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Jon: Yes. I, I'm trying not to, but – all the fear, the anguish, i-it just keeps coming at me in waves, rolling over me, filling my head with such awful sights.
Martin: I’m sorry. That sounds... that sounds horrible.
Jon: I wish it was, Martin. I really wish it was. But it feels... right.
Act I
Jonathan listens to a recording of Tim, Martin and Sasha throwing a surprise birthday party for him shortly after his promotion to Head Archivist, joined soon thereafter by "Elias", who in hindsight is clearly using his abilities from the Eye. Jonathan tells Martin that this tape and others must have been sent to him for a reason, but Martin thinks its just Jonah's way of gloating. Martin tries to comfort Jonathan, but Jonathan explains that through the Eye he is able to see all of the suffering in the world that he has caused by performing the Watcher's Crown. Jonathan then plays a recording from Gertrude, made just before her attempt to destroy the Institute and subsequent death. In the recording, which is intended for her successor should her plans fail, she explains the existence of the entities, their followers and rituals, the Institute's service of the Eye, "Elias"' identity as Jonah Magnus and his plan to use the Archivist as the catalyst for the Eye's ritual. She charges them to pay whatever price they are demanded to keep the world safe. Jurgen Leitner interrupts her and she instructs him to use The Seven Pillars of Architecture to move the Institute's gas main closer to it. Jonathan bemoans that he never received this tape before. Martin tells Jonathan that he wants to look for a way to change the world back to how it was before the Watcher's Crown, but allows Jonathan more time to think about it. They then notice the presence of a new tape recorder listening to them.
- Call-Forward: Most of the dialogue in the birthday party, such as Elias knowing about Jon's party and what his wish is, and Jon making a joking note to "Fire Tim", which was what Tim wanted Elias to do to him after discovering the Magnus Archives' dark secrets...plus fire is how Tim dies, given the plastic explosives and all.
- Dead Woman Recording: Tragically, Gertrude recorded a tape for her successor explaining everything in the anticipation her confrontation with Jonah/Elias would kill her, which would no doubt have helped Jon extremely if he'd been allowed to hear it before now.
- Mood Whiplash: The first tape played is a recording of a birthday party the archival assistants threw for Jon before season 1, full of light-hearted banter and with everyone obviously having fun (albeit grudgingly, in Jon's case). Then it cuts to...well, the present.
- Mundane Utility: Jonah/Elias used his Beholding powers to spy out the fact the archival assistants had cake.
- Power Incontinence: Jon has it worse now than ever before; his powers are on all the time, taking in what the Fears are doing to humanity. What little control he has seems to be bent entirely on making sure the Beholding extends its protection of him to Martin. Also, he is now spontaneously manifesting tape recorders.
- Video Wills: Now that it's After the End and far too late for it to matter, Jonah allows Jon to find the tape Gertrude recorded for her successor in the event of her death, which lays out the existence of the Fears, the rituals, the identity of Jonah Magnus, and the Archivist's importance to his ritual attempt.
On a recording, Gertrude catches Gerry snooping in her things before they discuss a Leitner book titled The Travels and decide to burn it, Gertrude chiding Gerry for bringing the book into the Archives with no precautions outside of a regular lock. Before he leaves, Gerry asks Gertrude what would happen if a ritual worked, and she suspects that whatever entity that manifested would rewrite the laws of nature to maximize terror, and may even prevent death. He asks if it could be undone, but she doesn't believe so. Another recording is played, this one of Tim and Sasha having a chat shortly before Jonathan's first tape recording. They discuss how Sasha was more qualified for the role of Head Archivist, suspecting that Elias choosing Jonathan was just sexism at work. Tim jokingly suggests that they kill Jonathan and make it look like an accident. Sasha considers leaving the Institute since she doesn't "have anything keeping me here". They get to the topic of Gertrude and how she kept the Archives in a state of chaos. Having actually known Gertrude, Sasha is sure that she did it on purpose for some reason.
Jonathan monologues about places that are perceived as safe retreats but are in fact traps, referring to the cabin and and Martin have been living in, before Martin interrupts. Jonathan explains to him that he wants to go out and find Jonah, but this place doesn't want them to leave. Martin reveals that he has already spent time packing things to leave at the drop of a hat. Jonathan brings along the tape recording "in case I need to vent", as his monologue had affected him similarly to a recorded statement. Martin suggest that they burn the cabin before they leave, but Jonathan doesn't see the point.
- Dramatic Irony: The older recordings provide a few.
- Sasha responding to Tim's joke with "I'm unforgettable!".
- Gertrude intentionally invokes several when speaking to Gerard, ranging from telling him about the tunnels under the institute that Leitner is living in, to making multiple references to his life expectancy where the powers are concerned and sharing his concerns about how the powers can change people. If she was already aware of his cancer, and if it was unrelated to the powers, is left unclear.
- Tim's joke about how Gertrude's management of the Archives and leaving of things in such a messy state must be "all a big geriatric conspiracy".
- Fate Worse than Death: Gertrude speculates that being dead is preferable to existing in a world where the Powers have broken through. She imagines that they might rewrite the laws of reality to the point time and space don't matter and suspend natural laws like the need to eat or sleep, even the ability to die.
- Genius Loci: Due to the Change, it slowly becomes clear the cabin that Jon and Martin are staying in has gained sentience and thrives off of the fear that the meager comfort Jon and Martin have might be taken away at any moment.
- Mood Whiplash: Similar to the previous episode there is a tape of lighthearted banter featuring Sasha and Tim, followed by a grim scene in the present. This time the present scene is one of Jon describing the warped world and nightmarish creatures outside, and saying the cabin they are in is a lie and has come alive. Most chillingly, that cabin is some sort of chrysalis for Jon and the Eye wishes him to stay until he emerges.
- Sarcastic Confession: When Gerard asks if Gertrude has a preferred place to destroy Leitners, she acidly exclaims that she didn't tell him about the network of tunnels below the Institute that harbors dark secrets. Gerard, at least, doesn't discount the possibility.
- Shout-Out: While Tim and Sasha joke about poisoning Jon so Sasha can have his job, Tim claims to have developed an immunity to iocane powder.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: While Gertrude and Gerard's discussion about how bad a post-powers world would be for humanity is serious the two still enjoy poking fun at each other, though for the audience Gertrude's jabs has a bit more of a bite to them.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Gertrude suspects that if the Entities do break through they might prevent people from dying, keeping them alive to feed on their fear.
- Will They or Won't They?: Parodied by Tim who joked that he and Sasha were this, positing that they've already gone through the casual hook-up, awkward aftermath and rebuilt friendship. Sasha shoots him down, albeit in a good-natured manner.
Jonathan and Martin walk for hours without tiring. Jonathan points out a great tower in the distance, explaining that its the new form of the Panopticon and the Institute merged together, able to be seen from anywhere in the new world as a reminder that it is always watching, and to get there "you have to go through everything in between". The first of these things is a trench, a territory of the Slaughter. As bagpipe music begins to be heard, Jonathan and Martin press forward.They run through the chaos of a meaningless battle and make it to a shelter. Martin sees several beings around them which Jonathan clarifies are the human victims of the Slaughter, "too busy waiting to die" to pay them any mind. Jonathan starts to monologue of the Slaughter but Martin makes him stop until he can plug his ears.
Jonathan monologues of the ranks of war, fighting against a monstrous enemy. A soldier watches his comrades be obliterated, a drone follows him waiting to fire at its own leisure, and barbed wire moves of its own accord to seize him before he is flattened by a tank. The tank's driver remembers how he enlisted to ensure his family would be supported, now waiting and praying for the moment a falling bomb will free him from this living hell, but when it finally happens he does not receive the mercy of death. A field nurse moves him into a hospital tent where hundreds of other soldiers suffer in their beds and thousands more are left outside, unable to be accommodated. On the battlefield, another soldier watches more carnage ensue while a jolly man in a suit praises him for his sacrifice while extracting his heart and stowing it in his wallet. The flattened soldier resurrects to a sergeant screaming at him to get back into the fray.
As Jonathan and Martin reach the end of the Slaughter's domain, Martin finds another tape recorder and wonders why it's there when a nearby payphone begins to ring. Martin realizes that the call is intended for him but thinks better of answering.
- And Show It to You: In the story of the Trench, Alexei has his heart literally pulled from his chest by a strange, well-dressed man who puts it in his wallet.
- Armored Coffins: One of the people fighting in the Trench gets pushed into a burning but functional tank, which is then sealed behind him, to force him to drive it into combat.
- Call-Back: Bagpipe music had previously been associated with the Slaughter in Episode 125 ("Civilian Casualties"), which took place in Scotland and had bagpipe music playing faintly in the background as the statement was read. Here, it's heard loud and clear over the fighting Jon and Martin travel through.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: We learn that the Magnus Institute has somehow merged with the Panopticon to form a huge tower visible from any location - and that it can see you anywhere too.
- Hopeless War: The Trench is the center of a war without rhyme, reason or any hope of either side winning, whatever those sides are; it's just a meat grinder that devours anyone who enters it.
- Supernatural Phone: As they leave the battleground, Martin hears a payphone ringing; since he's the only one around, he figures it's for him, but decides not to answer.
- War Is Hell: Jon and Martin's journey to London takes them past the former Kinloss Barracks
, a Scottish military installation, which after the Change has been turned into a small warzone by the Slaughter that they have to get through.- While taking shelter from the carnage, Jon finds himself compelled to record a statement about what's happening. The story he tells is of the Trench, the frontline in an unnamed place and war that will never end, and told from the perspectives of various soldiers and nurses involved, with every horror and atrocity of war on full display.
Jonathan tells the story of a diseased village, a disease which was always present there but which the villagers insist was brought in by outsiders. Anyone who visits the village are scrutinized for any sign of illness, however if someone if found to be healthy they are blamed for the illness and burned at the stake. Every villager secretly dreads that their family hasn't lived in the village long enough to be safe from being considered an outsider. The policing of outsiders and anyone else suspected of bringing disease is done by the village council, lead by village elder Jillian Smith, who secretly is completely covered inside and out in the mold that spreads through the village. At night, Jillian peels away her infected skin to try to find some purity inside, and when she cannot she takes it out on her neighbor, Mrs. Kim, who she thinks has managed to avoid infection.
As they leave the territory of the Corruption, Jonathan assures Martin that they can't be infected because he Knows "it isn't for us". Martin asks Jonathan about what he can Know, and since Jonathan thinks he can Know just about anything he decides to ask some specific questions. Jonathan Knows that Basira is still alive and not trapped in an entity's power, instead hunting down the monstrous Daisy with the intent to keep her promise and kill her, "but she's conflicted". Jonathan can't see Georgie and Melanie but he's sure that they're not dead either. Elias is inside the Panopticon, watching everything, and although Jonathan can't directly see him since "an eye can't see inside itself", he can still feel his presence there. Jonathan confirms that they are safe traveling through the various entities domains, since although they are inside them they are "separate and untouched". Martin asks who was trying to call him on the payphone in the Slaughter's territory, and though isn't totally sure he believes that it was Annabelle Cane. Martin asks if the world can be changed back. Jonathan answers that it can if the entities can be removed, but he can't Know a way to do that. For his last question, Martin asks what Helen is doing, and right on cue her door appears. As Helen comes out to meet them, Jonathan explains to Martin that she can always find anyone who has entered the Hallways before. Helen explains that all she wants now is to be friends, and Martin wonders if she could help them by taking them straight to the Institute through the Hallways, but Helen explains that she could only do that for Martin as "the Archivist is too powerful now" to travel through the Hallways. Helen returns to her Hallways after complimenting them on being "such an adorable couple". Martin advises Jonathan that they shouldn't rule Helen out as a potential ally.
- Boomerang Bigot: Head of the village council Jillian Smith is the most zealous in condemning the infected to burn at the maypole. She is also concealing the fact that every inch of her body (outside and in) is covered in mold. Jillian takes great pains to hide it by
peeling off her moldy skin every night. - Conspicuous Gloves: Jillian when out and about wears a pair of spotless white gloves, covering the cerulean mold with which she is infected.
- Kill It with Fire: The village's solution to dealing with the infection: lashing those accused to the maypole at the center of town and setting them alight.
- Mr. Exposition: Jon refers to himself as "a postapocalyptic Google", as he can answer almost any question Martin has.
- Poke in the Third Eye: Jon tries to use his omniscience to learn more about the Powers and if they can be sent back to where they came from, but trying to "know" things about them directly overwhelms him; he compares it to staring straight into the sun.
- "Pop!" Goes the Human: When Jillian blooms at the end of the statement.
- Shipper on Deck: Helen is most likely being facetious about it, but professes support and admiration for Jon and Martin's newfound relationship.
- The Reveal: Jon gleans several pieces of new information when he experiments with his growing scrying abilities.
- Basira and Daisy are still alive, the former chasing the latter who is trapped in bestial form.
- Melanie and Georgie are still alive in London, but Jon is unable to see them for some reason.
- Elias/Jonah is of course at the top of the Panopticon. Jon can't tell much more than that because "an eye can't see inside itself", but he can always sense him.
- The caller on the other end of the phone Martin encountered last episode? Annabelle Cane. Though Jon can't see her he knows the phone had the Web's essence all over it.
- It is in theory possible to undo the apocalypse, if somewhere else to put the Fears can be found—which won't be easy, because their original home stopped existing as soon as Jonah summoned them into our reality.
- Uncanny Village: The vibe of the village Jon and Martin encounter. This particular hamlet has been ravaged by a ghastly sickness where the people and land are warped by an all-encompassing fungus and rot. The villagers however pretend to act fine and maintain the idea absolutely nothing is wrong.
- Witch Hunt: The infection has made the villagers violently xenophobic and paranoid towards outsiders who they believe brought the infection. People are imprisoned in the post office with alarming regularity and those accused of being infected are burned to death at the town's maypole.
Jonathan and Martin arrive at a gigantic carousel in the domain of the Stranger. Jonathan assures Martin that they only have to experience it metaphorically and should try to avoid encountering it's attendant, which he clarifies is not Nikola Orsinov but instead "an old friend". They decide to get Jonathan's monologue out of the way first so they can get past it quickly.
Jonathan monologues of the swirling carousel whose riders' identities fall away from them and mix together as they spin and spin and are never able to get off.
As they walk past the carousel, Martin is surprised to hear that Jonathan's monologue ended in a poem and wants to know more details. As they are almost past, they are suddenly accosted by the carousel's attendant, the Not-Them. It and Jonathan exchange threats before Jonathan just starts laughing at it, and he explains to Martin that despite its best efforts, the Not-Them can't hurt them anymore since the Eye rules supreme in this new world and they are still technically its servants. As they start to walk away, the Not-Them spits a taunt about killing Sasha and Jonathan spins around to face it. The Not-Them starts to weep in terror as Jonathan forces it to experience all the pain and fear it caused to people. Jonathan commands the power of the Eye and obliterates the Not-Them.
- Back for the Dead: Not-Sasha returns, only for Jon to kill her.
