Well…this was a challenging episode to get through – this week’s recap and review is a little more linear in nature, since the timeline wasn’t. And surprisingly, “Twenty-Three” did not refer to the number of times Penny would bang Kady before he had to astral project back to the Library, as I predicted. Overall, though, great episode with the return of Kacey Rohl (But we will get to how in a minute).
As always, spoilers, but again, it’s the day of the next episode, so hopefully, you are all caught up.
In Fillory
Eliot and Margo are commenting about the wanted signs Tick has put up around the kingdom – they realize that Alice and Q are wanted too, since the coup overthrew all of the royalty of Fillory. Alice updates Margo on the fact that Julia is on good terms now with the Fairy Queen, and that they need to play nice since the sixth key is in the Fairy Realm. Since the four of them are wanted criminals, they need someone to go talk to Julia and figure out next steps. Josh, only an interim king of Fillory for a few days, ends up the designated runner.
At Brakebills
Julia and Fogg are discussing what went down with the McAllisters – Julia warns Fogg hat Irene will be coming for her fairy property. But Irene will have to find them first – Julia managed to put up all of the wards and protections back up around Brakebills on her own with her god power.
Josh shows up, and as he and Julia try to figure out what to do next, they suddenly find themselves in a Tesla Flexion. It turns out it’s Josh from Timeline 23 (ah, I see what you did there, Magicians) who created the flexion – they are having the same problem as the current timeline – magic shut off and the Beast unstoppable. However, their Beast still has magic, and it might have something to do with the key around his neck – it gives him visions of the future. Josh begs them to find a way to Timeline 23.
Julia is hesitant about jumping into the new timeline, given that the quest book only revealed the next steps to getting the key after they got the one prior to it (meaning the one that their Beast has may be the seventh key, and they would be going out of order). Josh argues that maybe they don’t need to go in order, but Julia wants to talk to Q about it first, and make sure they are on the right path.
They make their way back through the portal to Fillory, only instead to find themselves in Timeline 23 (let’s call it T23 to make me not have to type the whole thing out every time). They are still in Brakebills, but this Brakebills is utterly destroyed and ransacked. Julia is confused, since it seems like the portal key unilaterally decided to send them there. Alternate Josh (from the Tesla Flexion) greets them, as well as Marina (welcome back Kacey Rhol!).
Marina doesn’t know Julia in T23, since Julia was a student at Brakebills, and Marina was still a kicked out hedge witch. Julia shares with her how they were friends in her timeline (Timeline 40 – T40), since she didn’t go to Brakebills and also became a hedge witch.
Alternate Marina and Alternate Josh discuss what is going on over drinks – they aren’t sure why magic was turned off in their world, and are annoyed to learn it was because of a god being killed in T40. The Beast in their timeline started killing off magicians and hedge witches, and hasn’t been back to Brakebills since the initial massacre. T23 Marina and Josh have been looting the place since then, which is how they came across the Tesla Flexion and a battery to power it.
Our Josh, wanting to offer some help, starts to share that Julia has magic, but is abruptly stopped by her with a look. They make a deal with T23 Marina and Josh that if they destroy the Beast in T23, then T40 Josh and Julia can have the key.
Our Josh and Alternate Josh end up catching up over drinks, where we find out that Alternate Josh was never rescued by the Physical Kids in the Neitherlands, making him even more bitter and reluctant to make friends. Before they can get much further in the conversation, however, our Josh and Julia pass out, having been roofied by their T23 companions.
They wake up to find themselves chained together – T23 Marina plans to offer them up to the Beast, since when he came on his killing spree, he was specifically looking for Julia. But Julia was already dead at that point, which Marina concedes is a bit confusing. But they still plan to give T40 Julia to him – our Josh, unfortunately, is the Cedric Diggory of the story (ha!). They figure the Beast will be there soon, since he probably sensed the magic of the Tesla Flexion, but T40 Julia offers them another choice – she can do the Rhinemann Ultra and destroy him without anyone else dying. Marina scoffs, knowing that god-like powers are needed to cast it, at which point Julia unlocks the chains from her and T40 Josh, and places her hand on Marina face, healing a scar, her migraines, and smoking addiction all in one shot.
Julia says she can cast the spell if they can get it from Dean Fogg, if he’s even still alive in this timeline. Marina assures her that he is, but just kind of a walking drug addict at this point. On the way to taking Julia to him, Marina asks again about how they knew each other in the other timeline, since she’s sensing some weird tension. Julia shares that they were friends, and ended up getting into a big fight, but in the end, they ended up ok.
Going to Fogg’s room, he finally lets them in when he sees Julia. She shares with him that she’s from timeline 40, and he’s got 17 more of these to go. When they ask about the Rhinemann Ultra, he shares that Bigby had it, but she was killed and dissected for her magic, the same way that other magical creatures were. However, there were two students who tried to get the spell, but died in horrific ways trying to get it. The good thing is, they both haunt the library, but are probably not the most pleasant, given that they died horribly.
