The Magicians
Season 2, Episode 6: The Cock Barrens
Airdate: March 1, 2017
On The Magicians this week the squad find themselves dealing with more than they can handle as new complicated problems arise with no clear solutions.
Q tries to summon Alice in Fillory and fails, attends her memorial and deals with her parents instead
After seeing a very dead looking Alice across a New York City street in last week’s episode, Q returns to Fillory trying to summon her near the Wellspring shack. After an hour of doing an interpretive dance, Margo and Eliot convince him to stop. Q reluctantly halts his Cirque du Soleil number since he feels obligated to attend Alice’s memorial anyways at her parent’s home. He heads to casa de Quinn where Alice’s mom and dad are still as crummy as ever. Things take a strange turn when ghost Alice shows up and leads Q to her father’s locked study where she shows him an ancient Egyptian text. Daniel Quinn soon comes upon him and Quentin confesses that he’s been seeing his daughter and that she’s led him here to this book. Daniel believes in Q and says that he thinks Alice wants them to build a pyramid to usher her soul to the afterlife and be at peace. So the two men construct a pipe pyramid where then a blood relative of the deceased must use an enchanted mirror to help the soul crossover. Daniel gets into an accident while putting hanging the looking glass and breaks both of his legs. Previously he admitted to Quentin that he had a fear of heights and when Alice was young, she had a cat that had gotten stuck up a tree and he refused to climb up to get the animal down. Eventually though, Stefanie tells Q that she’ll help finish the spell and she begins with her usual selfish notion that she was a great mom. But at last before the mirror cracked completely, she admits that she never really understood her daughter and didn’t try too. As she runs away from the guilty admission, niffin Alice appears before Q and we find out that she didn’t actually die. The cacodemon stuffed her magical essence into the tattoo trap in the magician’s back and she was doing this to screw with her parents. Well hot damn. Well played Alice!
Penny returns to Fillory to find some moss
Penny has to head back to Fillory to find some moss that Professor Mayakovsky wanted in order to help fix his hands. While there, he gets drawn into the trouble that High King Eliot and High Queen Margo is currently dealing with as an unexpected new complication arises from the neighboring kingdom of Loria. Penny also gets close to the royal mapmaker. Begrudgingly, the mapmaker draws the traveller a map of where he can locate the moss he’s been so desperately looking for.
Eliot and Margo deal with crafty Prince Ess, Loria’s most eligible bachelor
As if they didn’t have enough problems to deal with, Prince Ess of Loria arrives at Whitespire with a treaty proposal to the rulers of Fillory. Because they had royally screwed over his land with the demise of the Wellspring, he wants a 50/50 split of rights to the magical waters and a marriage between him and Margo. Margo is instantly defiant about it and as a result, one of Loria’s magicians transports the whole castle to the neighboring kingdom and they are held hostage until they agree to his terms. This is an interesting moment for the two friends as Eliot urges Margo to think like a monarch now because they have to put the interest of Fillory ahead of their own personal happiness. Bravo Eliot! Margo attempts a hand at diplomacy by talking to Ess but instead she and the Lorian prince end up sleeping together because he insulted her sexual prowess. However, Penny discovers that they had been royally duped, the castle never having left the grounds (it was just a powerful illusion spell). Margo tells Ess before the royal court that she’s made her decision and that she would marry Ess on the condition that he gives her a tour of his kingdom beforehand. The prince asks to get married first and she then breaks the illusion spell, declaring war on Loria. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Julia and Kady try to find the girl who banished Reynard from Earth
After extensive research online, Julia was able to find a series of strange natural disasters that happened within hours of each other that traced back to Hoboken. An industrial park located in the Jersey suburb burned to the ground except for one building that was undamaged with a perfect circle around it. The two women head there and are able to find traces of the ritual circle. Julia thinks that human blood was used to make it and so they are able to use that in a tracking spell to find the location of the woman who banished Reynard.
Meanwhile, Kady is also using her own contacts to try and help Julia with her baby problem (she is preggers with a demigod). Eventually one of her mom’s contacts reaches back out, one who knows people who can help abort the magical fetus growing inside the hedge witch.
It takes awhile for the locator spell to work, but eventually it does and Julia goes to the location to plead for help. Dana, agrees to talk to her inside her home and tells her story about how she had summoned Reynard when she was young and idealistic. It sounds a lot like Julia’s story and the elder woman seems sympathetic. She explains that she cannot banish the fox god again but Julia can and she’ll show her how. They head downstairs to her basement where the hedge witch notices a lot of cat liter and leaves a marker for Kady in case anything happens to her. Good thing she does because Dana soon knocks her out and ties her up. Once Julia wakes up the older witch explains that the only way to banish Reynard is to harness the power from his child while giving birth. Julia of course is horrified because she would rather die than carry the baby to term. There is also a very large humanoid creature in the basement with them and at first Julia thinks that it’s Dana’s baby. The other woman laughs and says that is her haxsonpaxson, a creature that radiates such a foul magical stench that anyone near it is hidden from any kind of tracking spell. It’s also what’s kept her safe from Reynard.
With great timing, Kady arrives to the rescue and knocks Dana out. Julia then takes the Haxenpaxen with them because she sympathizes that he’s been imprisoned for so many years. With the magical protector gone, Reynard is able to find Dana and exact his revenge.
Final Thoughts
So many new subplots happening that continues to add to the magical madness that is The Magicians. Thoroughly enjoying seeing niffin Alice, it’s almost like the evil twin of living Alice. Olivia Taylor Dudley does such a wonderful job at portraying this totally different side of her character. Her body language and facial expressions are sensual and malicious, so opposite from the meek and reserved Alice we’ve come to know and love. The new situation that Margo finds herself in with Prince Ess is also so much fun to watch. Have to hand it to her for not taking crap from anyone, especially a man who was trying to get his way at her expense.
The squad has a lot to to overcome at the moment with a high likelihood of even more crap heading their direction before the season is over and I for one can’t wait to see what happens next.
The Magicians is on Syfy Wednesdays at 9/8 central.
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