WiC Watches: The Magicians season 4
Episode 411: “The 4-1-1”
“The 4-1-1” (because it’s Episode 411, get it?) sets up the final two episodes of the season quite nicely. Margo has returned from her time in Fillory with two ice axes she plans to use to expel the monster inhabiting Eliot. There’s a fun bit where she tells the story of how she got the axes, but has to tell it again when a new person enters and asks what’s up. This happens more than a few times until finally she gives up and lets Julia tell the story while she gets a smoothie.
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Alice arrives and give the Book of Binding to Julia and Quentin. It’s supposed to help them find a way to rid Eliot of the monster and kill it once and for all, but they soon realize they need a special spell called an Incorporate Bond to bind the monster to an object once they’ve chased it out of Eliot. Julia stays behind with Penny while Quentin and Alice reluctantly team up to go to Brakebills South to find the only magician Dean Fogg knows who can cast the spell: Professor Mayakovsky.
This is a neat callback to season 1, when Alice and Quentin were first-year students and traveled to Brakebills South where Mayakovsky treated them like garbage. But it’s also where Alice and Quentin fell for each other, so if the fractured couple is going to get another chance at love, it’ll be here. Once inside, they find that Professor Mayakovsky has cast a spell on himself that allows him to swap with mind with past and future versions of itself. So unless they can figure out how to find him in time, they’re screwed.
But of course they figure it out, and Past Mayakovsky helps Current Quentin write the basics of the Incorporate Bond. Only there’s a problem: Past Alice is in love with Current Quentin and doesn’t understand why he won’t kiss or have sex with her, and Past Quentin wants to make out with Current Alice because they’re supposed to be in love. It’s a mess, and before Current Quentin hops back into his body, Mayakovsky finally tells him his magical discipline: repair of small objects.
Quentin’s magical discipline isn’t something badass like Alice’s bending light ability, or Penny’s traveling, no…he mends broken teacups. It may not be flashy, but it’s practical. Anyway, Quentin shows Alice his new trick and she asks him how it feels. “It felt like it needed fixing,” he says. They smile at each other. Awwww, I see a relationship on the mend.
Meanwhile, Penny and Julia open the Book of Binding and an old man crawls out. He reveals that the gods used to be librarians who found a pair of magical siblings (the monster and his sister) who possessed so much god-like power that they never were without magic. The librarians chopped up the sister and turned her pieces into god-stones and ate them, becoming gods themselves. This is why the monster has been killing them this whole time; he’s looking to put his sister back together, only the trauma of being separated from his sister made him forget why he was doing what he was doing.
The old man (the Binder) tells Julia that since she is an immortal god, he can teach her to get her powers back, or at least become a mere mortal human once again, but he’ll need her to destroy his book so no one will ever learn his terrible secrets again.
Julia is pondering her decision when the monster — still in control of not-Eliot — shows up covered in blood and says “they’re all dying.” When Penny and Julia ask him what’s going on, the monster explains he needs a body worthy of holding his sister, and that Julia’s indestructible body is perfect. Before Penny can react, the monster grabs Julia and vanishes.
Finally, in the Library, Zelda and Kady are on a quest to retrieve Everett’s book from the poison room. They eat some magical bugs that will allow them to move around the poison room for about an hour before it kills them. They find the book and realize Everett knows about the Book of Binding, and has been hoarding magic so he can turn himself into a god. They go to exit the room just as the bugs are wearing off, only to find the door’s been locked and they don’t have a key.
Oh yeah, and there’s a river of secret magic under Castle Whitespire that Josh just so happened to accidentally uncover. So there’s that.
There are only two episodes remaining this season. We’re now primed to learn how the gang will settle the score with the monster inside Eliot, and how the Magicians will defeat Everett and the Library. I have a hunch the person Penny 40 saw on the elevator will have something to do with it.
