the past) where Quentin and Alice head back to Brakebills South where they find Mayakovsky, but he’s got a different timelines consciousness inside his head. Knowing that they need his help, Q & A deal with their awkward encounters, as the ice still hasn’t exactly thawed out between these two. Including an honest frank conversation between future Quentin and past Alice, a heart-wrenching conversation at that.
It wouldn’t be Margo if she weren’t breaking down some gender and social norms, one of the glorious moments of the episode see her cuffing Penny for continuing any kind of social taboo about menstruation, atta girl! After this, the book that Alice had brought Julia about “The Binder”, turns out a whole man who literally steps from the pages of the books into real life.
The wise old man (or, The Binder) tells the story of how the monsters came into being. It began at the Library (enter Parks and Rec quote here*) Where a man was “testing the limits of power. His specialty was the magic inherent in Gods. The Binder had a theory, when a being of great power, such as a god, is killed, their energy is lost, but he believed it could be preserved. By binding it to an object. That object, in turn could be bound to a Magicians of sufficient training and preparation, effectively turning the Magician into a God. It was a problem that perplexed the Binder and his fellow Librarians, but as it turned out. The old gods themselves provided a solution, two siblings, mistakes, born with the power of many gods.”
The key to their problems, Julia Wicker. The Binder can ease her into one of her two parts: humanity or goddess. The decision is hers. He also tends to talk about himself in the third person constantly, which strangely only gets more endearing and not irritating.
After breaking into the Panic Room in the Library and speed reading all of Everett’s book, Zelda figures out exactly what his plan is, he’s been hoarding magic, lying to everyone, in order to turn himself into a god, she worries aloud “If this book is correct, he succeeds.” The twist? They’ve been trapped in the panic room, and the antidote they had taken was sure to last an hour, perhaps two.
Julia and Penny….. after what seems like an eternity of waiting for these two crazy and ridiculously attractive kids to get together, finally, we have progress. Buuuuut it wouldn’t be The Magicians without leaving us on one gigantic cliff-hanger, just as Penny and Julia are getting close, NotEliot arrives to declare he requires help. His sister is dying, the body isn’t strong enough, he needs one that’s more durable. aaaand you as the viewer come to the only logical conclusion and feel your stomach drop as NotEliot grabs Julia and disappears.
