Julia wakes up in a not-so-great scenario, immediately confronted with NotEliot and his dying sister writhing on an old stone as her unearthly presence rejects the feeble human body that is attempting to contain it. Calling up Our Lady Underground who in fairness answers pretty promptly, but is ultimately uselss against the evil siblings… one tid bit of information gleaned from her before her untimely, but completely expected death, was that she informs Julia that her inbetween status (God….. Mortal-Human) has been there as a sort of test, one that she can’t fail, as long as the choice she makes is hers*.
Whilst Kady and Zelda are trapped in the infamous Poison Room; Quentin, Margo, Alice and Penny 23 make their way to Fillory to Fen, where she has found an entire reservoir of untapped magic – with a few quirks and configurations to be made before they can actually access it, Quentin’s task for the episode becomes clear..
Pro? If they can figure out a way to make a Fillorian Flower bloom, then they have access to the magic. Con; if they cant.. they turn into a fish….. like good ol’ Josh Hoberman.
Zelda, whilst in the Poison Room with Kady and Peedo-Plover, gets her consciousness transported into a different branch so that Everett can confront her about breaking into the Poison Room with a hedge-witch. He spews nonsense about becoming a god so that he can give that power to the Library, and have that level of defense against enemies like the evil twins that now inhabit the bodies of Eliot Waugh and Julia Wicker. Zelda wraps her head around it and starts to pick up th elayers of bullshit that he’s putting down. This reviewer is highly skeptical and one hundred percent convinced that there’s no way his plan is even the slightest fragment of altruistic or philanthropic. This is about domination and power for Everett, nothing more. Dean Fogg in the meantime makes an incredibly badass break-in to the Library, kicking ass and taking names on his way into the Poison Room. Taking down a pair of workers only to ffollow up by turning another two top level Librarians into two of the most adorable puppies I’ve come across in quite some time.
Back to the Evil twins, emo NotEliot and NotJulia, now that his all-consuming sister has arisen in her new form, she sets her sights on destroying the old Gods, their parents, who made them, deemed them monsters and tried to destroy them. Their plan involves, surprise surprise, breaking into the Poison Room to get a ‘key’ of sorts that can bring them to the plane of their parents.
Quentin meanwhile is tasked with the challenge of making the Fillorian Flower bloom, Plover tells him that “To make it bloom, you have to truly love Fillory.” Q has had to deal the loss of innocence and childhood, he had loved, cherished and adored Fillory but that was because it was fantasy, and he didn’t know what it was. The idea of letting go of childish ideals, but holding onto a true belief in magic, Fillory, having grown up. But Alice somewhat poignantly tells him that “being an adult doesn’t mean you have to throw away the things that you love. It means seeing the world through new eyes.” Here we have metaphor heaped on to this episode. The rebirthing and blooming of a new dawn, a new age that will be installed, along with the shedding of the skin of his past, letting go his qualms and picking up some new insights. But it also comments on how the idea of something is enough to save someone’s life. “People like me can somehow find an escape. There has got to be some power in that. Shouldn’t loving the idea of Fillory be enough?” Turns out, it is.
The fight gets taken to the Library, of course, where NotEliot and NotJulia have found their scroll containing the way to get to the plane that the old gods inhabit. When NotJulia sees Quentin and Alice with their battle axes and bottles, utters the solitary word: “Adorable.”