Our Josh and Alternate Josh are talking about how Alternate Josh seems like kind of a dick, abandoning his friends to die at the hands of the Beast. Alternate Josh defends himself by saying he has to distance himself from people, given that his sexy time with a werewolf chick is going to bring about the Quickening. Unfortunately, he won’t share what the Quickening is with our Josh, and our Josh conveniently leaves out that he also banged a werewolf chick in his timeline.
Julia and Marina make their way to the Brakebills Library to seek out the ghost students, where they find Ghost Eliot and Ghost Margo reliving their deaths over and over. They got the spell from Bigby, but Eliot is doubting his ability to be at his best, since Bigby accused him of being an alcoholic (she’s not wrong…). Margo shows him a spell in a book that they can use to power themselves up in order to cast the Rhinemann Ultra, but if they do it wrong, it will literally blow up in their faces.
And blow up it does, as we next see Eliot crying against a bookshelf covered in blood with bits of Margo on his shoulder. As he drops the Rhinemann Ultra to the floor, Julia takes a picture of it with her phone. Which prompts Eliot to notice her and grab her, growling about where his Bambi is. She and Marina pull back just as his Bambi appears…with half of her head blown off.
Marina and Julia escape, only to suspect that someone is following them. They stop and confront their stalker; to their surprise, it is Penny. And he is looking super hot, like old school Penny (which would make sense, since this is Timeline 23). He’s in disbelief that Julia is there, and before she can explain, he kisses her. Which is much, much hotter than he ever was with Kady. Sign me up for the initial voyage of the SS Jenny (or Pulia, but, well…no)!
Julia is utterly taken aback, particularly when Marina starts yelling at him for kissing Julia without consent. Penny thought she was his Julia, because they were together in Timeline 23. He wants to come help kill the Beast, but Marina isn’t too excited about that – Julia points out that because he’s a Traveler, he could come in handy.
While Julia practices the Rhinemann Ultra, Penny asks our Josh about what happens to him in T40. Josh shares with him that Penny is in the Underworld but not really dead, and he got there doing something heroic. Unlike him, whose alternate Josh is just kind of a dick. Penny leaves them to works out his (their?) issues.
Our Josh asks Alternate Josh once again what the Quickening is, and Alternate Josh refuses to tell him. He insists that he had a harder life than our Josh, and a prime example of that is that our Josh gets to hang out with Julia, while he’s stuck with Marina. When our Josh asks him why he stays with someone who is mean to him all the time, Alternate Josh shares that he won’t be as upset when she dies. In a peace offering, Alternate Josh gives our Josh a sweet jacket, but quickly notices someone in the chair behind our Josh, with a face full of moths.
He alerts the others that the Beast is there, and Julia, Marina, and Penny quickly take cover to start to cast the Rhinemann Ultra. The Beast, on the other hand, kills Alternate Josh, giving our Josh a chance to escape.
When Julia casts the spell and hits the Beast with it, he surprisingly doesn’t die. And even more surprisingly, as the moths scatter from around his face, we see that it is Quentin, not Martin Chatwin, who is the Beast in this timeline! Julia activates the Traveler tattoos on Penny’s hands so that they can travel out of the room as Q approaches.
Having escaped to the Neitherlands Library, Marina, Penny, Julia and Josh try to wrap their heads around how Quentin is the Beast. Penny shares that Q was the one that convinced his Julia to run away to Fillory in the first place, where she died, but Josh points out that she was killed by the Beast, who was not Q at the time. Marina doesn’t even really know who Q is.
Julia shares that the Alice of T23, in this timeline said the Beast killed Quentin, when they pulled her into their Tesla Flexion (to learn about how to get passage to the Underworld). Julia realizes they need to talk to her, since they are missing some part of the story between when the Beast killed everyone, and Q became the Beast, only more powerful.
Penny travels them a ship run by bunnies (awesome), where they find Alice working for the rabbits. After she talked to Julia and Q in the T40 Tesla Flexion, and hearing that Q still loved her, she worked to bring him back in T23. Alice made a deal with a creature in the Northern Marsh to bring back Q – however, when she dies, she has to stay with the creature for eternity. The creature gave her the power to bring back Q, but without his Shade. Alice thought that they could get through it, that their love would help them figure out how to get his Shade back, but it didn’t work.
The only love Quentin had was for Fillory. So he went there and killed Martin Chatwin himself, and then killed Ember, absorbing his powers, and thus prompting the old gods to take magic away from the world in T23. And Q was afraid someone would get magic again and challenge him for Fillory, so he had to wipe out magicians and witches before that could happen.
Alice tries to apologize, since technically, she kind of caused all of this, but Julia takes the blame instead, since had they not pulled Alice into the Tesla Flexion in their timeline, she would have had no hope or desire to bring Quentin back. Josh asks her why Alice is on the ship anyway – turns out the bunnies she works for are radish smugglers (HA!) and she stacks boxes for them with her bad hand – it’s the only thing the bunnies can’t do for themselves. Plus Quentin can’t track her on the ship, which gives her time and space to try to find a weapon that can kill Q and fix all of this.