- Bullying a Dragon: Not-Sasha provokes Jon by threatening to hurt Martin, fully aware that she has no power over them and that Jon is much more powerful now that the Eye rules over the new world, then compounds it by mocking the real Sasha after Jon gives her a chance to leave. It's no surprise what happens next.
- Eldritch Location: The colossal merry-go-round of the Stranger. It is so large that one full revolution back to the same spot would take days, but also so alien in dimension that you may be on the carousel forever without ever returning to the same spot.
- Face Stealer: What those who step onto the merry-go-round are forced to become. Victims lose all sense of identity and are forced to either run or claw and rip others apart for any scrap of personhood, usually by literally peeling off their faces.
- Karmic Death: Not-Sasha finally has the tables turned on her after killing and replacing who knows how many people (least of all Sasha) through what has been described as an extremely painful process. Jon forces her to experience the agony and pain she caused her victims which ultimately kills her.
- Leitmotif: The same circus music that played at the Yarmouth Wax Museum plays in the background.
- Madness Mantra: Used in this episode to demonstrate the circular, infinite hell of the Stranger's domain.
- Your face is not your face is not your face is not your face is not your face is not your face...
- Oh, Crap!: Not-Sasha's instant, meek apology for insulting the real Sasha when Jonathan turns back to face her.
- Rhyming Episode: This episode's statement is given entirely in verse.
Martin tries to get Jonathan to explain how he destroyed the Not-Them, but he doesn't want to talk about it as they approach the Buried's territory. Helen appears out of a door in the ground to check up on them, and answers Martin's question: although all the entities have entered the world, the Eye is supreme and benefits from the fear generated by all the others. When Jonathan turned the Eye's gaze upon the Not-Them, it became a victim of fear and as such was destroyed. Jonathan explains that he feels ashamed that bringing about the apocalypse caused him to become more powerful, and ashamed that he enjoyed destroying the Not-Them and wants to exact more revenge. Martin tells him he should go for it since his potential targets are almost exclusively evil monsters, but before Jonathan can respond he feels the need to give his latest monologue.
Jonathan tells the story of Sam, a worm that was once a human, pushing his way aimlessly through an endless amount of crushing dirt, with no sense of direction and no destination to be moving toward aside from a pinprick of light, barely visible at all times but never reachable. When it rains, the earth around Sam becomes soft and slick and any upwards progress he may have made is erased as he slides deeper downwards. Eventually Sam breaks into the tunnel of another worm and he is forced to slowly fight the other worm until he kills it, and his only reward is another tunnel to climb up and slide back down.
While Martin waits for Jonathan to finish, he hears a buzzing sound and follows it, finding a spade and digging up a ringing Nokia phone. He answers and speaks to Annabelle who offers her help, but he flatly declines and hangs up.
- Good Is Not Nice: Martin believes that it's only fair to go "full Kill Bill" on the monsters, and that Jon shouldn't feel bad about using his powers.Martin: Let's get our murder on!
- I'm a Humanitarian: When the worms fight... well, when you don't have space to use anything except your face...
- My God, What Have I Done?: Jon is ashamed of killing Not-Sasha—partly because he used his new, much stronger Eye powers, which he only got because of the apocalypse he blames himself for, partly because he liked it. Martin argues that Not-Sasha was actively torturing people and that being able to destroy beings like her is a net good.
- Unseen No More: After she has been hanging around in the periphery for a long time, Annabelle Cane's voice is heard for the first time (not counting her written statement in MAG 147).
Pre-Story
Jonathan asks Martin what Annabelle had wanted to help with, but Martin reprimands him for reading his mind unsolicited. Martin then explains that he couldn't really discern Annabelle's intentions, nor did it seem like she was trying to gain control over him. Jonathan is still unable to Know where Annabelle is. Martin asks if they can take a break for a bit, and as they sit and wait he voices his opinion that Gertrude would have done very well if she was in their place, but Jonathan disagrees. Martin asks if that's something he Knows, triggering a monologue.Story
Gertrude is appointed to the position of Head Archivist and soon kills a monster of the Stranger that had disposed of her predecessor, Angus Stacey, who had been too ambitious and lost all but one of his assistants, Fiona Law. Fiona is "the most fascinating combination of curiosity and cowardice", always eager to delve into the unknown before turning tail at the first sign of danger. When unable to escape a threat, Fiona faints which often causes her attacker to leave as they had no interest in killing something that would not be awake to know it. When Angus died, Fiona had the chance to leave the Institute but she didn't take it and continued her service under Gertrude. Gertrude hires two more assistants, Eric Delano and Emma Harvey. Of the three assistants, Emma is the closest to being Gertrude's right hand, the assistant she trusts most and the only one she tells when she becomes bound to Agnes Montague (#145: Infectious Doubts). Like Fiona, Emma has "that desperate, grasping need to know" but unlike her, "was circumspect enough to recognize the danger of such inclinations in a place like the Archives". She starts to conduct experiments when investigating real statements, taking Fiona with her as a guinea pig. For decades Emma intentionally lags behind and locks Fiona into places to see what happens, until Fiona is lost to the Buried's coffin. "When Emma came to tell Gertrude what had happened, she found the first of the cobwebs in her hair, the ones she would wash from it every morning for the rest of her life. And Gertrude mourned the first of many losses, and did not suspect the truth." Fiona is replaced by Michael Shelley, and Emma decides to conduct another experiment on him, this time to see how long she can hide the truth about the supernatural from him. When Eric disappears, Gertrude refuses to Know anything and searches for him, but believes Mary Keay when she claims ignorance. (#154: Bloody Mary) Eric is replaced by Sarah Carpenter, who is the subject of another of Emma's experiments, this time to see what it would take to break her bravery. Emma is surprised and disappointed when Sarah survives encounter after encounter, including using a dangerous Leitner book and spending a night at Paul McKenzie's house. (#27: A Sturdy Lock). Gertrude remains ignorant to Emma's sinister activities, from a combination of her own preoccupation with stopping rituals and the Web helping to cover Emma's tracks. While Gertrude and Michael go to Sannikov Land to stop A Great Twisting, (#101: Another Twist), Emma and Sarah go to investigate a statement and find a man with the power of the Desolation. Emma stays behind as per usual but when the man incinerates Sarah on the spot, Emma knows she's in trouble. Gertrude returns alone from Sannikov Land and finds Emma waiting, guilty and just as alone. Gertrude decides that Emma must be eliminated, and goes to the only other person she holds in some degree of trust. Agnes confirms what happened to Sarah and they arrange a plan. "Elias" is happy enough to hand over Emma's address so long as his own hands remain clean, and Emma is burned alive inside her home.Post-Story
Jonathan surmises that without someone to trust, to ground her, to give her a reason to fight, Gertrude would have had no real purpose and likely become complacent, ruling her domain in the new world. When Martin inquires about that last part, Jonathan affirms that every servant of one of the entities has their domain. Jonathan's is the Archives, and though he Knows what Martin's is, Martin would rather not. Martin then asks about the bit in the monologue where Fiona could have left the Institute after Angus, her original Archivist, died. Martin asks if Jonathan had known that the others would be freed if he died, if he would have told anyone or acted on it, but Jonathan doesn't know that.- A Day in the Limelight: One of the few episodes of the podcast that focuses on Gertrude personally and her past.
- Continuity Nod: The Sandman (featured in Episode 98) is mentioned as having been one of the monsters of the Powers that Emma tricked Fiona into getting trapped with.
- Cowardly Lion: Fiona; she was cowardly, but also so curious that she still kept getting herself into encounters with the supernatural.
- Everyone Has Standards: Gertrude may have been cold-blooded and ruthless while protecting the world from the Powers and studying them, but learning that Emma, who was the only other Archive employee she really trusted, has been using other Archive workers to study the Powers, she has her eliminated.
- Faint in Shock: Fiona had one simple but effective defense against the Powers: when she became too terrified, she would faint, making the monster attacking her lose interest.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: After Emma got another assistant, Sarah Carpenter, killed investigating a Desolation-related incident and Gertrude got back from preventing the Spiral's ritual, Gertrude saw through Emma's lies. With permission from Elias, she had Agnes Montague burn Emma alive in her home.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Apparently, monsters and other manifestations of the Powers don't typically target people who are unconscious or asleep, but only because that makes them unable to savor their victims' fear.
- The Reveal: Learning that Fiona was "released" from the Archives when her head archivist, Angus Stacey, was killed by the Stranger, Martin gets Jon to reveal that Jon's death would have released the others the same way.
- Unwitting Test Subject: Emma used Fiona as a guinea pig when studying the Powers, luring her into encounters with them, observing and taking notes from a safe distance and retrieving Fiona after she fainted from terror. Eventually, she was trapped in the Buried's coffin, from which her fainting couldn't save her.
- Michael Shelley, who later became the Distortion, was used by Emma in a similar way. She used him to test how long someone unaware of the existence of the Powers could be kept in the dark.
- Emma kept experimenting with the next assistant, Sarah Carpenter, trying to see what it would take to break someone as brave and driven as her.
Jonathan and Martin have reached the Corpse Routes, a territory of the End but specifically the domain of Oliver Banks. Martin is surprised and annoyed when Jonathan is hesitant to go after and destroy him since he doesn't think he's really evil, being the one to have woken him up from his coma. (#121: Far Away) This makes Martin jealous and angry, but Jonathan amusedly insists that he won't try to hunt Oliver down for something so petty.
Jonathan's monologue for the End comes in the form of a coroner's report from Oliver Banks.
Oliver writes his report to the Eye and the Archive, introducing himself as a servant of the End who is able to "see and spread the hidden veins of destiny". He then tells the story of one of his current victims, Danika Gelsthorpe, who from the age of fifteen who has spent her life believing herself to be on death's doorstep. She had health scare after health scare that turned out to be nothing life-threatening. She decided that whatever killed her would come from inside her body and so never worried about infection or disease. She was never able to stay happy because she never believed at any point that she had more than two years to live. When the Change happened, the End naturally claimed Danika and handed her over to Oliver's power. Oliver forsees her death in a crowded place where she will inadvertently dislodge a blood clot that she herself caused and die of a stroke, knowing what's happening the whole time and yet unable to stop it. Oliver watches Danika moving along the Corpse Route, trying in vain to stop. Sometimes Oliver allows her path to curve so she can witness the death of a loved one. Oliver then explains that in this new world, humans can no longer reproduce. When the End inevitably exhausts its own supply of victims, it will have to take more from the other entities until all life is extinguished, and when there is no more life, there will be no more fear to feed the entities and so they will die, with their own panic for their imminent demise feeding the End until only it is left, before it peacefully follows suit. Oliver then speaks directly to Jonathan, clarifying that he is not asking for help nor is he inciting him to action, and stating that he doesn't care if Jonathan tries to eliminate him or not.
Jonathan reaffirms his decision to not seek out and destroy Oliver, since he did not choose to be where he is and eventually his victims' torment will end.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Played for Laughs. Martin is jealous that Jon woke up because of Oliver, rather than him, and they banter about whether Jon should smite him.Jon: [amused] I'm not going to kill a man just because you're jealous, Martin.Martin: Why not? [Beat] Yeah, I know, I know, I know.[another beat]Martin: Pleeease?
- Deader than Dead: Oliver informs Jon that victims trapped in domains of The End die permanently due to its nature; this separates them from those of the other Powers, who torture their victims with false hope and constant torments.
- Did Not Think This Through: So, the Powers get to feast on humanity, and Jonah Magus gets to live forever? Oliver Banks points out the flaw in the plan; the new nature of reality means that likely no more children will be born, and since everyone in The End's realm will die and be replaced with people from other realms, sooner or later every human in the world will die. And without their fear, the Powers themselves will fade and die.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Danika Gelsthorpe spent her entire life convinced she was about to die of some horrific medical condition or other very soon. And because of this, she never got treatment for the actual medical conditions she had, since she felt there was no point... so one of them actually got serious enough to kill her.
Jonathan and Martin approach a burning building which Jonathan assures Martin they can go through since with his abilities they can navigate it. Martin voices qualms about this and gets Jonathan to admit that they don't actually have to go in and in fact have taken a detour to come here. Martin presses Jonathan and he explains that this is the domain of Jude Perry who he wants to destroy as punishment for giving him the mark of the Desolation and for all the pain she has wrought. Jonathan decides to give Martin the choice but he declines, and so they go in.
Jonathan monologues about the concept of home, how they can be rotten or relieving, and how much someone's life can be thrown into chaos when they lose it. He tells the story of a girl whose home catches fire while her parents are asleep and she is unable to save them or herself.
Jonathan's monologue is interrupted by Martin who snaps him out of it as Jude arrives. Jonathan demands to know if Jude knew her part in Jonah's plan when she burned him (#89: Twice as Bright), but she didn't, and she doesn't care to wonder if she would had she known since "the past is dead". She mocks Jonathan and the Eye for feeding on the fear generated by "the real monsters". Jonathan explains his purpose in coming and begins to force her to experience all the pain she has caused. As Jude suffers she tries to bargain with Jonathan, saying that they belong in this world and she can help him hurt those who wronged him, but Jonathan doesn't take her up on it and in a moment she is gone, but the fire still rages on.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Jude Perry tries to come off first as unimpressed, then as though she's humoring Jon, and then slipping into taking him seriously and then finally making frantic pleas to the tune of We Can Rule Together. He doesn't listen and she ends up the same way as Not-Sasha.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The fire caused by an uncaring landlord is reminiscent of the Grenfell Tower Fire
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Jude thinks Jon is like her and is actually enjoying this, and legitimately doesn't understand that he's killing her for reasons other than a power-trip.
- It's Personal: Discussed and Averted. Jon can sense two avatars from the Lightless Flame cult ahead, Arthur Nolan and Jude Perry. Both are cold-blooded sadists, but as Jon's personal vendetta doesn't extend far enough to endanger Martin, the choice ultimately comes down to "evil murder cultist" and "evil murder cultist who burned my hand".
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Jon and Martin have another debate about their current course; as the Power whose domain they are approaching is the Desolation, and thus revolves around cruelty for cruelty's sake, the moral imperative is to "smite" whichever avatar they come across to do their bit for the victims.
- Rule of Three: As Sabina tries to escape from the fire, she is foiled three times by problems with her apartment that her landlord promised to fix but didn't—first there's a latch that doesn't work right, then the window gets stuck and explodes in her face, then the fire escape breaks away when she tries to climb on it.
- Take That!: Against bad landlords; all the ways Sabina suffers are directly tied to incredibly poor maintenance of the building with a little supernatural spice.
Martin finds himself in a foggy house, unable to remember many things. He introduces himself to the tape recorder over and over, musing if this is his house, why all the chairs are so uncomfortable, trying to remember various details of his life until he remembers that he was following Jonathan through the house and fell behind. As Martin remembers and defines aloud who he his and remembers his friends, Jonathan finds him again. Martin admits that he had wanted to believe this place's lies and forget everything, and though Jonathan offers him the chance to stay and do just that, but Martin firmly declines and renounces the Lonely for good.
