We’re back for the second week of the newest season of The Magicians with the aptly titled ‘Lost, Found, and Fucked’. The premiere episode last week served as a pretty entertaining means of re-acclimating viewers back into the world that the show has built in it’s past 3 seasons while also getting us used to the new status quo post magic returning at a pretty breezy pace. This episode didn’t quite give us a full picture of exactly where everyone’s story lines are heading for the season, but an outline is at least starting to become more clear. Besides that, the commonality of the episode came in the fact that most of the characters had a scheme, plan, or course of action that looked promising but ultimately fell through in one way or another.
This episode starts in pretty much where you would expect — Greece, obviously. I’m not really familiar with what the Grecian landscape is looking like these days, but if it’s anything like a random park with aged marble columns scattered around in various states of decay then they nailed it. Monster/Eliot and Quentin/Brian are there because Monster/Eliot is looking to summon Enyalius, the god of war. In order to do so, there needs to be a sacrifice and a pig needs to be captured with human effort so Quentin/Brian is left with the task. At this point Quentin/Brian has been through so much that he’s not phased by just poofing to the other side of the world, and straight up lazy when he’s asked to partake in physical labor. There’s nothing deep to say about this, he’s just over it, and if that’s not a big mood for 2019 then I don’t know what is.
In Marina’s apartment, everyone recovers from being knocked out by the enchantment after Marina attempted to see who the questors really are last episode. Thanks to her wards, they’re not dead, and thanks to an automated warning triggered by the spell being tampered with, Marina knows that Dean Fogg is the one who enchanted the questors. She also deduces that since Fogg is the one who cast the spell who exactly it was he casted it on and, as a result uncovers Penny’s traveller tattoos and makes it so that he’s once again able to teleport. Why do they need to teleport, you ask? Because Marina has a scheme in the works, of course.
While all of the apartment action is happening, there’s one less questor there because Margo/Janet got transported to Fillory by Ember. Margo/Janet heads over to a pond to get some water and is pulled in by a pretty gnarly looking creature. The creature in question is Lord Fresh and not only is he not there to harm Margo, but he knows who she is. Turns out the Lord is in possession of Margo’s birthright box. Because of that, he knows quite a lot about Margo, including future events, which is how he knew she’d be there and wouldn’t know who she is. Because of Fogg’s spell, she can’t actually take the box so he tells her to find Ember, get the spell lifted and then she can come back and claim it.
She’s not too long in her quest to find the god before she gets captured by some Fillorian guards who take her to the palace prison and we get to see Fen, who’s still filling in as acting high king for the first time this season. After seeing what mentioning Margo’s name does and the fact that Margo tells Fen about her dreams involving Ember, she has no real problem believing that Margo/Janet is who she says she is, especially considering she needs help to find Ember who has been partying way too hard all throughout Fillory and when he returned, the opium in the air got turned up a few too many notches since a huge portion of the population are dying, mostly from falling asleep at the worst times.
Back on earth, Marina puts her aforementioned scheme into motion that starts with having Penny transport her to Brakebills then temporarily sedating Todd (who is now Dean Fogg’s assistant) and ends with her injecting Dean Fogg with the same liquid he’d given everyone to cast the identity spell, painting him into a corner of either revealing there’s an antidote for ending the spell or becoming someone new himself. This plot, more than the others is the A plot of the episode, and rightfully so as looming over everyone’s head more than the castle blackspire monster being out there is the fact that our heroes don’t know who the hell they are, and even more than that, the novelty of the whole new identities thing has a shelf life that I suspect wouldn’t have made it past the third episode.
Fogg doesn’t hesitate to accept his fate that he’ll be someone completely different in less than 24 hours, not even considering the alternative of exposing the fact that he can undo the spell on the questors. Fogg swore Todd to secrecy, who buckles, telling Julia/Kimber without even the slightest bit of provocation. The dean spends his last day as himself settling matters with different colleagues while narrating details of his life off to Todd, and because of that, Dean Fogg actually admits what we been knew — that he’s just kind of a generally shitty guy. While going around with Todd, he freely admits to being a functioning and deeply depressed alcoholic, an avid gambler, someone who has no problem sleeping with other people’s wives, and extremely uncomfortable with emotion.
Julia/Kimber goes to see Dean Fogg, and we get another round of her complaining about how she doesn’t belong there, and him assuring her that she does. Fogg explains to her why he’s doing what he’s doing once she tells him that Todd told her all about what Marina had done. In Fogg’s mind, to expose that there is a way to end the spell is the same as committing them all to death, which he refuses to do after what they did restoring magic. It’s easily the most noble thing he’s done thus far in the entirety of the series, but while he encourages Julia/Kimber telling her that she is more extraordinary than she knows and that she could one day end up fixing things, he doesn’t tell her who the questors are and that she’s one of them.
Still in Greece, Bryan/Quentin catches a pig as he was instructed but, snaps when monster/Eliot tells him to gut it for sacrifice. He blows up telling him that he isn’t afraid of him anymore and that the monster should just kill him. The monster genuinely likes Quentin and tells him that he would never do that, but he has no problem torturing him by breaking his bones until he relents and agrees to do the sacrifice. It works perfectly, and who they think is Enyalius shows up only for them to find out while monster/Eliot is torturing him looking for whatever it is the gods took from him that Enyalius didn’t actually come and sent a servant of his instead.
