Season 5, Episode 11
Be The Hyman
With the Dark King coming closer to his goal of opening the door to the Underworld, the crew contemplates destroying Fillory to prevent an even larger catastrophe.Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- The Ark: Umber made a Pocket Dimension designed to suck in every living thing in Fillory on the off-chance Fillory would need to be destroyed.
- The Bus Came Back:
- The emanation of Ember returns, alongside one of Umber.
- Fogg-17 is sprung from the Clean Room by The Couple.
- Cannot Tell a Lie: Part of Marina's personality alteration prevents her from telling a lie.
- Chekhov's Gun: According to the pig man's vision, Fillory will be destroyed by rewinding its clock, which the Clock Dwarf warned would destroy Fillory.
- Consummate Liar: Once her personality is reverted, Marina is able to convince Anna she won't have anything to do with Kady and Alice's world seed heist after Anna gives them the heist book, even though she had earlier admitted to Anna that she'd have to stay involved because they wouldn't be able to pull it off without her while she was under a spell that prevented her from lying.
- Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Eliot, Margo, and Josh managed to be High Kings of Fillory without learning one scrap of knowledge about its history or culture. This would've come back to bite them with the ghost butler, if they hadn't brought Fen along. So incuriosity was the crapshoot in this case.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Penny's mother was driven insane as a result of her pregnancy with him, on account of his powers bleeding into her. Even after he was born, the damage was done. She burned down their apartment, he went into foster care, and several attempts by her to regain her sanity all ended in failure. He fears the same will happen to Julia, though she assures him that she'll be better with modern medicine and knowledge of magic.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Fen gets fed up with her supposed friends taking her for granted and treating her like a sidekick.
- Expendable Alternate Universe: Fen calls out Eliot for thinking of Fillory this way, noting all the things such as the culture and history which can't be put into an ark, and says that they'd be trying a lot harder to save Earth if it were in the same situation. Eliot admits she's right, but there's no other way to save Fillory's people and stop the dead from returning.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Hyman may have been hanging around Brakebills for 100 years watching people, but when he actually gets his body back, he's amazed by all the comforts of the modern world he never had to bother with as a disembodied spirit.
- Forced Sleep: The Ember emanation knocks out Eliot, Fen, Josh and Margo in order to warn them of the upcoming zombie apocalypse.
- Gilligan Cut: Penny and Julia tell Hyman they need him to Travel some people to Umber's house. He assures them he'll do anything they want. Cut to Penny tattooing runes on his fingers so he can bring others along.
- Godzilla Threshold:
- Since the only way the Dark King can be killed is to destroy Fillory, and the emanation of Ember is fine with that, the cast decide that Fillory has to go and they can make a new one using the world seed. Fen is annoyed at how willing they are to sacrifice her home, though she concedes there seems to be no other option.
- The pig man is so desperate to have someone save Fillory that he's finally decided Julia is the only option left to him.
- Heel–Face Brainwashing: Marina-23 had this done to her, willingly. And then undone to her, unwillingly.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Hyman reveals that one of the reasons he acted the way he did in life and was drawn to the protagonists was because in life no one liked him and he was a deeply lonely person.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: When Julia asks if his prophecy regarding "invaders" destroying Fillory and stealing its people ended with them putting them on a new world, Effingham says that he didn't mention any new worlds and realizes Julia's one of the "invaders".
- Jerkass Ball: Eliot and Margo seem to be holding one this episode in regards to Fen (and Fillory), though Eliot does apologize.
- Life Drain: Ember warns that were the dead to escape, they would drain the life from everything they touch.
- Magically-Binding Contract: Alice has Marina agree to a Word as Bond contract before reverting her to her original personality.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Apparently even Marina has limits, because after orchestrating a failed attempt to steal the world seed from the Couple that got most of her cohorts killed or seriously injured, she is affected enough to want to get 'trance healing' to turn herself good (albeit it was an item on Anna's list for her).
- Mystical Pregnancy: Werewolf babies are apparently a handful.
- Needle in a Stack of Needles: When Josh asks the ghost butler for the Ark, the butler produces ten globes, only one of which is right. The other nine are fakes which will cause all ten to blow up if the wrong one is picked. Margo ends up grabbing the wrong one, but Fen swoops in just in time to grab the right one before it blows up with the rest.
- No Sense of Personal Space: Hyman tries to touch Julia's pregnant belly, but Penny slaps his hand.
- Only the Knowledgable May Pass: Umber's ghost butler won't allow people into his house unless they can demonstrate knowledge of Fillorian scripture. He also forces them to pick the correct Ark from a group of fakes, and if they're wrong all of globes will explode.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After her attempt to steal the world seed went south in a big way, Marina went to a trance healer who removed all the aggressive parts of her personality.
- Panicky Expectant Father: Penny's becoming one of these—for example, he nervously bought one of everything at the Chinese and ice cream places because he doesn't exactly know what Julia wanted.
- Pocket Dimension: Umber designed an Ark which acts as one of these, taking every living being on Fillory and putting them inside so they can all be moved at once.
- Prophecy Twist: The pig man's prophecy actually refers to the main cast, who intend to destroy Fillory as a last-ditch measure to stop the Dark King from destroying the barrier between life and death. He warns that doing so will cost them the ones they love.
- Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: Margo risking her life to save Josh from Purgatory is an effective reset on their relationship.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: In his defense, Hyman was getting his fingers tattooed.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: As Julia points out, Sir Effingham telling her an apocalypse was coming led (in part) to the group's quest to save Fillory and then to destroy it.
- Sense Freak: Upon first re-entering his body, Hyman runs around touching, tasting, and smelling things.
- Sense Loss Sadness: Inverted. Hyman becomes depressed after being brought back to life because he misses being an outside observer of everyone else's story, and he hates all the biological functions he didn't have to worry about before, on top of the fact that people just don't like him.
- Shout-Out: Umber based his Needle in a Stack of Needles choice on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, only with different consequences for failing as a way to avoid copyright issues.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Penny forces Hyman to abandon a sandwich he just made. The pig man ends up stealing it from the trash later.
- Title Drop: Penny uncovers Hyman's body and encourages his astral self to rejoin it.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The pig man is outraged upon finding out the main cast are the ones plotting to destroy Fillory. That they are doing so to prevent a greater disaster doesn't matter to him, and he warns Julia of the consequences should she go through with it.
- Wimp Fight: The emanations of Umber and Ember spend several hours slapping each other after explaining how to save the people of Fillory.