- Amnesia Loop: This episode is framed through Martin finding a tape recorder, dictating a few thoughts, becoming increasingly terrified and then immediately forgetting everything. Followed by his surprise at finding a tape recorder, dictating a few thoughts... over and over.
- A Day in the Limelight: The first statement of the Changed world given primarily by Martin. Fitting since he was once a budding Avatar of the Lonely and the setting is an empty, fog-covered house that is its domain.
- Brief Accent Imitation: When Martin remembers his name and starts repeating it, he says it the way Jon does a couple times.
- Foreshadowing: At one point in Martin's aimless bantering, he wonders aloud why the tape recorders are still around if the Eye can observe everything on its own now.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Martin's alarmed narration and lapses in memory are reminiscent of the fear of losing one's mind to dementia or Alzheimer's.
- The Power of Love: Martin breaks out of loop by remembering his friends and that he is in love with Jon.
- Self-Deprecation: Martin, regarding Martin: "I don't like me sometimes. And I am me."
Jonathan and Martin reach the domain of the Boneturner, now cultivating a garden of flesh plants that were once humans. He knows that they've come to destroy him, and requests to hear Jonathan's monologue about the place before that happens.
Jonathan's monologue consists of a cultivation guide for the various flesh plants, describing each one and how to care for it by enhancing the body-related fears and inadequacies their former human selves were burdened with.
When the monologue is complete, the Boneturner thanks Jonathan and bids his garden farewell before being obliterated. Before they press on, Martin asks Jonathan why they didn't go after Arthur Nolan while in the Desolation's territory. Jonathan answers that "it didn't seem worth it" because he doesn't have beef with Nolan like he did with Jude Perry, and eliminating him wouldn't have stopped the suffering there.
Jonathan: I don't know if that was ever an option.
- Body Horror: The "flowers" are humans twisted and disfigured by Jared based on this aspect of the Flesh:
- Reese, "The Gristlebloom Orchid", seems based on bodybuilding and a fear of physical inadequacy and keeps growing more and more muscle to the point of not even looking human anymore.
- Patricia, "The Bone Rose", is based around eating disorders and a compulsion to stay thin; Patricia is now so emaciated that she would collapse and snap into pieces if she didn't constantly struggle to stay upright.
- Leopold, "The Cutaway Tulip", is based on body alterations through plastic surgery and the fear of deteriorating with age; the notes suggest that if this fear grows enough, he will eventually start making modifications to himself.
- Maeve, "The Lily of the Damned", is based on a fear of the body failing, its fragility and irreplacability.
- Face Death with Dignity: Jared knows Jon will kill him, and would prefer to go out with some good fisticuffs, but as that's not an option he nonetheless remains humble in the face of annihilation.
- Faux Affably Evil: Jared speaks affectionately to his... flowers... but he clearly enjoys their fear and pain—when Jon does the statement, he says that Jared does love them, but it is a terrible love that can only cause harm. Likewise, he's more or less polite to Jon and Martin, but that's just because he knows he wouldn't actually win a fight.
- Morton's Fork: Leopold, "The Cutaway Tulip", is disgusted by what Jared's cultivation has turned him into, but he fears the decay of aging even more.
- Moving the Goalposts:
- The growth notes for the "Gristlebloom Orchid" say that the victim can never be allowed to feel like it has grown enough, forcing it to keep growing more and more engorged.
- Similarly, the growth notes for the "Cutaway Tulip" say that the gardener must make sure the victim always thinks there's something about their body that's ugly and needs fixing; every time they fix one problem, the gardener must do this.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Jared reveals that he took willing subjects through his gym simply because it was convenient, and he still fed on their fear, just in more subtle ways than simply making them afraid of him. Now that he can just grab people whenever, it no longer matters to him.
Jonathan and Martin are almost out of the Web's territory, a sprawling theatre, when Jonathan has to stop and monologue.
This monologue comes in the form of a script of the 48,067th act of a play happening in the background, in which Francis is pulled around by hooked strings onstage, forced to indulge in old addictions while the Spider mockingly tells them they are in control, and their friends and family verbally put them down from offstage.
When Jonathan starts to transition into Act 48,068, Martin snaps him out of it with a slap. Martin explains that he went exploring the theatre but can't explain why, and worries that the Web is influencing him. He asks if Jonathan can Know the Web's plans, but he answers that "the Web doesn't work in Knowledge, not in the same way" and if he tried to see its plans he wouldn't be able to understand it.
- And I Must Scream: The puppet shows happening in the theater, where monstrous spiders force their puppets/victims to do horrible things for an audience's amusement. One such show is the Tragedy of Francis, which is currently on Act 48,067.
- Body Horror: The cringe-inducing descriptions of the puppet hooks stabbing into Francis's limbs and later on the side of their cheek.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: In-universe, the Spider appears to be shoving Francis's problems with addiction in Jon's face as a way of mocking his own struggles with feeding on people's trauma.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Martin gets frustrated with Jon's need to "vent" a new statement when they are close to the exit. Jon retorts with "if you're bored, you can always take in a show," indicating the nightmarish puppet acts happening nearby. Martin is not amused by the joke.
- Mood Dissonance: The moments where Jon notes the performers should pause for audience laughter are (to most people) not at all laugh-worthy. Such moments include Francis's abusive father insulting them or Francis being forced to ingest a bottle full of hatching arachnid eggs.
- Never My Fault: The spider insists that Francis shouldn't blame it for torturing them, because "the man in the audience", ie Jon, is forcing it to, even though Jon didn't want to summon the Fears and would be stopping them if he had any power to (which, after smiting Jude and Jared failed to change anything about their respective domains, it's pretty clear he doesn't).
Jonathan and Martin trek through a dark neighborhood street which Jonathan seems in a hurry to get past. Martin presses him on the subject and he explains that since the Eye prefers more complex, adult fears, all the world's children were sent to the domains of simpler fears, such as the Dark, to mature. Horrified and disgusted, Martin demands that Jonathan do something, at least destroy the avatar of the Dark whose domain this is, but to Martin's further horror Jonathan rings a doorbell and summons that avatar: Callum Brodie (#73: Police Lights). Although Callum was a bully before, his experience being kidnapped by the People's Church of the Divine Host and almost becoming the new host for the being inside Maxwell Rayner caused him to change his tactics to show the younger kids the true terror of the Dark. Furious, Martin demands to listen to Jonathan's monologue about this place in hopes of learning something they can do to save the children.
Jonathan tells the story of children living on Night Street, chased by the monsters unseen in the darkness and unable to get help from any grownups as they are all fast asleep. Callum leads the torment, telling the other children stories about new monsters, or giving away the ones that have found places to hide.
Martin is displeased with this monologue as it truly seems that they can't do anything for the kids here, but he is now more determined to reach the Archives and find a solution for the world as a whole.
- Enfant Terrible: Basira might have saved Callum Brody from being possessed, but she didn't save him from being marked by the Dark—which means he's the new avatar as himself.
- Kids Are Cruel: Callum was already a bully before he became influenced by the Dark.
- Parental Neglect: While not focused on, one of the tortures of the domain is the children's parents (or replicas thereof) callously ignoring the children's terror and punishing them for bringing it up.
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: These are used to torture the children trapped on the Dark's domain, with each new monster they hear about becoming another creature hunting them.
- Would Hurt a Child: Children arguably suffer more than adults—they experience the Dark's domain first, when their fears are simplistic, and the Eye allows them to age until they're mature enough to have more "interesting" fears, at which point they'll be farmed out to other domains.
Jonathan tells the story of a woman who sees a gigantic monster, so huge that it blocks out the sun and can't been seen all at once, approaching her home. She packs her family into the car and tries to escape, but eventually it becomes clear that she could drive forever and not make it out of the beast's shadow. The monologue then reveals that the beast is actually comprised of millions of still-living humans, unable to control their bodies as the collective whole steps endlessly and painfully forward.
Martin tries and fails to get a clear answer about how much longer until they leave the territory of the Vast since time and space are virtually meaningless. Martin asks about Simon Fairchild, but Jonathan explains that he can move so much faster here, so they'll won't catch him if he decides to keep away. Right on cue, however, Simon lands in front of them with a cheerful greeting. Martin berates Simon for manipulating him into helping Peter earlier (#151: Big Picture), though Simon defends himself by saying that since he was just doing the favor he owed Peter, Peter is more to blame than he is. Martin doesn't care and orders Jonathan to smite Simon, but he hesitates. Panicked, Simon rushes a polite farewell to them before flying off again. Martin angrily demands to know why Jonathan didn't destroy Simon as Helen turns up to voice her displeasure as well, having secretly spectated his previous smitings. Jonathan explains that destroying other avatars has stopped feeling right, that rather than making things better it only makes himself worse since their work of fear is still able to continue without them. Helen angrily tells Jonathan that he should enjoy his unmatched power before taking her exit. Martin asks if Jonathan's hesitancy to kill the other avatars extends to Jonah, but Jonathan assures him that he'll kill him if he needs to.
- Big Entrance: Simon says hello by, given the sounds, falling from the sky. When Martin announces their intent to kill him, he just...zooms off. Into the sky.
- Body of Bodies: What the Great Beast turns out to be: a monster of incomprehensible scale composed of millions of people contorted in agony, suffering from the flexing and shock of impact caused by the movement of the Beast.
- Call-Back: Simon mentioned in MAG 151 ("Big Picture") that he thought about trying to do something with "the scale of humanity". Turns out, that's exactly what he set up his little pocket of the Change to be.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Jon begins to realise this about his "avenging angel" spree against other Avatars. While Martin is right that Jon is removing evil from the world it doesn't make anything better; it just makes him worse.
- Jerkass: Helen shows up to berate Jon for not taking enjoyment out of slaying avatars—she was having a good laugh, you see.
- Made of Iron: Simon Fairchild is completely unharmed by crash landing from untold thousands of feet.
- Morton's Fork: Edward's dilemma in his section of the statement. Either be stuck as one of an infinite number of victims interwoven to form the Great Beast, suffering from the unending torment or be jettisoned from the Beast and experience the pure terror of free-fall and eventually meet the pavement. Edward settles for the relative comfort of the former, becoming part of the Beast once more where the chance of instant death is lower but the suffering is constant.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Simon Fairchild gets the hell out of dodge as Martin and Jon argue over whether or not to kill him.
- That's No Moon: When the Great Beast first arrives, Noreen initially thinks its shadow blotting out the sun is an unexpected eclipse.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: It is stated to be impossible to get far enough back from the Great Beast to be able to see all of it. The statement takes care to mention that comprehending it wouldn't be possible even if seeing all of it were.
This monologue is a set of notes analyzing supernatural rubbish items and mutated creatures, interspersed with a woman named Leah interacting with them. An old stained lamp with a broken bulb that somehow glows without a power source, a seagull tangled in plastic webbing that has evolved to hunt by sound and bite through plastic and tin cans, a soggy history book whose pages have melted together that screams if touched, a broken umbrella that no longer has a purpose as there is no rain, and "the thing that lives", a creature native to the new era "that does not know or care what a human is", "it is our replacement and it is welcome to the world". The last item are some human bones, and Leah takes a rib to replace her broken pencil.
While they take another break, Martin and Jonathan discuss the Extinction, and how Peter Lukas was ultimately just another of its victims, terrified at the thought of humanity's destruction brought on by themselves. Martin asks if there is any kind of afterlife or deities outside of the Dread Powers, but Jonathan admits that he can only see the fear of those things and cannot Know if there is any truth to them. As they prepare to move on, Jonathan warns Martin that they are going to the Hunt's territory next, where Basira and Daisy are.
- After the End: The domain is a massive pile of trash in a dried out seabed, filled with the ruins of humanity and mutated creatures. Appropriate for the Extinction's domain.
- Anti-Climax: After seasons of theorizing and foreshadowing, when the Extinction finally shows up? It's just there. Feeding off the world like any other fear. Jon and Martin simply acknowledge it and move on.
- Call-Back: An Inheritor, mentioned in Episode 134 ("Time of Revelation"), the Extinction's proper debut episode, makes an appearance in the statement.
- Contemplate Our Navels: With no avatar to fight, the two mostly sit in the ruins and discuss the universe. Among other things, we learn that the Eye can't tell if God or the Afterlife are real, and that all human attempts to categorize the fears are more reflections of the observer's biases than objective truth.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: A particularly horrific example: Leah writes her notes using her own ribs
- Feathered Fiend: The Seagulls, which are totally silent, have razor-sharp beaks that can tear through metal and many-jointed legs.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Averted. While an atheist before, in a world reformed by dark gods of terror, Martin acknowledges the idea of a higher power "feels less far-fetched"
- Gaia's Lament: Among other things, it never rains, the entire world is covered in 30ft trashpiles and birds are born already covered in oil and plastic rubbish
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: Or fear, at least. The nature of the Fears as, well, fears is elaborated on a lot more here, in a way that makes them seem almost pathetic. Jon and Martin's discussion frequently brings up that they are finite creatures based on human perception, rather than true Eldritch Abominations. Most notably, when he tries to use the Eye to determine the existence of gods and the afterlife: it can detect what people are scared the answers might be, but as a manifestation of human fear, the actual answer is simply beyond its grasp."I'm not sure it would exist without the baggage.
- Non-Indicative Name: As the statement points out, calling the monstrous birds "Seagulls" is a misnomer since there isn't a sea anymore.
- Nothing Is Scarier: While given a bit more of a description than last time, other then a smile and a long, acidic tongue, we still don't know what an Inheritor looks like.
- The Reveal: The Extinction is real, and may well have been approaching the same level as the other fears. But the worries about its emergence were ultimately unfounded: rather than some grand destroyer, it's just another Fear.
- Wham Line: "Daisy and Basira. We're close."
In the territory of the Hunt, Jonathan and Martin search for Basira. Jonathan explains that this particular region of the Hunt's domain focuses on the fear of betrayal, one's pack turning upon them, but he assures him that as long as they show no fear they will be safe. As he tells Martin that Basira has had a worse time in the new world than they have, Jonathan suddenly needs to make another monologue.
Jonathan monologues of a pack of Hunters chasing down, cornering, killing and devouring their quarry. Once they come to the realization that they no longer have prey, they look among their own number and decide who was the weakest before chasing them as their new prey.
After finishing, Jonathan tells Martin that they don't have to fear the pack he spoke of since they are not and were not one of them previously. Jonathan suddenly stops and tells Martin to stay calm before he is suddenly seized by Trevor Herbert. Trevor threatens Martin but Jonathan explains that Trevor cannot kill him as he is no longer a Hunter but the prey. Trevor starts to break down and explains that Julia was killed by "that rabid bitch" before letting him get a headstart. Jonathan expresses his pity for Trevor, for causing him and Julia to be put in this situation, and for him to have fallen from Hunter to prey and now to bait. Trevor is shot dead at these words and Basira emerges. She demands that they prove they are the real Jonathan and Martin, and though they can provide no proof since Martin didn't know Basira well enough and Jonathan can Know anything she eventually admits that it's really them because:
- Alas, Poor Villain: Jon acknowledges that Trevor has had a very difficult life and never got the chance to have anything better, and that he does feel sorry for him, particularly because he lost Julia, and because Jon is using him as bait.