Margo’s journey with Fen to find Ember leads them to a tavern, however the satisfaction of completing their mission is short lived when they get there and aren’t met with Ember but with Baccus who is pretending to be Ember for what reasons unknown as of yet.
This episode doesn’t have a lot of Alice content, which I can’t say I’m upset about even though as I said in the last recap, I am willing to see how I feel about a redemption arc for her. But what we do get from her is thanks to a tip from Santa. She uses the magic contained in the tube that transports books across the library to cast a spell that allows her to use the cockroach she caught in the last episode as an avatar she can control. The roach manages to make it undetected to Zelda’s office before it’s squashed and if that doesn’t sound like much it’s because it’s not. I have no idea how spying on Zelda would help her get out of jail, but it’s something, and I’m guessing it’s enough to keep her pressing forward with trying to find a way out.
Back at Brakebills, Julia/Kimber figures out that she is one of the questors who Fogg spelled, and he doesn’t deny it to her. She makes a case for him to just undo the spell, explaining that when they’re themselves again they can fight not to die, but Fogg isn’t deterred. Luckily, neither is Julia/Kimber who goes to Todd, and after realizing that it’s impossible for a spell as powerful as the one cast over all of them to be maintained on the rationed supply of magic alloted to Brakebills they deduce that there must be some other source. Now if you’re jumping into the show this season (which what are you doing? Binge the first 3 seasons on Netflix right now!) or if it’s just been awhile for you, here’s a quick reminder that there was talk of a magic battery starting in season 1 that would sporadically come up here and there throughout the rest of the series. It was thought to be a myth because no one had ever actually figure out how to make it work, but Todd reasons that it’s the most likely avenue in terms of how Fogg is powering his spell.
They search for the battery in Fogg’s office, and when they find it, the first thing Julia/Kimber does is touch it and dies only to resurrect seconds later, which is amazing because it means Julia ‘I horocruxed myself for y’all’ Wicker is in fact still a literal goddess as it’s been established that it’s near impossible to kill a god. In an effort to overload the battery, Julia/Kimber repeats the process of touching the battery and dying until it finally gives out.
With no magical source to keep the spell going, our questors are finally themselves again. The moment Quentin comes to, he squares up against monster/Eliot but doesn’t actually do any battle magic. Margo returns to her old self and knows exactly who Baccus is (she followed him on Instagram before he was kicked off). Fen crowns her as high king once again, and when Margo starts demanding answers from Baccus, he transports her back to earth without warning.
When Fogg’s time was up, Marina, who promised him he wouldn’t like who she turned him into treats his new form, a homeless man who she addresses as her father with contempt, which is an interesting bit of plot on the horizon and bodes well for seeing more Marina the rest of the season, hopefully digging a little deeper into how she became the person she is currently.
Monster/Eliot is happy that Brian/Quentin is just Quentin again and he tells Q that he wants to retrieve from the gods whatever they’d taken away from him. He doesn’t know what it is, best describing it as some sort of knowledge, but he’s willing to kill to get it back. Quentin asks if the monster could bring Eliot back after he gets what he wants, which upsets the monster who accuses Q of liking Eliot and the rest of his friends more than him. Despite Quentin denying it, monster/Eliot transports the both of them to Marina’s apartment where Kady, Josh, and Penny are, and the episode ends with monster/Eliot declaring that he didn’t come here to play, he came to slay…literally.
Final Thoughts: Was ‘Lost, Found, and Fucked’ a great episode? Meh, it was alright; not bad or boring, but not one that would likely make you want to watch it again any time soon. The connective tissue I found running through the episode was that most of the characters at one point or another had a plan or course of action they enacted that ultimately failed. The Blackspire monster summoned a god in order to kill him and take back what he believed was his, only to be tricked by the god in question. Marina planned on forcing Dean Fogg to reveal that there was a way to reverse his spell only to have him for once not choose the selfish route and sacrifice himself to keep that fact a secret, and Margo set out to find Ember only to be duped and sent away by Baccus.
I would be remiss and not a very good fangirl if I didn’t point out once again that Julia Wicker is kind of just an all around BAMF and saved the day. It comes as no surprise that she’s the one to restore everyone’s lives to what they should be, she’s seriously the best, I don’t make the rules, and since we won’t be seeing everyone’s alter egos again (most likely) I can say that Kimber was my favorite as despite not being Julia proper and sucking at magic, she was still clever as hell and possessed the tenacity that Julia has in droves. DJ Hansel was a close second, as Arjun Gupta was just fun to watch as a character who was the complete and total opposite of Penny.
All in all, I doubt very much that this episode will be a stand out by the time the season is over, but even the worst episode of The Magicians (which this is not) still has something to offer in terms of a laugh, stellar acting, or a bit of brilliant writing. Not the mention it will always contain set up for something good on the horizon in the episodes to come, and ending this episode with the casually cruel and extremely powerful blackspire monster popping in on 3 of our newly restored questors with obviously murdery intentions does just that.
What did you all think about ‘Lost, Found, and Fucked’? Any predictions on how Quentin, Kady, Josh and Penny are going to survive the monster? What do you think Baccus is doing in Fillory really? Which questor alter ego are you going to miss seeing the most? Which did you wish you saw more of? Let me know down below and keep it here for more recaps of The Magicians on Forallnerds.com.
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