Season 5, Episode 4
Magicians Anonymous
Margo and Eliot infiltrate the Dark King's court; Alice and Julia look for ways to prevent the Harmonic Convergence; and Kady and Fogg search for the missing Library depository.Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Actually Pretty Funny: The Binder may be upset with Julia, but he does spare a laugh when she tells Clarion to go fuck herself.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: A side effect of being in the Etheric Realm is that the high never, ever goes away. Combine that with the beautiful sights within and Kady and Fogg are barely able to keep on task.
- Blessed with Suck: Clarion feels this way about godhood, as she claims she cannot feel the music she created, and doesn't have the freedom of choice humans do.
- Blind Jump: Without his psychic abilities, Penny can't use his Traveler powers because he'd have no idea where to aim.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Emperor of the Etheric Realm lives to take screwed-up people and make them abandon all responsibility. He thinks both Kady and Fogg are awesome because of how much pain they're carrying, and eventually kicks Kady out of the Realm because her desire to continue her search for the depository means she still has a shred of responsibility that might eventually make her a bummer to hang out with. Zelda notes in the next episode that he doesn't have a use for stable people who don't hate themselves.
- Brought Down to Badass: In order to keep the signal from killing Penny, Clarion removes his psychic abilities. Technically, he can still use magic and even Travel, though the latter is a really bad idea.
- Brought Down to Normal: Clarion, goddess of music, wants to become human. Julia gives her the Binder to accomplish this, though he isn't happy about it.
- The Bus Came Back: Much to his annoyance, The Binder has not been burned, per his request, and Julia summons him to turn Clarion human.
- Call-Back: Penny forgives Julia for making the decision to heal him instead of get the answers to the Harmonic Convergence while he was unconscious because he made the difficult decision to keep her mortal instead of turn her into a goddess while she was in pain.
- Commonality Connection: Eliot's past as High King allows him to commiserate with the Dark King in regards to the heaviness of the crown.
- Continuity Nod: The same hotdog stand that existed in front of the depository before shows up again. It's small, but it is continuity.
- Court Mage: The Dark King offers Eliot a position as Court Mage, seeing his potential.
- Crystal Ball: The Dark King has a number of scrying glasses set up so the people of Fillory can watch him fighting the Takers.
- Death Seeker: The Binder still wants to be burned.
- De-power: Penny was in such a bad state the Clarion didn't have time to delicately separate him from the Signal. She just shut off his psychic abilities.
- Disney Acid Sequence: Kady and Fogg drop some magic acid so they can see the Etheric Realm, which is filled with partiers, Elvis impersonators, and lots of pretty colors.
- Follow the White Rabbit: Kady and Fogg follow a man in a brown bunny costume to the emperor of the Etheric Realm.
- I Choose to Stay: Fogg decides to stay in the Etheric Realm when offered the chance because forty timelines of dealing with students is quite enough for him, especially since he's no longer drinking to cope with it.
- I Gave My Word: The barbarians had offered their word to leave the Libraries unharmed if they lowered their defenses. Alice scoffs, but Zelda notes that Visigoths are famous for keeping their oaths.
- It's All My Fault: Plum blames herself for all the trouble Penny's gone through.
- Lack of Empathy: Clarion notes that her lack of humanity means that she is unable do things like bend the rules and give Julia two things in exchange for one. Julia notes that she still has the option to do both, but won't.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Invoked by Penny: previously he chose to make Julia human to heal her wound, and now she chose to let Clarion to remove his psychic powers to stop him from hearing the signal.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Lampshaded. Lipson (a supporting cast member) barely recognizes the name "Chatwin" when "Merritt" reveals her true identity and upon the surprised looks from the others defensively notes that she "missed an episode".
- Magic A Is Magic A: Since the Harmonic Convergence is an alignment of celestial bodies, moving one of them (in this case the moon) will keep it from happening.
- Mind Probe: The Emperor of the Etheric Realm can read the surface thoughts of anyone who enters it. With a bit of time he can go deeper.
- Mushroom Samba: The Etheric Realm is quite a trip.
- New Meat: Margo makes friends with a fellow guard, who's young, funny and informative. He's toast.
- The Nicknamer: The Emperor of the Etheric Realm is one of these. Dean Fogg finds he doesn't mind being called "Hank", at least not when he's high.
- No MacGuffin, No Winner: To keep the barbarians from stealing the books on everyone, Zelda burns that wing of the Library to deny them the knowledge.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: With all the life-books burned, Penny suggests that people have free will instead of all that pre-destination shit...oh, hey Zelda! M-maybe it'll just mean rewrites...sorry.
- Off the Wagon: Kady's been clean a year, Fogg's been off alcohol for over a month, but they need to drop magic acid to access the Etheric Realm.
- Power-Strain Blackout: The Dark King nearly faints after driving off the Takers, and passes out immediately after getting into bed when he's brought back to the castle.
- Red Shirt: Name-dropped by Margo when she realizes the Centurion Guard is there to be killed so the Dark King isn't. Her fellow guard doesn't get the reference.
- The Reveal:
- Penny's student, who introduced him to the signal, is another Chatwin, named Plum.
- The Dark King is capturing fairies for some reason.
- In order to stop the Harmonic Convergence, all they have to do is move the Moon.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Dark King accompanies Margo's patrol rescuing the Mapmakers.
- Sadistic Choice: Clarion forces Julia to choose between saving Penny or saving the world, because she only has one bargaining chip. Julia chooses Penny.
- So Much for Stealth: Alice knocks over a shelf of books while trying to sneak around the barbarians, necessitating a Jump Scare/rescue from Zelda.
- Technicolor Eyes: The Etheric resident who offers Fogg and Kady cotton candy has multicolored irises.
- Teleportation:
- While Kady debates whether taking Archie and going to the Etheric Realm is worth going off the wagon, Dean Fogg teleports one of the pills from her hand into his mouth and swallows it.
- Archie eventually physically teleports the user into the Etheric Realm.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: As mentioned above, Archie eventually physically sends the user into the Etheric Realm, but there's a transitional period where they exist in both the real world and the Realm at once wherein they can get themselves killed by, say, walking in front of a car that doesn't look like a car to them.