- Back for the Dead: Trevor.
- Batman Gambit: Jon pulls one of these to get close to Basira. He knows that she'll react poorly to a direct approach, and he also knows that Trevor is hunting them, and Basira is hunting Trevor. So he lets Trevor catch them, and stalls until Basira shows up.
- Brought Down to Normal: The Hunt withdrew its power from Trevor when he became Daisy and Basira's prey.
- Dwindling Party: The pack of hunters that pursues and kills victims in the domain. After their most recent hunt is successful, the other members of the pack single out one of them for some reason and that member becomes the prey in the next hunt.
- Genre Savvy: At this point, Martin knows Jon well enough that his attempted reassurance only serves as in-universe Five-Second Foreshadowing that something is about to jump them.Jon: Martin, do you trust me?
Martin: What? Ah, Christ, this can't be good. - Something Only They Would Say: Averted. When Basira demands Martin tell "something only [he] would know", Martin can't come up with anything to say—as he points out, they weren't really that close, so how is he supposed to know what she knows about him? Jon can't do it either because his powers make a test like this meaningless. She eventually decides that they're wasting time talking about it, and if they do turn out to be monsters she can just shoot them.
- Wham Line: As Jon is talking to an obviously agitated Trevor who has Martin held hostage.Jon: I’m – sorry, Trevor. For putting us all in this situation. I had hoped you’d go for me, but – well. I’m sorry I’ve reduced you lower even than prey. To bait.
Act II
After hours of traveling with Basira, Martin demands that they stop and talk through things. Together, Basira and Jonathan explain that Daisy hunted Julia Montauk for a week before killing her, after which she was tracked by Trevor. Basira started track Trevor so he could lead her to Daisy and she could keep her promise and kill her, however this plan was ruined when Jonathan used Trevor to lure Basira to them. Basira demands that Jonathan use his abilities to lead her to Daisy, and he requests that she give him time to figure out a way through Wonderland House, a mental hospital which is a territory of the Spiral. He goes off to Know a way forward, during which Martin recaps their journey so far to Basira. Jonathan tells them that they will pass by another of Daisy's victims on the way, before needing to stop for another monologue.
In the monologue, Jonathan roleplays as "Dr. David", a psychiatrist at Wonderland House who gaslights his patients into believing that they're making up their afflictions and previous doctors they saw didn't know what they were talking about. He tells them that their paranoia is justified and that everyone around them really does hate them. Eventually, the patient tears off Dr. David's face, which unfazes him but leaves the patient screaming in terror at what's underneath.
They arrive at a room containing the remains of Daisy's victim. Basira identifies him as Noah Thomson, a criminal Daisy had held a grudge against for escaping a GBH charge for blinding a man, though Jonathan explains that rather than a robbery gone wrong as Daisy had claimed, Thomson was instead running from Daisy and done the deed as a panicked accident. He warns Basira that "you can't hunt a monster that you refuse to see". Helen arrives at that moment and offers to take Basira straight to Daisy through the Hallways, with the caveat that she would have to go alone since Jonathan can no longer use the Hallways. Basira decides to decline Helen's offer.
- Bedlam House: Double Subverted. Wonderland House is a clean, modern mental health facility rather then the nightmarish Victorian hellholes usually seen in horror fiction. However, under the facade, it's still a very, very bad place to be.
- Gaslighting: Jon explains the torture of Wonderland House as gaslighting in reverse. The doctors there manipulate patients into believing that their mental illnesses aren't actually real and all the problems are actually all their fault and not just in their head or that things really are as bad as they think.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: "Dr. David" is this in spades.
- Nothing Is Scarier: What is beneath "Dr. David's" face is not described, and the sinister tone with which he says that's what is really under there implies it's nothing good.
- Second-Person Narration: The statement is given in the form of "Dr. David" making his rounds at Wonderland House, talking to three "patients" at the facility, mocking them, verbally abusing them and telling them they are making up their illnesses.
- Unusual Euphemism: Basira assumes Martin saying Jon needs to "make a statement" is this, possibly code for going to the bathroom.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Or rather, you mind makes it not real. Distance isn't really physical anymore, but rather a matter of mindset. So Basira hasn't caught Daisy yet because, deep down, she doesn't actually believe that she needs to.
As they travel through a factory territory of the Flesh, Jonathan explains that most of the innumerable queues of people aren't actually real, only serving to heighten the despair of the real ones.
Jonathan tells the story of a man named Tyler who makes his way through the queues in the factory, where all the human victims are butchered like livestock. When Tyler reaches the killing floor, the bolt paralyzes him instead of killing him and he is forced to watch as his body is taken apart before being disposed of, and the last thing he hears is one of the butchers calling the meat "useless".
Jonathan leads Martin and Basira to a room containing Daisy's next victim and tells Basira that they can't move on until she recognizes her. Basira doesn't know the dead woman's name, so Jonathan fills in the details. A thief and drug addict who Daisy was sure was a dealer as well, and actually stopped her from getting clean. Basira says that she joined the police force because she wanted to do good and help people, but that ended up changing after she saw the evil in the world and got sectioned. Daisy was there for Basira through all of it, and before falling back to the Hunt for good she really was trying to clean up her act. Jonathan confirms that there is no way to save Daisy now and Basira will have to kill her.
- All for Nothing: Not that Tyler's story had any chance of ending happily, but after he's been killed with a bolt gun and slaughtered, the Butchers throw all of his remains in the trash because they deem his flesh unsuitable, which somehow seems to make the experience even worse.
- Armor-Piercing Question / Armor-Piercing Response: Jon manages both of these in practically the same sentence. When Basira sarcastically asks if Daisy's victims were innocent, he calmly replies that some of them were, and even if they weren't, 'What crime warrants what was done to them?'
- Call-Back: The concept of pigs as potential consumers of humans illustrated with the pig men that run the slaughterhouse hearkens back to the monster pig in Episode 103 ("Cruelty Free").
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Early in the processing, Tyler is forced to fill out a form of personal details, but because he isn't given a pen, he instead writes by scratching the words with his overgrown fingernails until they break.
- Forgiveness : Jon, when talking about Daisy's attempts to be a better person, mentions that she never asked him to forgive her for her attempting to kill him — and adds that he wouldn't have forgiven her regardless.
- Institutional Apparel: Tyler is said to wear some sort of overalls.
- Living Prop: Surprisingly, most of the humans going through the slaughterhouse are just "set dressing", as Jon puts it. The slaughterhouse manifestation would require many more people to complete the crowded experience than there are available for the Flesh to use, so it creates several fake ones to enhance the terror of the real humans coming through.
- Pig Man: The Butchers, though not described in great detail, are humanoid and sound very much like pigs in the background noise.
- Sickening Slaughterhouse: Jon, Martin and Basira's quest takes them through one where humans are lined up, processed and slaughtered like livestock, playing on the Flesh's "meat is meat" aspect.
Jonathan tells the story of a man named Derek working in an incinerator territory of the Desolation, remembering his life with his close friend Colin and their entry into a life of crime together. Derek went to prison several times in Colin's place, feeling that he owes Colin for all the help he has given him, but it caused him to lose everything else including his daughter. Derek suddenly hears something coming for him, something not of the Desolation, and he is promptly pounced on and slaughtered by a monster he briefly recognizes before he dies.
Jonathan comes out of his monologue trance to find that Basira has been listening. Martin arrives to tell them that Daisy is nearby. They sneak towards her, but before Basira can take the shot Martin suddenly gasps in anticipation, triggering an argument between the three of them which allows Daisy to find them and attack. She starts to maul Jonathan until Basira begs her to stop. Daisy recognizes Basira and, dropping Jonathan, asks her to come be a Hunter with her. Basira can't do it and as Daisy angrily repeats her demand, Basira fires at her and she falls. As Martin patches up Jonathan's leg, Basira tells them that she's going to stay back and take care of Daisy's body before going to London on her own. Martin protests but Jonathan agrees that this is what she needs.
- And I Must Scream: Derek is torn to shreds by Daisy. It's explicitly stated he's still aware and conscious afterwards.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: The Domain Statement is barely five minutes long before Daisy bursts into the story and kills the statement giver. The rest of the episode is entirely about the conflict with her, with the actual domain itself basically forgotten.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Basira tries this with Daisy. She fails.
- Mirror Character: Derek's life as a criminal ultimately started because of his loyalty to his best friend Colin, the two of them excusing and supporting each other's crimes as they escalated from the petty to the serious...just like Daisy and Basira.
- Nightmarish Factory: The domain of this statement is a giant, red-hot furnace where the inhabitants are forced to burn everything they love cart by cart.
- Not So Invincible After All: After being utterly immune to the domains and avatars for the whole of season five, Jon is nearly killed by Daisy. He explicitly links this to his personal connection to her before the apocalypse, implying other people he cares about could also hurt him
- Staking the Loved One: Basira finally lives up to her promise to kill Daisy
- Talking Is a Free Action: Subverted. Basira and Jon arguing over the details of shooting Daisy gives her enough time to flee and ambush them.
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Grieving over killing Daisy, Basira splits from Jon and Martin and decides to make her own way to the panopticon without Jon's supernatural protection
- Was Once a Man: We don't get a description of what Daisy looks like after being fully consumed by the Hunt, but the distorted, unnaturally deep voice doesn't paint a pretty picture.
- We Can Rule Together: In their final confrontation, Daisy offers Basiara the chance to join her in the Hunt. Basira is tempted but in the end follows through on her promise.
- Wham Episode: Daisy is dead, Basira has left on her own and it turns out Jon can be hurt after all
Jonathan and Martin make their way through a necropolis territory.
Jonathan tells the story of someone attending the funeral of their abuser and forced to give a glowing eulogy for her, even as her corpse rises from the coffin and starts to eat them.
Jonathan reveals that he actually doesn't know what they're heading towards next as its a blind spot similar to the Panopticon. Jonathan and Martin find a manor house seemingly untouched by the apocalypse, and decide to investigate it. As they climb the front steps, Jonathan realizes that he can't use his powers here. The front door opens and they are greeted by Annabelle Cane who invites them in to meet their host. As they realize they are starting to feel the exhaustion of their long trek, Annabelle takes them into the parlor where Mikaele Salesa is excitedly waiting for them. They only have a moment to register shock before they collapse from the onset of exhaustion.
- Actually Pretty Funny: When John and Martin have a giggle over John's 'I Spy' joke, something else in the necropolis joins in on their laughter.
- The Fundamentalist: The statement subject's relative that's being buried is revealed to have been an abusive religious fanatic who at one point made a cut in the shape of a cross in the subject's back.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead:
- In the first part of the statement, the unnamed subject walks through the Necropolis, reading the flowery epitaphs and wondering what secret flaws in the buried that they hide. They then worry that the nearby stone angels will take issue with not honoring the dead, no matter what they were like in life.
- When forced to deliver a eulogy at the funeral, the person in the statement can't bring themselves to tell the truth about what a horrible, abusive person the deceased was and instead showers them with praise.
- In general, the statement seems to concern a fear of not being able to move on from someone and feeling compelled to speak fondly of them after they've passed on, even if they were terrible in life, simply because they’re dead.
- Not Quite Dead:
- After the statement subject finishes the eulogy for their abusive, vicious relative, the deceased rises from her coffin and bites into the subject's shoulder.
- Also, Mikaele Salesa, of all people, turns out to be alive and living in the house Jon and Martin find.
- Not So Omniscient After All: Jon discovers that the area following the Necropolis is a huge blindspot for his all-knowing powers, which actually makes him quite excited for the first time in ages.
- Schmuck Bait: Jon and Martin both figure that the perfectly tranquil house near the Necropolis is an obvious trap, but they both decide to take the chance anyway.
- Second-Person Narration: The story is of someone walking through the Necropolis, feeling threatened by the buried dead, and attending the funeral of a relative, all narrated as their actions being described to them.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When Jon and Martin arrive at Mikaele and Annabelle's house, the weeks or months that they've gone without eating or sleeping properly make themselves known.
Pre-Story
After taking time to rest and recuperate, Jonathan and Martin meet with Salesa. They ask about Annabelle and he explains that she just kind of showed up one day, but she hasn't given him any trouble and he doesn't feel pressed to give her any, and in fact she is helpful to him as she stopped a monster of the Corruption that managed to enter the property. Martin tells Salesa about their plan to reach the Panopticon and return the world to normal, and though he supports this goal he has nothing he can offer to help them aside from the safety of his manor. As they continue to press for answers about how Salesa ended up here, he decides to tell them his story.Story
Mikaele starts out as an assistant of Jurgen Leitner, but leaves his service after realizing that trying to control the powers is a road to trouble. He starts a career as a smuggler, initially for stolen art but soon for cursed objects with dark powers. He finds and sells these items, taking great care to avoid actually serving any of the powers so as to keep himself safe from their hunger. Over time, Mikaele learns about the various rituals and concludes that eventually one will succeed, and so he starts to prepare for when that day comes. His greatest priority is to locate and reclaim an artefact he had previously possessed and sold, a broken camera able to render one undetectable by any of the powers. "I believe it operates as a sort of battery, charging itself on all the quiet worries that come from living in hiding, and then when the sanctuary collapses, all that fear flows out at once." After Mikaele retrieves the camera, he fakes his death and goes into a hidden retirement, banking on the camera to keep him safe if all hell breaks loose.Post-Story
Jonathan and Martin prepare to move on from Salesa's sanctuary, since prolonged lack of contact with the Eye is weakening Jonathan to the point of completely zoning out of conversations. They encounter Annabelle one more time but Jonathan declines to try to force answers out of her. After exchanging goodbyes with Salesa and feeling the safety of the manor draining out of them, Jonathan needs Martin to recap everything to him for a change, as the memories have quickly faded.- Breather Episode: The episode is fairly low on horror, especially compared to the pure, uncut terror of the Eye's hellscape we've seen so far. Appropriate, since Jon and Martin spend the episode getting some rest before continuing their journey.
- Chekhov's Gun: Salesa's aquisition of the camera that provides him with his safe zone was previously told in Episode 141 ("Doomed Voyage"), in which one of his former crew members described him going out to a tiny private island in the Maldives with a few men and returning with the camera, after which the island was suddenly hit by a thunderstorm and some gigantic shape rose from the ocean and swallowed the island.
- Driven to Suicide: Not yet, but Mikaele is aware that his luxurious hideaway comes with a warranty, and he doesn't plan to be alive to face the outside world of horror when it expires.
- Foreshadowing: Even though Salesa's house is in a blind spot for the Eye where even Jon's powers don't work, a tape recorder still somehow finds its way inside. This makes sense in hindsight with the revelation in Episode 196 ("This Old House") that the tapes are actually the work of The Web, and Annabelle, one of its avatars, was staying in the house.
