After managing to take down NotJulia and realizing that they needed another shot of magic from the unending reservoir of untapped power in order to get Eliot back as well, they return to the lake to find the entire reserve disappeared, in its place is a bone dry and empty landscape. Everett made it there first.. Though Julia is no longer plagued by the evil sister, her body, with its goddess powers of healing, heals and reopens the wound from MArgo’s axe, requiring help, the Binder steps in to help, after receiving Penny’s request. Who tells them that Julia’s body “requires transformation. Luckily, this was the Binder’s expertise. But, he needed direction, initiate her long and arduous journey to full goddess-hood, or revert her body to that of a mere human.” Penny recognizing that it should be her choice, but as she’s unconscious the decision needed to be made. Penny makes the choice for her to go back to being human, potentially for the main reason that she would no longer be in his life if she went, to quote the Binder; “Full Goddess”. The result is her having potentially lost her magic all together, she struggles to even attempt to light a candle.. At one point, she berates Penny telling him “thank you for making me perfectly normal again. And we all know that magic doesn’t come from normal.”
Josh “unfish-es” and ends up with some serious magical prowess having been submerged in the reservoir as he turned into said fish.
Quentin and Josh accidentally use the scroll that transports them to the plane where the evil twins parents (the Old Gods) inhabit, and get sent back but after having revealed the problem and got told to throw the bottles containing the souls of the twins into “The Seam between worlds”. Alice’s time as a niffin ended up taking her to the very door itself that the seam lies behind, but they require an inordinate amount of magic in order to make the bond. These twins desire not only to eradicate their parents but to also eradicate human and magical life, everywhere, (including the Library), sure what’s a little mass genocide on a Tuesday afternoon.. It’s difficult not to read this is as a loose metaphor for climate change; something that threatens all of life on this planet, that will lead to the inevitable extinction of our species – the solution? To band together, regardless of ethnicity, race, sexual identity, religious belief systems – and fight back. Kady suggests “co-operative magic” – “We tell everyone, and I mean all over the world – and we all do the same spell at the same time.”
After having made it back into the Mirror Realm, Quentin, Alice and Penny throw the bottles into the realm but after the first one making its way into the seam, Everett appears. He breaks the mirror that when functioning held open the portal to the Seam. But Quentins, magical major being the repair of small objects, fixes it, but enacting this spell, ensures mutual destruction in the mirror realm, Penny grabs Alice out of the room but they witness Q’s destruction.
By far the most poignant and heartbreaking scene in this episode is one of the last, Quentin’s private memorial. Everyone seated around a fire and Kady magics a moving rendition of Take on Me. (very similar in style and tempo to the death scene in Deadpool 2 I may add) which each person sings a chorus of, and not in the cheesy style that tv shows took in the 2000s to do a ‘musical episode’ solely the one song, in memory of Quentin do they sing.
Zelda, whilst discussing plans for The Library: “Then, we tear down and rebuild, which is probably long overdue.” Commenting on the necessary disabling and restructuring of bureaucratic and capitalist /authoritarian regimes. Eliot and Margo take a trip back to Fillory, only to find that three hundred years have passed, a new ‘Dark King’ rules and Fen and Josh were overthrown several centuries ago… Plot twist. Penny, the real one not Penny 23, is guiding Quentin through the underworld, but when Q tells him he’s most concerned about Julia – lamenting how much she fought for magic, Penny reminds him, “Magic…. Comes from pain.” Through her grief, she find her way back to magic.
