Spoilers for The Magnus Archives will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
The Magnus Protocol is a horror podcast and "sidequel" to The Magnus Archives, created and produced by Rusty Quill.
The year is 2024 and Samama 'Sam' Khalid has landed a new night job at the Office of Incident Assessment and Response, a heavily underfunded government department with an unclear purpose. The job mostly consists of reading (highly disturbing) internet messages corralled by an archaic program and then filing those messages under (highly disturbing) categories, along with enduring the sniping of bitter and stressed co-workers. Occasionally the program even decides to read some of these messages aloud using some familiar voices, and one such message concerns the Magnus Institute, which burned down under mysterious circumstances twenty-five years ago...which in turn piques the curiosity of Sam, who has a past connection with that obscure yet sinister organisation and is keen to find out more...
The first episode was made available for Rusty Quill patreons in October of 2023, and to the public along with the second episode on January 18th 2024.
The Magnus Protocol contains examples of:
- The Alleged Computer: Well, operating systems, but still. FR3-d1, the system that collects the OIAR's statements, runs on Windows NT-4.0 (an operating system from 1996), will break any newer operating systems, runs on a proprietary German source code that Colin can't make heads or tails of, and inexplicably has what may or may not be text-to-speech capacity despite running on an operating system from the '90s.
- All There in the Manual: The official episode transcripts contain several things of note, but the most important is that they clarify exactly which device each scene is being heard through.
- It also clarifies the rather ambiguous noises heard at the end of episode 10 after Sam and Alice leave the institute. An unnamed character picks up the key Sam had dropped, uses it to unlock the trapdoor it was apparently trapped beneath, and then climbs out.
- Alternate Universe: The series is set in a different universe to the original podcast, since in this world the Magnus Institute was destroyed a quarter century before the story begins, and it was based in Manchester rather than London.
- Artistic License – History: A very minor example: Alice describes Windows NT 4.0 as a predecessor to Windows 95, when in fact it was released in 1996. Of course, since this is an Alternate Universe it's possible that Windows NT 4.0 came out first in this timeline. It's also possible that Alice doesn't know, or is just messing with Sam by exaggerating a bit.
- Big Brother Is Watching: The statem - er, cases FR3-d1 collects come from all sorts of online sources, from message board posts to personal emails. When Sam asks about the legality of such blatant government violation of privacy, Alice just shrugs it off.
- Breaking Old Trends:
- In the original series, a big deal was made that quitting the Magnus Institute is impossible, to the point where two characters even stabbed out their own eyes because it was the only way. The Magnus Protocol starts with a going away party for a former employee who's quit peacefully, and is being replaced by Sam. To drive the point in further, the phrase "No one is making you work here" comes up twice in the first two episodes.
- Another major difference from Archives is that supernatural incidents can be recorded digitally. Prevously, statements involving the Fears could only be documented on paper or analogue cassette tapes because digital recordings were scrambled. In Protocol, everyone works on (very janky) computers that read records with text-to-speech programs, play video files and scrape from digital sources like e-mails and blogs.
- Dysfunction Junction: OIAR is not a great place to work. Any given employee will only be on friendly terms with one or two of their coworkers. At best. Worse, the boss responds to any greviance by outright telling the employee in question that they can quit if they don't like working there.
- Ensemble Cast: While the original had a central main character and a supporting cast surrounding him, this show largely splits the focus between Sam, Alice, Gwen, and Celia, with Lena and Colin being more supporting.
- Naïve Newcomer: Sam is the newest hire and so is not yet desensitized to neither the byzantine and nonsensical nature of the work OIAR does, nor the horrific nature of the messages he has to read.
- Nice Mean And In Between: The three female workers at OIAR fit into the archetypes; Alice is the Nice, being very friendly, approachable, and jovial with an irreverent attitude. Lena is the mean, a strict and professional boss who refuses to tolerate any kind of disrespect from her employees. Gwen is in-between, being fairly strict and professional, but not to the degree of Lena and is at least on speaking terms with her coworkers.
- Noodle Incident: In episode 11, Celia's reaction to waking up in the middle of a highway is "Not again," implying that similar stuff has happened to her before.
- Pretentious Latin Motto: According to the podcast's image, the OIAR has one, "Non Vacillabimus", meaning "we will not falter".
- Private Military Contractors: A group called Starkwall appears in the background. All that's been revealed about them is that they once massacred a large group of people in San Jose, California...and that the OIAR has used their services as part of something called "the protocol." It's implied that the OIAR employs them to take care of certain supernatural events, mostly by shooting up the area, burning it down, and threatening any witnesses into silence.
- Sinister Surveillance: Each scene has the audience - and, most likely, someone or something else - listening to the characters through some sort of device that's been hacked somehow. Computer microphones, intercom systems, personal cellphones, etc.
- Sympathetic Magic: In the second episode, Daria supposedly changes her physical body by making alterations on a painting of herself after getting a tattoo from a mysterious parlour. Maybe. It's also possible that she took the paintbrush and paring knife directly to her body to supernaturally change her appearance.
- The Unreveal: Unlike the statements in the previous series, the cases here are relatively light on detail. Outright descriptions of what horrible things are happening are scarcer, leaving the audience to put together what's happening based on the few given details and the reactions of third parties.
- Working with the Ex: Sam and Alice used to date, but there seems to be no hard feelings between them. Alice was even instrumental in getting Sam his job.