- Forgetful Jones: Being cut off from the Beholding makes Jon's memory slip, in the form of him losing trains of thought and having trouble remembering what it's like outside.
- Karma Houdini: Reflecting on his own role as a black market dealer of supernatural nightmare items, Mikaele noted that such figures in other stories were rarely punished for their actions, which was one of the reasons why he committed to his new occupation. The other being that he simply enjoyed watching his rich, arrogant clients buy their own dooms.
- Magical Camera: Mikaele's sanctuary is created by a camera apparently linked to the Beholding that allows the user to hide from the Powers. He believes that it draws power from the user's worry of being exposed when that blindspot is suddenly taken away, at which point the Beholding feeds on all that pent-up fear.
- This is similar to the cabin in which Jon and Martin stayed at the beginning of the season, which also seemed to feed on their fear of having that relative shelter suddenly taken from them.
Jonathan assures Martin that they are getting somewhat close to London as they approach a terrifying hospital. Entering, they are greeted by a creature calling itself Dr. Jane Doe, who recognizes Jonathan as an "Inspector" and gives them a tour of the hospital which she tells them is named St. Bleedings Center for Wellbeing, although wellbeing is considered the ailment rather than the goal. The main method of treatment is surgery, and the hospital has four hundred operating theatres for this purpose. Martin spots someone he seems to recognize, but Dr. Doe remarks that it's just a janitor and leads them onward. Martin notices that Jonathan needs to give another monologue and alerts Dr. Doe, who is only too pleased to find a place for him to do so.
The monologue comes in the form of several medical reports, in which clearly nonhuman doctors examine patients for any sign of wellness before rushing them off to strange and twisted surgeries.
While Martin waits, he encounters the janitor again and realizes that he's Breekon, who becomes interested when he recognizes Martin as a Magnus Institute employee and figures out that he's travelling with the Archivist. When Jonathan comes out, he quickly deduces that Breekon wants something from him. Breekon asks Jonathan to destroy him, as despite being of the Stranger this place is a hell for him too, without Hope and their deliveries. Jonathan sees no reason to deny him this and commands the Eye to turn its power upon him.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Subverted. Martin has absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for Breekon; entirely fair given the chaos and suffering he and Hope inflicted on countless people. Jon feels a little bad for him, granting him the merciful death he asks for.
- Anatomically Ignorant Healing: Renee, one of the patients in Jon's statement, is frequently taken to an operating theater where surgeons will open her up and root around for whatever is ailing her, usually by removing organs. Then the doctors will replace them with things that are most certainly not organs - sometimes hard and sharp objects, things that are soft but putrid and even things that are alive. This is because, in Dr. Doe's words, St. Bleeding's is very concerned with your wellbeing—removing it, that is.
- Call-Back:
- The domain, St. Bleedings Center for Wellbeing, is a huge one to MAG 34, "Anatomy Class". The students there, who were a little too normal-looking and all named after generic missing person's names (like "Jane Doe"), were noted to have an odd fascination with the material of the titular class, as if they were determined to find out exactly how "the insides" worked. Here, the doctors, including Jane Doe, visibly and audibly look forward to performing surgery in quite the experimental fashion.
- Jane Doe sounds exactly like Nikola Orsinov (despite being played by a different actress), making it clear which entity holds power here.
- Compliment Backfire:
Jane Doe: Do not insult me.
Martin: I- okay.
- Cruel Mercy: Kelly M's "treatment" appears to be final. The problem is, it's so constant and unpleasant that she actually wants them to hurry up and perform her next treatment if only to stop it. So naturally, they aren't going to.
- Death Seeker: Breekon actually asks Jon to annihilate him, having nothing left to live for since Hope died.
- Dissonant Serenity: The Uncanny Valley variety. Doctor Jane Doe is clearly has a range of emotions, but her voice seems stuck on a polite, cheerful tone.
- Hell Is That Noise: The scissor-like sounds that occasionally ring out when Jane Doe starts walking.
- Medical Horror: The hospital, apparently belonging to a domain of the Stranger, is built to be the exact inverse of a hospital; instead of being a place of healing, it's explicitly designed to remove any hint of wellbeing from people trapped in it. In general, it seems built on a fear of doctors, who are rendered faceless and anonymous and cause the patients terrifying harm. Any physical pain seems like a more secondary fear; the terror mainly comes from how nonsensical and wrong the "treatments" are and the feelings of violation.
- Jeremy W is stuck in a hospital room and is periodically visited by a group of "doctors" who ask him if he's feeling well. It's never clear if they want him to be, and if he chooses wrong between "yes" or "no", they start operating on him.
- Renee T keeps getting wheeled into an operating theater, where an anesthetic mask is strapped to her face and the surgeons start performing cruel parodies of surgical procedures on her.
- Kept locked up in a dark room, Kelly M had something that looked like a stillborn baby removed from her chest, after which the doctors replaced it with a device with cold, glassy tubes that pumps freezing cold water into her.
- Mercy Kill: Jon destroys Breekon per his request, though the degree to which it was a merciful death is relative since Jon explains it will still hurt a lot.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We never hear what Dr. Jane Doe looks like, but the mere sight of her is enough to make Martin recoil in horror and disgust.
- Strange-Syntax Speaker: Dr. Doe mostly gets sentences right, but she uses words in ways that are slightly out of sync with how they're actually supposed to slot into a sentence.
- Uncanny Valley: Extraordinarily so. If Jane Doe really is one of the Anatomy students, she's learned to infuse her voice with plenty of emotion, and even at the right moments, but it isn't quite real enough, a bit too practiced. The surgeons are noted to be a little too off in proportions to be convincingly human, and mutter surgical terms meaninglessly.
Jonathan and Martin approach a giant building "like Escher ate a bad cathedral and threw up everywhere", which Jonathan explains is a sort of monument to Robert Smirke and others like him who tried to fit the Dread Powers into an organized and controllable system. Helen pops out again, telling them that she wanted to catch up after Basira killed Daisy, but she was unable to find them until now. Jonathan deftly stops Martin from giving her the details. She brings up that she also wanted "to see which path you choose" and explains to Martin that there is a crossroads ahead, one path of which leads to his own domain. Martin decides to let Jonathan do his next monologue before they discuss this.
A nameless doctor watches people helplessly wander through an inescapable maze, observing their attempts to help himself devise his own way out. Once he has it, he makes his way through, proudly aware of all the ways the maze shifts and changes to try to disorient him. To his shock, however, the place he had calculated to be the exit turns out to be another dead end, and as he tries to make sense of it a trapdoor opens beneath him and he falls through more architecture he knows shouldn't be there, hitting various objects on the way down. Lying broken and immobile on the floor, the doctor is found by a professor who tells him that the way out is identified not by determining direction but by the mineral makeup of the passages. The doctor defiantly mocks this, telling the professor that this idea is "painfully outdated", briefly scaring the professor before he kills the doctor himself.
Jonathan explains to Martin that his domain is "a swirling mix of the Eye and the Lonely" whose few inhabitants fear that no one shall ever know of them and their suffering. Martin asks how he can have a domain if he's not an avatar, but Jonathan tells him that "avatar" is just a term created by those trying to fit the powers and their followers into a consistent system, and in this new world there are only two types of beings: the watched, and the watchers. Martin asked where Daisy and Basira fit into that binary, and he answers that Daisy, rather than being bound to a domain, could move freely between others' domains at her leisure and take her victims from them. Basira was something of "a sufferer in Daisy's domain" and after killing her inherited the ability to travel freely and may eventually receive a domain of her own. Jonathan then moves onto the path forward, explaining that they have two choices: one that will take them past "a lot of horrors, but remain personally untouched", and another, shorter path that includes Martin's domain as well as some familiar faces. Martin chooses the shorter path.
- Bizarrchitecture: The tower, described by Martin as "like Escher ate a bad cathedral and threw up everywhere", is made of corridors that invert and rotate and staircases that spiral in different directions.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Lacking proper writing utensils, the doctor writes his notes on his theories on his skin with a shard of obsidian. The professor writes his in blood on the robe he's wearing.
- Foregone Conclusion: Given the nature of the reality surrounding the tower, it's fairly obvious that the doctor's theory, no matter how well-reasoned and thought-out it might sound, will be incorrect.
- I Am the Trope: Helen.Martin: Might have guessed you'd be into weird architecture. Very much your area of expertise, no?Helen: Hmm, depends. Would you describe 'petulant poet' as your area of expertise? I am weird architecture.
- It's All About Me: The people trapped in the tower each has their own theory of how to navigate its nonsensical layout - and all of them are centered around them personally and hinges on this being true.
- In general, Jon describes the tower as a mockery of people who tried to study and categorise the world around them based on their own worldview and caused suffering, like how Robert Smirke tried to categorise the fears and find ways to contain them.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: All of the academics and scholars running around in the building looking for a way out are convinced to their cores that they have figured out the key to navigating it. The doctor works on his theory involving compass points and keeping track of the times and ways the building shifts; he assumes the room he started in was the central chamber because he was in it. The professor, on the other hand, has one related to the mineral types the tower is built out of, to which he arbitrarily ascribes varying degrees of "spiritual purity".
- Was Once a Man: Defied per Jon: even though Martin has a domain (a mixture of the Eye and the Lonely, representing a fear of irrelevance), it doesn't make him an avatar of either; and that the line between man and avatar is so blurry as to maybe not exist.
Jordan is trapped in tunnels filled with innumerable ants. He tries to go through a tighter tunnel in the hopes that there will be fewer ants, but this only gives him less mobility to get them off of him when they start to bite. Elsewhere in the tunnels, Leto refuses to move as he loves the ants and doesn't want to kill a single one, and at some point he had been able to communicate with them. He sees Jordan screaming and flailing, killing ants as he does so, causing Leto to attack him in rage, although Leto ends up falling and crushing ants, throwing him into despair and regret. Jordan asks Leto where the queen ant is so he can kill her, but he answers that there is no queen, and each ant is acting of its own free will to work together. Jordan already knew this but he allows himself to believe that there is a queen anyway since it gives him hope of escaping.
Martin tells Jonathan that Jordan, who is Jordan Kennedy (#55: Pest Control) is close by. Jonathan doesn't know what to do about it as he explains that the ants as a collective are this domain's avatar and if he were to destroy them, the Buried would take over. Jonathan decides to go to see Jordan directly. When they find him, Jordan recognizes them and begs for help. Jonathan wields the Eye's power and makes Jordan into a new avatar and ruler of this domain. The ants leave Jordan, but he can now feel the terror of everyone else trapped in this place which feels "good but wrong". Jordan doesn't know how to feel about being changed from the tortured to the torturer, but still refuses Jonathan's offer to change him back.
- Call-Back: One of the victims of the domain is Jordan Kennedy, the pest control worker whose statement Jon took in Episode 55 ("Pest Control").
- Hive Mind: According to Jon, the ants collectively make up an avatar in charge of the domain; despite not having a queen, they form one single mind on their own.
- Morton's Fork: After Jon turns Jordan into a vessel for the Eye in order to spare him from the ants, Jordan is horrified and disgusted by having to see all of the suffering in the ants' domain. However, given a choice between that and going back to being a victim of the ants, he chooses to keep his new status as a watcher, even though it makes him complicit in what's going on.
- The Swarm: The domain is one giant ant colony, so packed with them that the two victims we see trapped in it can't even move without being covered by them from head to toe.
Jonathan tells the story of Tina, a woman who is randomly detained and jailed by inhuman officers who provide her no reason for doing so and no chance to ever get out.
As Jonathan and Martin go through the prison, one of the prisoners recognizes Martin and calls out, identifying himself as one of the officers who arrested Elias. He pleads Martin to help and Jonathan gives Martin the choice. Martin discusses it with Jonathan and he surmises that if he were to make the man a jailor rather than a prisoner, he would enjoy it. Martin decides to leave the man, and as they transition from the jail to Martin's domain, Martin finds himself quite alone.
- Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: The general depiction of the police in this episode, who are portrayed as either menacing, corrupt, violent, authoritarian or varying combinations of all four.
- The Bad Guys Are Cops: The point of the prison is impressing this idea upon its victims. The people suffering within are those who believed the police were on their side (either because they were good citizens or because they were the police) and thus that they had nothing to fear. Pretty much every trope critical of the police is showcased within.
- Call-Back: One of the prisoners, inmate #547, calls out to Martin and identifies himself as the inspector who arrested Elias in Episode 120 ("Eye Contact").
- Cliffhanger: As Jon and Martin leave the prison and start to enter the next domain, Jon realizes he hasn't told Martin about what comes next. As the tape makes a familiar screeching sound, Martin, who is still audible, is apparently sucked into a domain of The Lonely without Jon.
- Dirty Coward: The Inspector. He grovels to Martin and asks for him to help, but gets Martin's name wrong (the second time being after Martin told him his name), refuses to confess why he ended up in the prison until Jon forces him to, and repeatedly insists that Martin owes him as justification for why he deserves help. The final straw for Martin comes when he snaps at Jon and calls him a "scrawny little tit" when Jon says that he would likely enjoy being the avatar in charge of the domain.
- Hellhole Prison: The main setting of this episode.
- Kangaroo Court: Tina's trial is made of this trope. The "charges" laid against her are just a list of her life experiences and choices, none of which are illegal. She points this out and is met with the reply that "laws have changed."
- Laser-Guided Karma: The current fate of inmate #547, who was a former police officer: Jon forces him to confess that his methods in convicting criminals was sloppy and cut corners, having sentenced many to something akin to the hellish imprisonment he is currently experiencing. Jon offers Martin the choice of absolving #547 of his punishment but after learning of his corruption and abuse of his power as an officer Martin decides to leave him to his fate.
- Missing Time: Tina seems to experience any time spent outside of her prison cell in this fashion; hazy moments that come in flashes, particularly of violence enacted upon her.
- Police Brutality: Not directly described but implied in fleeting moments during the statement.
- Realism-Induced Horror: To the extent that Jonny personally apologized for making it far too close to reality, crossing the line between horror and trauma, as he put it. As anyone who has suffered in the industrial prison system can say, the depiction here is indeed painfully on point, only the lawyers and police with interchangeable faces appearing to make it appear supernatural.
- Shout-Out: When Martin ponders on the power and responsibility he wields as a servant of the Beholding, Jon playfully refers to him as Uncle Ben.Martin: "Pop culture? Really?"Jon: "I'm allowed to know what Spider-Man is."
- You Are Number 6: The Inspector is now only identified as "Inmate #547" and can't even remember his real name anymore.
In his own domain, Martin converses with a blunter version of himself, discussing his own guilt and his expectations for their future journey, and if he's prepared to pay a heavy price to return the world to normal. The conversation shifts to the people trapped in his domain, but Also-Martin tells him that even if he wants to, he can't make things better for them. All he can do to help them is to not make things worse. Martin demands that Also-Martin tell him about them.
Also-Martin tells Martin about people who in their lives before the Change felt disconnected from others and formed no meaningful relationships, and now are endlessly wandering through an endless rain, never meeting another person to witness their misery.