She shows them an item she did manage to procure, with Julia correctly guessing that Alice went back in time and made a deal with a knife maker in Fillory. And that knife is the one the gang in T40 used to threaten Martin. The problem is, Alice doesn’t have god like powers in this timeline, but luckily Julia does, and she can wield the knife. Alice insists on coming with them, saying that she’ll tell Captain Hopps (HA again!) that she has to leave.
As they prepare to leave, Josh is stroking one of the bunny sailor’s ears, when Penny offers him some carrot wine. Josh is still lamenting the fact that whatever this Quickening thing is, it’s going to happen to him too – he refers to it as “murder herpes,” since I think he realizes that when he changes into a werewolf, he’ll likely kill all of his friends. Penny warns him to run far away before that happens, since if he’s around Julia when it happens, Penny will kill Josh himself (way to make things awkward, Penny).
Marina and Julia are trying to figure out how to approach Quenin, with Marina wanting to use Alice as bait. Julia refuses, finally spilling to Marina how she used her as bait in T40 to try to kill Reynard, and that she won’t hurt someone like that again. She insists that they can use Quentin’s own weaknesses against him.
Traveling to Whitespire to confront Q, they see he has set up a creepy fan boy palace, filled with magical souvenirs he has been hoarding from the Fillory and Further books. Josh plays a bugle from the collection, prompting Q to address them directly. They hide in different areas to try to throw Quentin off, but he can smell Alice among the magicians. Penny tries to travel Julia closer to Q so that she can stab him, but Q has put up wards against magic. Q notes that he will smoke them out by filling the room with fire, but Alice sacrifices herself before he can kill them all, telling Q that she’s there and shouldn’t have run from him before. She asks him why he didn’t kill her along with all of the other magicians, and Q shares that he thought about it, but that she was doing such a good job of torturing herself about bringing him back, that he didn’t need to do anything else. She asks him why he’s doing this, since this isn’t like him, and Q notes that that was the old him – now, he shows up with a face full of moths and everyone loses their shit (I can see why that would be empowering for someone like Q). But he has grown tired of the conversation, calling Alice out on the fact that all of this talking is just a way to keep him from killing her friends immediately. He slashes her across the stomach, killing her as Julia approaches from behind.
Q doesn’t kill Julia right away, reminding her that the Rhinemann Ultra didn’t work on him. Before he can attack her, though, Julia shoves her Shade into Quentin’s body, suddenly making him feel all the shame, regret and sadness she has. He’s horrified to see that he’s killed Alice, and while he’s lamenting what he’s done, Julia asks him where he found the key. She also puts down the knife, since she wants to help him, not kill him. He secured it when he learned about the Quest, and had to get it to prevent them from re-starting magic. Julia thinks that the key shows visions of the future, but actually what Q saw was a vision of Julia unlocking a door at The End of the World. And letting in something much worse than him, instead of magic.
Filled with regret, Q gives her the key and tells her to take back her Shade, before stabbing himself with the god killing knife. And then there is a lovely bit of cinematography after Julia takes it back, with the overhead shot of a dead Alice and Q, in the exact positions of Ember and Umber when they died last season, surrounded by magicians.
Now having secured the key, Josh is waving it around, trying to get a keyhole to open up. He finally succeeds and Marina runs through, before anyone can stop her. Penny’s going too, followed by Julia and Josh, who wonder how taking people from one timeline to another is going to effect things.
Q and A About Q & A and Everything Else
- How great is it that the chains Marina used on Julia and Josh were from Professor Sunderland? Maybe we’ll get that kinky scene between her and Penny in some other universe after all…
- So our Josh did sleep with the werewolf chick, yes? Because he’s acting like he didn’t. I’m not sure if he’s just in denial that he, too, may be affected by the Quickening, or if I missed something somewhere. Our Josh even says to Alternate Josh, “unlike me, you were dumb enough to bang a werewolf chick.” But…he did bang the werewolf chick in T40…I’m so confused.
- Oh dear…if the Quickening is the full conversion to werewolf under a full moon, does that mean Josh is going to turn at the exact moment the moon halves form in Fillory to reveal the key? That would make things…challenging for the gang.
- I love, love, love Jason Ralph as the Beast. He does a great job with both roles, but his Shadeless villain is just outstanding.
- Will we get to see the Northern Marsh creature that Alice is enslaved to now that she has died in Timeline 23?
Next Week
Next week is the penultimate episode of Season 3 (nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! How did we get here so fast?). There looks to be a ton of sacrifices, Julia using all sorts of crazy powers, and the gang all here for the final showdown and securing of the keys. It happens tonight, March 28, at 9 PM EDT on Syfy!
Photos courtesy of Syfy.com