WiC Watches: The Magicians season 4
Episode 410: “All That Hard, Glossy Armor”
Margo takes a trip through the desert while Quentin, Julia and Penny try to save the god Enyalius, aka Angus, played by former Game of Thrones star Gethin Anthony (Renly Baratheon). Throughout its four seasons, The Magicians has included loads of Game of Thrones, and now they actually have a former cast member.
This was also a musical episode, but it missed the high mark set by last season’s group sing of “Under Pressure.” I guess there’s no substitute for Queen.
Let’s start with Margo, who is on a quest to find a way to expel the monster inhabiting Eliot’s body. As she treks through the desert, she runs out of water and gets very thirsty, but not to worry, she’s brought along her talking lizard. She licks it, which is as gross as it sounds. After licking the lizard, Margo trips balls and starts to see Eliot, who is singing “Don’t Get Me Wrong” by the Pretenders.
Throughout the episode, Margo sees all her friends, but they end up being figments of her imagination representing certain parts of her subconscious. Eliot is the person she loves most, so she sees him as a spirit guide of sorts…while under the hallucinogenic lizard excretions.
Margo finds the group of nomads she’s been looking for and discovers that the desert is full of red sand demons that can possess a woman who has an emotional outburst. Margo doesn’t like that, but she plays along because she finds out there is a special black grain of sand that when harvested in large quantities can be forged into weapons that expel demons.
So she goes out into the desert and begins harvesting, only it’s much harder than she thought, and pretty soon she has a huge emotional outburst that summons one of the red sand demons. Just when she thinks her goose is cooked, the demon takes on the form of a woman and tells Margo she and her ilk aren’t there to hurt women, but come to the call of extreme emotions to help them through whatever is causing distress. The demon summons all the black sand from around her and gives it to Margo.
Margo takes the sand back to the nomads who laugh at her and tell her it was a fool’s errand and they won’t help her. Wrong answer. Margo, being a powerful Magician, uses battle magic to subdue the leaders and takes their demon-expelling axes. She releases all the captured red sand demons and tells the women of the nomadic tribe the demons are there to help them and they no longer need to rely on men to protect them.
As she leaves, Margo and her figment friends (because she’s still tripping balls) sing “Here I go again” by Whitesnake…which was the best number the group did this episode. Jade Tailor (Kady) is the real talent here. She’s got a powerful voice that carried last season’s musical episode, and she’s the one bright spot in this one.
Back to the action: Penny tells Quentin and Julia that the monster inhabiting Eliot isn’t actually trying to rebuild his own body, but rather the god stones are for his sister’s body which is way worse. Apparently, the monster got imprisoned by the gods for his crimes, while his sister was killed, chopped up and swallowed by the gods who killed her. Whatever this sister is, she sounds like bad news.
So Penny, Julia and Quentin track down Enyalius, aka Angus, and try to warn him the monster is coming. He toys with them before revealing he’s got a panic room dimension he can scurry off to where not even the monster can follow…only he can’t remember his password.
While he’s trying different combinations to get into his safe room, he tells Julia he’s been keeping an eye on her. He knows she was a goddess once, but gave up her power to help her friends. Now, even though she is immortal and invincible, she has no powers, but Angus tells her he has a way to return her godlike powers to her if she’ll just come with him. But, as she’s deciding, the monster shows up and kills Argus, pulling his sister’s god stone out of his body. Renly Baratheon can’t catch a break, y’all.
The monster then turns on Penny, Julia and Quentin, but Penny, being a traveler, grabs his friends and blinks away.
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Finally, Zelda the head librarian does some digging into her boss Everett’s office, and finds out he’s the one behind “Serpent,” the magical terrorist group killing Hedge Witches. She also uncovers evidence that Everett has been lying about how much ambient magic the Library has been allotting to Magicians on Earth. For some reason, the Library is hoarding magic, and Zelda wants to get to find out why before it’s too late.
This wasn’t my favorite episode of season 4; in fact, I thought it was a bit of a speed bump in an otherwise exciting and excellent season. The musical numbers weren’t that great, there weren’t any answers to Julia’s missing power problems (because Angus is now dead), and the entire episode felt like the writers just phoned it in. Hopefully, we’ll get back to the fun next week.