Martin refuses to be sustained on the suffering of others, and resolves to do whatever he can to put an end to it, even if he has to make Jonathan destroy him.
- A Day in the Limelight: Another Martin-centric episode after the Change.
- Foil: The man and woman from the story of the domain had different ways of alienating themselves from people, but both wound up in a domain of the Lonely. The man, who grew up with a cold, distant family, took on several relationships throughout his life, but eventually walled them off. The woman, on the other hand, had plenty of people around, even though she had trouble really connecting with them; whenever she tried to, she eventually became so smothering that people were pushed away.
- Gray Rain of Depression: The prisoners of Martin's domain are trapped in a vast, drowned field while being pelted by icy rain, weather that contributes to general mood of hopelessness and fear that the prisoners will never feel happiness again.
- It's All My Fault: Martin blames himself for many of the things that went wrong in the series (like Jane Prentiss attacking the Institute), even events that were out of his control (Jon enacting the ritual to end the world).
- Lonely Among People: The unknown female subject of the statement was this in her life before the Change, surrounded by friends and loved ones but never quite able to connect with them. Driven by desperation, she would cling so tight to those who attempted to reach out to her that she would end up smothering them and driving them away.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. Also-Martin informs Martin that one of the prisoners is named Tim. Also-Martin is unsure if that was a subconscious move on Martin's part.
- Talking to Themself: It's unclear if it's either this or a Literal Split Personality since we can't see it, but another Martin appears to converse with the real Martin as a feature of his domain.
While Martin is in his domain, Jonathan reaches Helen's domain, a hotel which she is. Helen comments on Martin's absence, which Jonathan tells her is intended so that he doesn't interfere if Jonathan decides to destroy Helen. As they go through the hotel, Jonathan does not hide his distrust and dislike of Helen, and she experiences great discomfort when he Knows things inside of her. Jonathan gets Helen to admit that she is trying to figure out how to kill him so he won't change the world back. He then has to stop and make a statement.
Jonathan tells the story of a woman running through the hotel looking for her lost son, as Helen commentates. A smiling woman who works at the hotel leads her deeper in, and she becomes lost in endless hallways, staircases and doors before she hears a man taking in a nearby room and runs to him, bursting in on Jonathan talking about her.
The woman begs Jonathan for help and he interferes as Helen tries to mislead her again, but Helen ends up trapping her in the Hallways. Jonathan reveals that he made the decision to kill Helen before he even came, because she is a more insidious danger than most, the danger of a false friend who betrays at their leisure while insisting that they're here to help. Jonathan tries to command the Eye's power but the hotel shifts around, and Helen explains that she can shift her domain around to throw off the Eye's focus, and even though she can't kill Jonathan she can delay him until everything and everyone outside that he cares about is gone. But Jonathan doesn't care and swears to end her, and she lies that she isn't scared. Jonathan is able to get the Eye to focus on that lie and reach Helen through it, and though she pleads with him to spare her and warns that if she dies then everyone inside her will too, he completes his incantation and the Distortion disappears for good. Jonathan finds himself outside with the hotel gone as Martin catches up. Jonathan fills Martin in on the happenings before pointing out that they are now just outside London.
- Achilles' Heel: Both the Spiral and the Eye are this to each other. Jon can't focus the Ceaseless Watcher on Helen, the focal point to be destroyed, because she can react and re-define herself before it can take. The focus on twisting of truth and fact also proves to be a north-north point against the Eye's gaze. Likewise, Helen has to rely on that grey area, and the instant she tells a complete lie, the Eye can catch her and destroy her.
- Asshole Victim: Helen tries to convince Jon that he shouldn't be mad about what happened to "Helen Classic" because she was a Tory and a shady businesswoman, and he wouldn't have liked her. He shoots this down by pointing out that he never got the chance to dislike her because the Spiral ate her, and she deserved at least to be liked or disliked as herself, not as an appendage of an Eldritch Abomination.
- False Friend: Jon concludes that Helen is and always has been this—or rather, although her attempts at friendship were genuine, they were also genuinely toxic and undermining, because that's the Spiral. In fact, this is why he decides he has to kill her. The fact she's likeable makes her more dangerous than post-transformation Daisy or Elias/Jonah, because she can get under people's skin in a way straightforwardly antagonistic opponents can't.
- Faux Affably Evil: The degree to which Helen is this or Affably Evil is discussed at length between her and Jon. Jon settles on Faux Affably Evil, seeing first-hand the torture she commits with remorseless abandon and recognising her friendly, cheery attitude as nothing more than a veneer that hides a truly dangerous and sadistic creature.
- First-Person Perspective: Jon's statement this episode takes the form of a first person account of a guest's hellish trek through the hotel corridors in a futile search for their missing son, peppered with wise-cracking commentary from Helen. Unusually, the statement is interrupted when the guest stumbles upon Jon and Helen after hearing them narrate her thoughts.
- Hell Hotel: This is how the Distortion manifests itself in the Changed world. Here Helen controls a twisting, labyrinthine hotel that misleads the "guests" to the point of madness and physical exhaustion.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: Helen was the one to explain the nature of Jon's powers to Martin and how he could force a monster or avatar to implode under the Eye's hunger for fear. She dies making the same mistake Not-Sasha did, provoking Jon into turning against her completely and realizing that she is thus vulnerable to him. Her own fear of Jon trips her up enough to impulsively tell a full-out lie, which the Eye pounces on to "unravel" her.
- Killed Off for Real: Jon kills Helen in this episode, having had enough of her lies and seeing how dangerous she really is.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Jon threatens to kill Helen, her smirk drops and she remains silent without a witty comeback. She even shows Jon the door and attempts to shoo him out of the hotel, poorly hiding her growing fear.
- Pull the Thread: Done both figuratively and literally. When Jon threatens Helen she becomes notably rattled and her smarmy, jolly exterior falters for a second. She responds a bit too quickly when Jon asks if she is scared of him, caught in a fearful lie. Jon then takes that brief fumble as the opportunity to turn the Eye's gaze on her, characterising that lie as a "golden thread of falsehood" for the Eye to unravel Helen.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Defied by Helen, who doesn't wait for Jon to finish talking. The most Jon can get out is "Ceaseless Watcher-" before Helen contorts the space around Jon, throwing him off-balance and unable to fully invoke the Beholding's power.
- Villains Want Mercy: Helen's last words are spent fruitlessly pleading to Jon for forgiveness, that she's his friend and been nothing but helpful to him.
- Wham Episode: Jon destroys Helen, and he and Martin finally reach London.
- Wham Line:Jon: You see that over there?Martin: Yeah?Jon: That's London.
Jonathan and Martin enter the domain of the Eye that once was London, finding it to be filled with thousands of cameras and beings which turn to watch them.
Jonathan monologues about a woman named Carmen who has moved to London and finds herself constantly being watched and judged by people and cameras. She becomes increasingly agitated and frustrated by this and kicks a wall in her flat, uncovering a giant eye underneath. She tries to stab it but her arm simply sinks into the pupil and the iris closes on her arm, pulling her in before she wakes up at the beginning of the story again.
- Giant Eye of Doom: Upon bashing in the wall of her bedroom in frustration, Carmen is surprised to find a huge eye inside it, staring at her.
- Psycho Psychologist: At one point, Carmen actually goes to a psychiatrist - who only reaffirms her worries and says everyone is counting on her.
- Sinister Surveillance: For the first time, we experience a domain belonging entirely to the Beholding, in which a woman named Carmen goes through what outwardly seems to be a fairly normal life. Except it's laced with instances of her being observed and judged by cameras and people, including her roommate, who berates her for the slightest indiscretions at the apartment and calls them "unacceptable".
- When Jon and Martin enter that domain, they are unnerved by countless security cameras turning to focus on them and fake people looking at them through their windows.
- In the end, Carmen finds a huge eye inside her bedroom wall and realizes that her world is now riddled with such eyes, watching her every action.
- Stepford Suburbia: As they enter post-Change London, Jon and Martin briefly walk through a suburb-like domain of the Lonely. According to Jon, while everything looks nice and peaceful, there is plenty of torment happening inside the houses.
Nearing the Panopticon, Jonathan and Martin anticipate the looming confrontation with Jonah Magnus, and they realize that since both Jonathan and Jonah serve the Eye, then ultimately the Eye will choose the winner, which doesn't bode well for Jonathan since his final goal is to cast the Eye back out of the world. Struggling to find an actual way into the Panopticon, Martin decides to search around the perimeter while Jonathan makes another monologue.
Jonathan monologues about a minister who attends a government meeting where the only goal is to be the loudest rather than to make things better for the starving citizens outside, and he can only feel guilty as he enjoys the pleasures of his position.
Martin picks up Jonathan while clearly hiding something and drags him down a hatch into the tunnels where they meet Melanie and Georgie. Jonathan starts to feel dizzy since the tunnels interfere with the Eye's vision. Melanie and Georgie explain that they fled to the tunnels after the Change and are now leading a group of survivors.
- Acting Unnatural: Martin has a lot of trouble suppressing his joy about being reunited with Melanie and Georgie, so he smiles while he's pretending to tell Jon they should keep going.
- Did Not Think This Through: While considering ways to take out Jonah Magnus, Jon realizes something he hasn't considered up until now: he and Jonah are both given their powers by the Eye, meaning if they both tried using its power against the other, it will decide who comes out alive from the confrontation. Since Jon wants the Powers gone, his chances of being chosen are very slim.
- The Cameo: Tim Meredith, of Stellar Firma (and brother of Elias/Jonah's voice actor, Ben Meredith) provides one of the voices heard by the statement subject when he walks to the parliament.
- Not So Omniscient After All: Apparently, even after the Change, the old tunnels beneath what used to be the Institute are still a blind spot for the Eye.
- Rule of Symbolism: The parliament the statement subject goes to contains political imagery, with some members having held their positions for so long that they have literally fused with their chairs and others being nailed to their seats with nails of gold.
- Sinister Surveillance: Another Beholding statement, this time following a politician feeling judged by the troubled, starving masses for his inability or lack of willingness to do anything to help them, and by his fellow politicians, both ones on the opposing side and his own.
- The Bus Came Back: Jon and Martin are finally reunited with Georgie and Melanie, who have been hiding out in the old Institute tunnels.
Act III
Laverne: Look at it this way: The world's already ended… how much worse can it be?
In the tunnels, Laverne and Celia await the return of their prophets, Georgie and Melanie, and discover a running tape recorder hidden in their supplies shortly before they return with some new people who they introduce as Jonathan and Martin. Celia tells them that she chose her name after the hell she was previously trapped in took the original from her. She then asks what hell they were rescued from, but Jonathan explains that they walk the world, visiting hells rather than being trapped in them, and are old friends of Georgie and Melanie. Laverne, who was Melanie's therapist before the change (#136: The Puppeteer) recognizes that Jonathan is Melanie's former boss. Celia shows Georgie the tape recorder and she orders her to turn it off before taking a private word with Jonathan.
Tape recorders continually appear and turn on during their conversation despite Georgie's furious attempts to stop them, until Jonathan convinces her that it's no use. Georgie explains that they have seven survivors with them, and that there were more before they "got greedy" and tried to retrieve too many. She asks if the tape recorders are a bad omen, but Jonathan promises her that they're only here for him and Martin. Georgie tells him that they found the sanctuary of Jurgen Leitner (#80: The Librarian) to live in, and get their supplies from a nearby hell "that's essentially just an endless supermarket". Jonathan inquires about the Admiral, and Georgie reveals that he has his place in one of the hells, "a place full of cats and their prey", but he seems happy there.
A tape recorder starts to listen to Martin and Melanie's conversation, which they leave running since Martin knows it'll be futile. Melanie explains that she and Georgie were unaffected by the Change due to Georgie's immunity to fear (#94: Dead Woman Walking) and Melanie's blindness keeping her out of the Eye's power. They discovered that they could temporarily keep others safe long enough to get them into the tunnels when they saved Laverne from the Spiral. As they took on survivors, they had to explain everything to them and "a few of them took it in a bit more of a religious direction", which wasn't improved when Melanie tried to give them hope by claiming to have had a vision of the world returning to normal, leading to them viewing her as a prophet. Martin and Melanie then move on to discussing their romantic relationships and then to who Jonathan and Martin met in their travels. Martin recounts how Basira had to kill the monstrous Daisy before making her own way to London. Melanie then warns him about Helen, who had visited them earlier and betrayed them by trying to claim Celia into her hallways, but Martin reveals to her that Helen was destroyed by Jonathan. (#187: Checking Out) A knock on the door reminds Melanie that she promised to listen to poetry written by Arun, another of the survivors. After she leaves, Laverne comes in to invite Martin to join them for dinner and he asks her if she really believes that Georgie and Melanie are prophets. She says that while there's certainly something special about them that allows them to leave the tunnels and rescue people, she doesn't feel like "prophet" or "chosen one" is a fitting descriptor. Nonetheless, she still has hope in them.
Another recorder turns on to listen to Georgie, Melanie and Jonathan's critique of Arun's latest writings.
- Blind Seer: Invoked; Melanie lied and told the members of the cult that she'd had a vision about the world being restored to normal to give them hope.
- Breather Episode: The episode doesn't have a lot of outright horror, except some that's in the past, and instead focuses on Jon and Martin interacting with Georgie and Melanie for the first time since before the Change.
- Call-Back:
- Melanie's therapist, Laverne (heard in Episode 136: "The Puppeteer", voiced by the same actress), is a member of the cult, having been rescued by Melanie and George.
- Georgie and Melanie have made good use of supply caches left behind by Jurgen Leitner while he was hiding in the tunnels.
- The Cameo: The cult members heard in the episode are voiced by Helen Gould, Lowri Ann Davies and Anil Godigamuwe, all members of the Rusty Quill team.
- Cats Are Mean: There's an entire Hunt dimension that's just cats making life hell for every prey animal they can get their paws on. The Admiral is perfectly fine there, but Georgie sadly says that he doesn't recognize her anymore.
- Shipper on Deck: Laverne thinks it's "sweet" that Melanie and Georgie sometimes go to a side tunnel for "private contemplation".
- Take Our Word for It: We don't get to hear Arun's poem that he wrote about Georgie and Melanie, but going by their and Jon's reaction, it wasn't good. Though Jon did like a rhyme he made with the word "redeemer".
- Unwanted False Faith: Because of Georgie and Melanie's ability to move through the nightmarescape without being sucked into any of the domains, the people they've saved see them as saviors or prophets. Neither of them is happy about it and they even find the attention tiresome.
Martin tells Jonathan that he recognizes Celia as the woman who gave a statement under the impression that she would be paid for it (#100: I Guess You Had To Be There). A woman they haven't met comes in to check on them, and she refuses to tell them her name as the hell she came from can track you down by it. Later, Martin encounters Arun who is dubious about him and Jonathan. While waiting for Georgie and Melanie to return so they can guide them out of the tunnels, Jonathan and Martin discuss some beings that are assembling above, which Jonathan reveals are more Archivists, like the one found by Walter Heller in Alexandria in 1941. (#53: Crusader)
- Breather Episode: Another fairly calm episode without much immediate horror.
- Call-Back:
- Sergeant Walter Heller's encounter in an old library with a humanoid creature with a single eye (Episode 53: "Crusader") is brought up when Jon tells Martin that other such creatures, revealed to be past Archivists who survived long enough to transform physically, are heading for the tower.
- The survivor calling herself "Celia" is revealed to be Lynne Hammond, the one whose statement Martin took in Episode 100 ("I Guess You Had To Be There"), where she was also voiced by Lowri Ann Davies.
- No Name Given: One of the survivors, voiced by Marguerite Kenner, refuses to tell anyone her name because she believes that people knowing her name makes her vulnerable to "them". The episode credits her simply as "Unnamed".
Georgie takes Jonathan and Martin to a place where they can see the entrance to the Panopticon, guarded by the many Archivists. Georgie doesn't want to risk testing if her fear immunity protects her from them and so stays back, while Jonathan commands the Eye to welcome them in. After the long staircase, they are surprised to meet Rosie at the top, having retained her position as Assistant to the Head of the Magnus Institute. She doesn't recognize them and only asks if they have an appointment, and can't let them in without one. Jonathan finds he has to make a statement.
The monologue comes from Rosie's perspective, first seeing her job interview with Elias where she noticed how odd it was for someone so young to be head of an academic institution and how his eyes didn't seem to match his face. In the present, Rosie feels helpless to do anything in the new world. She remembers signing for a package from Breekon and Hope and forwarding it to the Archives, (#35: Old Passages) then how casual Elias was about the fire alarms going off for "a little incident down in the Archives". (#39: Infestation) She had eavesdropped on Sasha's conversation with Elias about worms in the Archives, and Elias caused her to relive a memory of an encounter with the Corruption in her youth. In the present, she knows that Elias is responsible for the change. She remembers watching Daisy, Basira and Jonathan return to the Institute to confront Elias (#92: Nothing Beside Remains), and being torn about whether she should warn them about him, and afterwards knew that Elias was evil. She doesn't know why she can't bring herself to do something to stop him, and though she was relieved when Elias was arrested, it didn't last long when he was replaced by Peter Lukas. (#120: Eye Contact) She was at a complete loss of what to do after he died and the Archival team disappeared after the Hunters' attack on the Institute (#158: Panopticon, #159: The Last), and all she could think was to keep going into work and wait for something to happen, until the Change happened and it was too late. (#160: The Eye Opens)
Rosie returns and tells Jonathan and Martin that they can go in to see Jonah now, and they enter to find him floating and unresponsive and speaking an unending statement.
Jonathan: Nothing. Nothing's wrong with him. He's the pupil of the Eye.
Martin: Meaning?
Jonathan: He won.
- Ambiguous Syntax: The description's "the administration of fear" can refer both to Rosie working in administration at the Institute (as Jonah's assistant) and Jonah subtly needling her with fear of being watched while employed by him.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Elias/Jonah's assistant, Rosie, of all people. The statement Jon feels compelled to read recounts dramatic moments of the entire story of the series from her perspective, showing how she gradually came to realize how evil her boss was, but still felt compelled to keep working for him at the Institute.
- Anachronic Order: Rosie's story jumps back and forth in time between her time as assistant at the Institute, starting with her job interview with "Elias" and until the day of the Change, and her personal hell stuck working the reception for the evil overseer of a warped world.
- Continuity Cavalcade: The statement includes flashbacks and references to Breekon and Hope delivering the web table to Jonathan (Episode 35: "Old Passages"), Jane Prentiss' attack on the Institute (Episode 39: "Infestation"), Elias being arrested and Peter Lukas taking over as head of the Institute, though seen from Rosie's perspective.
- Power Floats: Inside his office, Jonah floats in mid-air, watching the hellscape and reading a rambling story of terror out loud.
- Stepford Smiler: Feeling the watchful gaze of Jonah, Rosie feels compelled to smile all the time.
Jonathan explains that Jonah, as a part of the Eye, is nearly unaware of anything outside of the endless stream of knowledge flowing through him. Martin theorizes about what they could do to dispose of him, and asks if the real Elias is still somewhere inside that body and if they could contact him, triggering Jonathan's next monologue.
Jonathan retells Elias' interview with "James Wright" for a position at the Magnus Institute. As he tells the story, Jonah speaks his lines aloud in Jonathan's stead. In the interview, "Wright" catches Elias off guard by asking what he was afraid of, and because Elias is afraid of "Wright" finding out about his stoning habits, he lies and answers that he's afraid of spiders. Elias suddenly finds himself forced to imagine a spider climbing up his body and to his face, snapping out of it just before the spider bites his eye. "Wright" then asks if he's had an experience with the paranormal, and he remembers a friend who found an old book which caused him to slowly become paranoid about an eyeless creature coming for him, before Elias found him brutally killed and missing his eyes. Elias lies again and says that he isn't sure. "Wright"'s final question is the classic "Why do you want this job?", but although Elias starts to recite his prepared answer, "Wright"'s piercing eyes cause him to remember his father, who Elias was never able to make proud before his death. Elias can't remember hearing about or even applying to this job. As Elias falters, "Wright" gets him to answer that he doesn't know why he's here, but that he chose to come because "this is the place I know I should be". "Wright" hires Elias on the spot, and he has a brief vision of himself tied down as his eyes are removed and a "presence, old and rotten" takes up residence in his mind.
Jonathan confirms that the monologue was "an echo" of the real Elias, and it's far too late to save him. Jonathan realizes that he can destroy Jonah by killing Elias' body, but if he did so then the Eye would take him as a replacement.
- A Day in the Limelight: For the real Elias Bouchard, before his body was possessed by Jonah Magnus.
- Anachronic Order: Similar to the previous episode, Elias' story jumps back and forth between his job interview with Jonah Magnus (then using the body of James Wright) and his own supernatural experience prior to that.
- Being Watched: After reading a strange book apparently related to the Beholding, Elias' friend Allan felt something without eyes following him, seeing it everywhere he went until it caught up with him and killed him.
- Eye Scream:
- Whatever was following Allan, it took his eyes while killing him.
- One of the real Elias' last memories was apparently of Jonah Magnus taking control of his body, which involved removing his eyes while he was strapped down and unable to move.
- Wham Episode: Jon and Martin's plan to take down Jonah turns out to have been futile since he is now a conduit of the Eye, and the from the look of it, the Eye wants Jon to kill Jonah and take his place.
Returning to the tunnels, Jonathan explains that the position of the Eye's Pupil is overwhelming Jonah as it wasn't meant for him and that replacing him may be the only way forward. Martin doesn't think it would change anything to "swap one self-important, floating, hollowed-out terror zombie for another" and they end up arguing before Jonathan storms off to recompose himself and think things through. On the streets of London, the endless watching cameras demand another statement from Jonathan.
Jonathan tells the story of Malcolm, who feels free to live his life now that the cruel old man living with him has died. However, it's not long before an eye grows on his shoulder, causing him to go to the hospital. While in the waiting room, a mouth develops beside the eye and speaks words of discouragement to Malcolm, and he decides to cut it out himself. Malcolm goes to a store but ends up running away when the tumor grows arms and tries to force itself out of his clothes. Back at home, Malcolm cuts open his shoulder to extract the tumor and the old man he believed himself to be rid of climbs out and resumes his position on an armchair.
Jonathan looks for Martin to apologize but learns from Celia that he left with Annabelle Cane, who Jonathan cannot See as she has taken Salesa's camera. After discussing things with Melanie, Jonathan realizes that Annabelle is taking Martin to the house at Hill Top Road.
- Chest Burster: The old man regenerates from Malcolm's body like a cancerous growth, erupting from the torso after Malcolm cuts him out with a kitchen knife.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Invoked by the Beholding. It gives Jon a statement in which attempting to get rid of one of its monsters only results in the monster's rebirth. Jon is unimpressed with the attempted message and tells it, essentially, to go screw itself.
- Evil Old Folks: The unnamed old man in this episode's statement. The statement subject Malcolm believed that the old man (possibly his father, grandfather or landlord) had an uncanny ability to know every dark secret and impulse in his head. He gets worse once he dies and begins regrowing from Malcolm's body.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: The first sign of the old man growing out of Malcolm's body is a sickly eye protruding from his shoulder.
- Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Melanie snaps at Jon to quit panicking because his powers aren't helpful and actually use his brain—he doesn't need his powers to think.
- Killed Offscreen: Jon says that Mikaele Salesa was killed by Annabelle when she took the supernatural camera that concealed him, which was what Salesa wanted.
- Klingon Promotion: Jon believes that removing Jonah/Elias as the Eye's host and taking their place is the only option they have at mitigating the immense damage done to the world. He wouldn't be able to remove the Fears entirely but alter it so all the Avatars are removed from their positions of authority and torture is reserved only for the truly deserving. Martin strongly disagrees and accuses Jon of envy towards Jonah's current state.
- Wham Episode: Jon and Martin are separated, and the latter is following Annabelle Cane to Hill Top Road - the one domain of the Web in the Beholding-centric London - either because he was kidnapped or persuaded to do so.
Jonathan rows across a lake domain on the way to Hill Top Road, when he has to make another statement.
Jonathan monologues about a person trapped in an endless body of icy water with a colossal monster that occasionally brushes against them, and when they breach the water's surface they see the Eye staring at them and casually consuming their terror, throwing them into enough despair to let themself sink.
Sometime later, Jonathan picks up Basira from a nearby island and tells her that he needs her help in rescuing Martin from Annabelle. As they continue the journey, Jonathan explains that when he tries to see Hill Top Road, he gets disoriented as "my mind follows the paths of the Web". They talk about Basira's travels after their separation (#179: Accomplice), and Basira realizes that she's become something of a Hunter, though one that looks for opportunities to make things right rather than any prey. After reaching shore, they continue on foot and soon enter the camera's area of effect, seeing a tape recorder playing a statement (#81: A Guest for Mr. Spider) hanging in a spiderweb.
- All for Nothing: The statement subject eventually manages to swim to the surface... and finds a vast horizon of absolutely nothing but endless sea, with the added torment of being observed by the Eye.
- Amnesia Loop: The statement subject has vague memories of having some reason for not trying to swim to the surface. When they get there, they find that the surface is completely empty and that the Eye is watching from above and go back down, implying that they've done this more than once and forgotten about it every time.
- The Bus Came Back: Jon rows out to an island surrounded by the lake to pick up Basira, who has wound up there.
- Call-Back: When Jon and Basira arrive at Hill Top Road, Annabelle is playing Jon's statement about his childhood incident with the Web from Episode 81 ("A Guest for Mr. Spider").
- Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The statement subject feels a humongous leviathan creature swim past them; they don't even really hear or see it, but feel the water around them shift and brush up against its coarse, leathery skin.
- Evil Is Deathly Cold: The bottom of the ocean at which the statement subject is trapped is absolutely freezing, so much so that their skin is completely numb and when they get to the surface, their tears feel like burning against their ice cold cheek.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Jon tells Basira that she has been essentially serving the Eye as a watcher by travelling the fearscape as well as taking over Daisy's role as a member of the Hunt, Basira wonders what she was supposed to be chasing when all she did was look for a way to help people... and realizes that pursuit of a solution she would never find is the hunt she was on.
- Ignorance Is Bliss: Of a sort; faced with the hopeless, wide expanse of the surface, the statement subject decides to go back down to the icy depth because the darkness down there at least gives some feeling of hope for something they can't see and means they don't have to see the Eye watching them from above and delighting in their suffering.
- Second-Person Narration: The statement is narrated this way.
Pre-Story
As Martin and Annabelle approach Hill Top Road, they mention that Martin willingly came with her to hear what she has to say regarding another way to end the apocalypse. Once they're inside the house, Annabelle hands Martin a statement she wrote and asks him to read it while they wait for Jonathan to arrive since "I believe you'll find it illuminating".Story
The house at Hill Top Road marks a crack in reality which no being knows the origin of, but remains slightly offset from the world around it. The first house ever built there was the home of a Saxon named Eowa, who was fled from the battlefield but in his solitude continued to exude fear to feed the powers until one day he awoke in a timeline distinct from his own where the enemy "had pushed further, had taken more" and he was soon killed by them. Over the centuries, the place that would become Hill Top Road hosted various inhabitants, and while a village grew around it "those who tried to make it their home might have felt a whisper, an echo of some other place, some place not quite their own." Later, the property was bought by a scholar named Geoffrey Neckham who took notice of the dimensional disturbances and studied them, thinking they could indicate a point from which Heaven or Hell could be directly accessed. His preexisting paranoia brought the Web's attention to the crack in reality and so it devised a plan, "working all the while to weaken that crack, luring in the servants of other powers, and so in the resulting clash pressing ever harder against the edges of our reality. This culminated in Agnes Montague's infiltration of Raymond Fielding's halfway house and her subsequent destruction of it and him.Post-Story
Annabelle tells Martin that the crack in reality is on its way to becoming "a gateway to other dimensions", and admits that she was planning to make him into an avatar of the Web so that she could use him to get Jonathan to make "a final push", but she now knows that she "couldn't drive that kind of rift between you now". After considering her remaining options, she concluded that she now needs to be open about her plans with them. Sensing Jonathan approaching, Annabelle destroys the camera, reverting the place to how it appears in the post-change world: a great spiderweb suspended over an impossibly deep chasm. Annabelle starts to bind Martin in web to ensure he doesn't fall, and he sees that the web is spun all of the tapes recorded by the archival staff, still producing their audio.Annabelle: Oh, Martin. You have no idea who's listening, do you?
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Martin was expecting something more dramatic than simply following Annabelle to Hill Top Road and quietly sitting around while waiting for Jon to arrive. Annabelle decides to fulfill Martin's expectations and destroys Salesa's magical camera in the name of making things more dramatic. This causes reality to revert to its current nightmarish form and turns the rift into a yawning void into which Martin nearly falls.
- Call-Back:
- Raymond Fielding is mentioned along with his immolation at the hands of Agnes Montague all the way back in episode 8 ("Burned Out").
- The statement describes the pathway between realities as a crack, which is how it manifested to Anya Villette in episode 114 ("Cracked Foundation") who is now confirmed to have originated from another reality.
- Cliffhanger: When Martin notices the tapes Annabelle used to weave the web above the dimensional rift and asks if they've been used by the Web to spy on everyone:Annabelle: Oh, Martin. You have no idea who's listening, do you?
- Cryptic Conversation: Discussed. Martin notices Annabelle always answers his questions with questions of her own, which he is beginning to find exhausting. Annabelle admits that by her nature as an agent of a power that personifies hidden intention and manipulation for ends that aren't immediately knowable, giving straight answers isn't exactly her thing.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Annabelle says she had originally intended to drive Jon and Martin apart and then have spiders kill Martin and take over his body in order to send Jon over the edge, but because their bond has become too "complicated", she has realized that she has no way of driving a wedge between them and is instead forced to just tell them the truth instead.
- The Reveal: Hilltop Road is confirmed to have been built upon a rift between dimensions, which the Web has been working to widen for some still yet unknown purpose.
- Slain in Their Sleep: Annabelle killed Salesa while he was sleeping, which she figures is what he would have wanted.
- Shout-Out: Annabelle beckons Martin into the house saying "Step into my parlour," a reference to the poem The Spider and the Fly.
- Take a Third Option: Annabelle leads Martin to Hill Top Road to show him an alternate solution to their current problem that she claims won't involve anybody sacrificing their lives or becoming subservient to the Powers.
- Thin Dimensional Barrier: In essence what the rift beneath Hill Top Road is. This crack is a pathway to alternate realities that has existed long before Hill Top Road was constructed. It is never big enough to allow anybody to move between dimensions, except on very rare occasions such as Eowa the Saxon exile in the statement. The Web has been feeding other servants of the Powers to the crack in order to widen it into a reliably traversable gap, which was accomplished upon Raymond Fielding's death.
Jonathan and Basira carefully make their way toward the center of the web where Annabelle and Martin are waiting for them, and when Basira asks what's in the chasm below, all Jonathan can tell is that "it's somewhere else". Basira suggests that they hear Annabelle out, but agrees to help him take her down if she hurts Martin.
Martin tries to argue with Annabelle, having lost what little trust he had in her as he believes she has tricked him into being bait for Jonathan, but she insists that he's "an invitation" and if anyone's going to get hurt, it's her. They sense Jonathan and Basira coming, and Annabelle fully binds and gags Martin as "appearances are everything", before transforming into her true form. Jonathan starts to utter the incantation to smite her but stops when she threatens to drop Martin into the void below. She reveals that she "needed him to feel this place" in order to truly understand what she's about to explain. They discuss how the powers don't really think, and aside from the Web and the End, they don't understand that achieving their ultimate desire of manifesting in the world would ultimately result in their own cessation of existence when they run out of victims. Annabelle explains that there are realities where the powers don't exist that the Web desires to escape to, although since the fears cannot be separated they would all have to travel there as well, and so "we found the one we believed most likely to bring about their manifestation." (#81: A Guest for Mr. Spider) The web woven from the tapes, when cast through the rift into another world, would allow the fears to "travel out along it, or be dragged". If the fears were to go to another reality, they would exist as they did originally before the change but still have potential to manifest as they did here. Basira asks what happens to all the avatars in this world if that happens, and Annabelle answers that it depends on the avatar. "I would either travel with them, or I would die. I do not know which. My life is only sustained by the Web. Most would simply lose whatever power they have been gifted. Jon would lose much of himself, the parts of him that are the Eye. But he would survive, and perhaps more importantly, he would remain who he believes himself to be. And you would end the suffering of all those others who remain here." Jonathan's not interested but Basira insists on having the option and asks Annabelle how to do it, and she answers that the Archives and the Eye's pupil would need to be destroyed simultaneously, as it would briefly sever the fears from the world, forcing them to latch onto the tapes and be dragged out into the multiverse. She reveals that there is a gas main running underneath the Institute, protected from the change by Smirke's tunnels, which would destroy the Archives if detonated, and reveals that Jonathan's spiderweb lighter has allowed the Web to monitor him. Annabelle hands over Martin as she has nothing left to explain, and leaves Jonathan to decide what to do with her and the lighter. He decides not to kill her but holds onto the lighter for the time being.
- All Webbed Up: Annabelle Cane restrains Martin in webs, partly to keep him from falling into the inter-dimensional rift, partly to make everything more "dramatic."
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Jon is pretty baffled that, after every thing they've seen and experienced, Basira has trouble believing in alternate universes.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Jon's gold-plated, spiderweb-engraved cigarette lighter, gifted to him by the Web long ago, is revealed to be intended by them for him to use to ignite a gas main built into the foundation of the Institute thanks to a mistake in the building plans; because it is protected by Robert Smirke's architecture, it hasn't been affected by the Change.
- Related to this, the aforementioned gas main was previously mentioned in Episode 161 ("Dwelling"), which revealed that Gertrude and Leitner had intended to take advantage of it to destroy the Institute.
- Continuity Nod:
- Jon informs Basira about Oliver Banks' prediction about The End ultimately consuming all life in the universe if the world continues going through the apocalypse.
- When Jon realizes that him reading statements have played into the Web's plan, Basira points out that so has she, as she read the statement in episode 112.
- Long Game: Annabelle reveals that the Web has spent centuries widening the crack between universes in order to create an escape plan in case a ritual would be successful, which would eventually doom all of the Powers. To this end, they directed Jon into becoming the Archivist, recording his actions on cassette tapes in order to tie his voice to all of the Powers. Now, they've spun a web of those tapes near the gateway in order to draw all of the Powers into another universe where they don't exist and they can continue attacking that world from the shadows, like they did before the Change. However, this will require Jon and the others to kill Jonah and blow up the Panopticon, taking away the Eye's hold on the world and sending it and the other Powers scurrying to the tapes, the Eye's last connection to reality.
- Precision F-Strike: From Jon."'Free will', she says, as we stand in the middle of her fucking web!!"
- Spider People: Before her confrontation with Jon, Annabelle undergoes what the script describes as a "visceral arachnoid transformation" and speaks with a deeper voice afterwards.
On the way back to London, Martin explains his reasoning in following Annabelle Cane. Jonathan wants to wait to decide what to do next until they can discuss it with Georgie and Melanie. They find that the way forward is descending a ladder on an impossibly high cliff face. As they make their way down, Jonathan assures that if they fall off they won't die, though they would experience all the other unpleasantries of a very long fall. They are promptly confronted by this when the ladder ends with no ground in sight. Basira accepts that they have to jump off and convinces Martin that it's the only option before Jonathan has to make another monologue. Basira and Martin jump down while Jonathan stays on the ladder.
Jonathan monologues about someone climbing on the ladder, gripped with terror as screaming bodies fall past.
Once he's done, Jonathan jumps down. Once enough of the pain from landing has worn off, they see London in the distance.
Arriving in the tunnels, they find Georgie and Melanie hiding away, and they reveal that the other Archivists found their sanctuary and took everyone else. After catching up on everything, Jonathan announces that they all need to talk.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: After getting back to Melanie and Georgie, Jon gets himself a drink from their supplies to prepare himself for telling them about Annabelle's plan.
- Morton's Fork: Similar to the statement subject in Episode 195 ("Adrift"), the one in Jon's story about the ladder is also torn between two unappealing options whether they go up or down. If they try to keep climbing upwards, they head for a great unknown with the distinct possibility that they'll find nothing but more emptiness at the peak. Climbing down the ladder would bring them closer to the ground, but they are still terrified of falling and dying upon impact and have memories of the ground being covered with a deep swamp that will consume them if they touch the surface.
- Scaling the Summit: Jon, Martin and Basira's journey back to London forces them to climb a tall, tall ladder on a blizzard-stricken cliff which has replaced the deep lake (also apparently of the Vast) that Jon and Basira first travelled by.
Jonathan, Martin, Basira, Georgie and Melanie discuss their options. They have three choices: 1) carry out Annabelle's plan and send the powers to other realities, 2) have Jonathan take Jonah's place as Pupil and try to "make the place a little more tolerable until the end", or 3) leave everything as-is. Jonathan doesn't want to force other realities to potentially endure what their reality has, and proposes that they use the moment the fears detach when Jonah is destroyed to contain them and potentially destroy them. The others aren't sure it could work since they don't know if the powers even originated from their reality or were sent from another. Jonathan suggests going with the second plan, but instead of making things better he could try to speed things up to naturally end the apocalypse sooner, but Basira refuses to allow the destruction of humanity like that. After some more arguing, they decide to go with the first plan.
Jonathan goes outside for a smoke to mull things over, soon being joined by Georgie. They talk about choices for a bit before Martin comes out and Georgie leaves them alone. They wonder if they would have ever become a couple if they had just met without ever working at the Institute, and Martin insists that he will always stand by Jonathan
They return to the tunnels and discuss details. Melanie and Georgie will go to detonate the gas main while Basira distracts the Archivists, who seem to know that something is happening. In order to prevent Jonathan being forced into being the Eye's pupil when Jonah dies, Martin will be the one to kill him. As they start to rest up and prepare, Basira pulls Jonathan aside.
Jonathan: I'm sorry for all of this.
Basira: We've all got regrets. But we can't undo what's done. All we can do is try and do something worthwhile with the time we've got left.
Jonathan: <sigh> Yeah.
- Book Ends: "Can I have a cigarette?" For possibly the creepiest version ever.
- Continuity Nod: Jon and Martin's conversation turns to the statement of Episode 14 ("Piecemeal") and Jon mentions that the woman from the statement, Angela, is still around and in charge of a Flesh domain.
- Final Boss: The previous Archivists' mutated bodies have become active and agitated, possibly sensing an oncoming reckoning, shaping them up to be this to the Institute employees.
- If We Survive This: A large one as the Archival employees make their various decisions.
- Passing the Torch: A literal version—Georgie asks for a cigarette, and keeps the gold lighter Jon uses, as she will be the one to light the gas main.
- Sadistic Choice: Either the group pass the terror of a world ruled by fear onto other universes, or they endure this one with Jon lessening the burden as much as he can...or just moving as many people as possible to End-controlled domains to perform a Mercy Kill on the planet.
Jonathan enters the Panopticon alone and commands the Eye to release Jonah. Jonah wakes up from the trance of being the Pupil and sees that Jonathan has come to kill him. Jonathan reveals that he is going forward with his plan to rapidly burn out the world's fear and starve the entities. "I wonder if they're even capable of fearing their own ends. I look forward to finding out." Realizing that he's serious, Jonah starts to nervously bargain but is interrupted by a punch.
Jonah: Jon, wait!
<punch>
Jonathan: For Tim!
Jonah: Please, Jon!
<punch>
Jonathan: For Gertrude, and all the others.
Jonah: Please, Jon! <cough> I don't want to die.
Jonathan: Neither did they.
Jonah: No. No. No.
Jonathan: But no one escapes at the end.
At first there was only one entity, feeding on the fear of creatures hiding from those that would hunt and kill them. When beings with more complex thought processes evolved, so too did their fears, which caused the single entity to develop into multiple. With the Hunt as the original fear, the End developed next when humans began to fear death itself. Third was the Dark, when the fears of things hiding in darkness became attached to that darkness. As humans learned and developed education, they developed the fear of being unable to trust what they saw and so the Spiral was born. Trust in familiar friends in family led to the fear of outsiders and the fear of the loss of those connections, spawning the Stranger and the Lonely. When humans mastered fire, the fear of the pain and destruciton it could cause gave rise to the Desolation. As humanity further developed and learned, the Corruption and the Buried developed alongside them as new fears were realized. The Vast came to be next as humans realized their own insignificance compared to the unfathomable volume of the universe. They learned to scheme and plot against one another, allowing the Web to rise, and this led to conflicts which brewed into war, calling forth the Slaughter. As people encountered manifestations of these fears, some revered the terror they witnessed and ended up serving that same terror. With the connection to the world provided by human avatars, the powers became more proactive and took more action in the world, eventually manifesting monsters and growing in power. The entities began to long to truly enter the world and make it in their image, but for all the desire they could inflict upon their forces, "they could not conceive of what or where they were beyond the words and images the minds below could give them." However, the paranoid and suspicious thinking that went into humanity's scheming and manipulation allowed the Web to receive a real mind of its own, something that set it apart from every other entity, and when it understood reality it began to plan its escape. It dared not share its plans with its brethen but instead manipulated the Eye, "the most unwise of all the fragments" to use its thirst for knowledge without comprehension to bring about the change, manifesting all of the fears into the world and allowing the Web's plan to ascend to its final step and escape.
As Jonathan prepares to carry out his plan, Martin bursts in and sees what Jonathan has done. Martin explains that he knew what Jonathan was doing when he went to the Panopticon and had the others start their plan early. Jonathan stays calm and collected until he realizes that he gave Georgie his lighter the night before, allowing them a way to detonate the gas main. Jonathan cannot leave the Panopticon as he is now a part of it and he orders Martin to save himself, but Martin refuses to leave Jonathan's side again. Jonathan then asks Martin to take his knife and stab him, severing the Pupil once again and allowing the entities to be taken to another reality. They share a kiss before Martin does the deed.
Basira, Georgie and Melanie search through the rubble of the Panopticon for any sign of Jonathan and Martin, but find only a single tape recorder. They decide to accept that they're gone and it's for the best, since the former victims of the entities have not been quick to forgive the now-powerless avatars.
Georgie: Leave it. We're done with tapes.
Melanie: Want me to smash it?
Basira: I think we can probably just turn it off.
Melanie: Okay.
<Georgie and Melanie leave>
Basira: If anyone's listening… Goodbye. I'm sorry, and… good luck.
- And This Is for...: Jon punches Jonah Magnus, punctuating his blows with "this is for Sasha!" and "this is for Tim!"
- Bittersweet Ending: The Web has gotten everything it wanted, Jon and Martin have gone off to Uncertain Doom, but this world, including the rest of the cast, is free and healing.
- Gainax Ending: Jon and Martin are dragged out of this world along with the Fears, possibly killing them, possibly changing them—the only known thing about whatever it is that happens is that they're together. Basira, Melanie, and Georgie find one last tape recorder in the ruins of the Panopticon, and Basira concludes the series by saying to anyone who might be listening (whether it's us or the myriad of worlds that the Fears have been released upon) 'Goodbye. I'm sorry, and... good luck.' before turning the recorder off.
- Eviler than Thou: It is revealed that the Web is the only one of the Fears that can actually think, and it's been manipulating the others all along to break it out of this reality and into the multiverse. It views the other Powers with contempt, particularly the Eye, which it sees as the most foolish of them all.
- Foreshadowing: Remember how Jon was consistently unable to think about the Web lighter for more than a couple seconds at a time? He forgot he gave it to Georgie and so doesn't realize that he can't actually stop the "move the Fears" plan.
- The Needs of the Many: Jon decides that the other worlds are the "many" in this case, despite seemingly having agreed to save this one (which Martin noticed).
- The Reveal: We finally learn the true nature of the Powers. Initially, they were all one amorphous entity of fear, but as humanity evolved and the fears of living beings became more complex, they splintered into separate but connected entities, which shift and change as the world does.
- Sealed Evil in Another World: By destroying the Panopticon and sending all the tapes through the gap in reality, the Fears are ejected into The Multiverse, saving this world but giving them the chance to try again elsewhere... just as the Web planned.
- Together in Death: Jon and Martin. Maybe.Where you go, I go.
- Uncertain Doom: No one is 100% certain what happened to Jon and Martin, and Basira, Georgie, and Melanie reluctantly accept that they'll probably never find out.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The group clearly laid out their plan in the last episode. So the very first thing that happens in this episode is Jon going off the rails and taking on Jonah himself. They do actually manage to shove the Fears out of this world and into the multiverse, but because Jon has become the Pupil Martin has to slash his tether, severely hurting him.
