It might be cosmic horror, but there are some bright spots. All spoilers are unmarked - proceed with caution.
- Anytime someone escapes the Powers and lives counts, but special consideration has to be given to:
- Joshua Gillespie, who resists the call of the coffin by freezing the key to prevent himself from being compelled to open the it.
- Ivo Lensik. In Episode 8, he destroys a seemingly evil tree without hesitation, and when he finds what's underneath, he simply tears it apart without a second thought.
- Carter Chilcott is stuck on a space station haunted by the Lonely, the Dark and the Vast and escapes with his sanity intact, at one point starving himself nearly to death and still manages to outlast them.
- Lawrence Mortimer, stranded in the woods in Virginia and being chased by an avatar of the Hunt (who's already ripped out the throat of Lawrence's friend) still has enough presence of mind to pretend to be helpless and no kind of threat. When the avatar gets close enough to strike, Lawrence temporarily overpowers him thanks to his R.A.F training, and shoots him several times.
- Ivan Utkin was kidnapped by the Other Circus and forced to perform a deadly tightrope act. Despite the usually universal mortality rate of people forced to perform in the Other Circus, he somehow manages to make it across safely, and he, his family and the rest of the village are able to escape. Gertrude notes that there must have been something very special about him to make that possible.
- Similar to the above is Michael Crew. While he does surrender himself to the Vast, he's rather unique in that he does so entirely on his own terms, resisting the call of the Spiral despite being marked by it from a young age and spending much of his life essentially shopping around for a Power he believes will keep him safe. Although he is eventually killed, he seems quite satisfied with his chosen path and its outcome. No small feat in a world where almost everyone else, servants included, is a Cosmic Plaything.
- Martin successfully avoiding contact with the creature known as Jane Prentiss for two solid weeks by blocking any point of entry the worms could possibly use and basically waiting her out.
- Melanie's reaction to witnessing Elias go full-on Manipulative Bastard? Poison. And when that fails, stabbing. Sure, she was a bit bitchy and blunt, but before now there was never any indication she was anything more than a young woman who was into ghosts. Even Daisy doesn't have the gall to try and ice Elias. As she points out to Jon, his "kill me and you all die" schtick isn't even a good lie—and judging by what is revealed later, the opposite might actually have been true as well.
- In an effort to distract Elias while the rest of the team is stopping the Unknowing, Martin burns several statements, only stopping after Elias begins to Mind Rape him with knowledge of the state of his mother. He takes the full brunt of it, and then some, simply to make sure his friends are safe.
- Martin's sheer titanic brass balls during this segment are incredible. He lashes out and calls out Elias not just on treating him as some timid nonentity, but on knowing full well that Jane Prentiss was infesting the Institute and that Sasha had been replaced by Not-Them for a whole year. Martin Blackwood is through taking your shit!
- What's Martin distracting Elias from, you ask? He successfully outsmarts him by organizing his arrest. Even Elias admit he didn't saw that one coming.
- A couple of ones during the Unknowing:
- Basira manages to use reason and not be swayed. Jon, an avatar of the Eye, can't do it, but she does, with no supernatural ability, only determination and willpower.
- Daisy kills Hope. Counts as a two-for-one, since Breekon is so despondent about losing his centuries-long partner-in-crime afterward, he simply gives up the monster business altogether.
- Jon uses his Beholding powers on Tim, asking him what he sees, breaking the mind-bending power of the Unknowing.
- Tim's Heroic Sacrifice, taunting Nikola in the process.
- Basira's brain isn't the only badass part of her. In season four, after going across the world more than once on goose chases from Elias while the situation at the Institute and within Jon steadily worsens, she finally does what everyone's been craving to do since Episode 80, and that's to do some violence to his person.
- Daisy, outnumbered and significantly weaker than her opponents, manages to drive Julia and Trevor, who have discovered Jon stole and burned Gerry's page, out of the Institute with only a few carefully-aimed threats. And she manages to keep the Hunt out of her head in the process.
- She does give in to the Hunt, eventually, when they come back. We don't know if either Julia and Trevor survived, but Daisy did. Keep in mind, Julia and Trevor are Hunters themselves, so fully capable of killing an avatar in a fight.
- As of Act II of Season 5, we know Daisy succeeded in killing Julia.
- Martin getting one over on Elias was just the start. He has been onto to Peter's manipulations this whole time, and has just been playing along to find out Peter's real plan. And Peter never suspected a thing—played him like a cheap whistle, indeed.
- The entirety of Episode 159, The Last.
- Jon is trapped in the Lonely, desperately searching for Martin before finally finding him, only for Martin to reject him (This is where I should be. It feels right). Then Peter Lukas himself turns up to taunt Jon, and Jon sounds like he's on the brink of giving in, too… before he asks Peter for his statement.PETER: You’re alone, Archivist. The last one standing. I did warn you. I did want you to leave, but… perhaps it would be better if you stayed a while. After all – you can’t hurt anyone in here.ARCHIVIST: (seemingly defeated) Yes.PETER (AS THE ARCHIVIST’S ECHO): Yes.ARCHIVIST: (flatly) Or perhaps you could answer some questions.PETER: (echoing) …what?
- After Jon gets Peter's childhood backstory statement, he asks why Elias (or Jonah Magnus) got if he "won" Peter's bet. When Peter refuses to tell, Jon manages to use his Beholding power to tear Peter apart.ARCHIVIST: Tell me, or I will rip it out of you.PETER: No…[THE STATIC GROWS LOUDER.]ARCHIVIST: Answer my question!PETER: (echoing again) No! Leave… me… ALONE!ARCHIVIST: TELL ME![THE SQUEALING CRESCENDOS AS THE ARCHIVIST RIPS PETER LUKAS APART. LUKAS LETS OUT A FINAL DEFIANT SCREAM THAT FADES INTO THE REGULAR STATIC.]
- And right after that, he manages to finally find Martin and save him from the Lonely, resolving the emotional core of Season Four in a tearful reunion:ARCHIVIST: Martin. Martin, look at me. Look at me and tell me what you see.MARTIN: I see…[MARTIN’S VOICE QUAVERS.]I see you, Jon.[HE LETS OUT AN INCREDULOUS CHUCKLE, THEN ANOTHER. HIS ECHO GOES AWAY.]I see you.
- Jon is trapped in the Lonely, desperately searching for Martin before finally finding him, only for Martin to reject him (This is where I should be. It feels right). Then Peter Lukas himself turns up to taunt Jon, and Jon sounds like he's on the brink of giving in, too… before he asks Peter for his statement.
- In Episode 165, Not!Sasha shows up again and finally, finally, gets what's coming to her. First Jon is openly contemptuous of her, despite her threats, because he knows she can't hurt him—then she makes the mistake of reminding him what she did to the real Sasha, and he turns the full force of the Eye on her, obliterating her.
- This is followed by Episode 169, where Jude Perry gets the same treatment. Hearing her crack under the realization that she won't get away with feeding off of hideous cruelty and sadism and that Jon really is going to kill her is...priceless.
- While it ultimately doesn't succeed, in episode 187, Helen is the first being to actually evade the Ceaseless Watcher's gaze, using her teleportation to avoid being in one place long enough to watch and her shifting corridors to stop Jon focusing on her. She's the first being to actually stand against the Archivist in a one-on-one battle, and if he hadn't pushed her into lying, she may very have put an end to the Herald of the Eye there and then.
- For all his failures ultimately made things worse for the world as a whole, Robert Smirke has to be given credit for one great accomplishment that no other person in history can boast to have replicated; He built a place that is truly immune to the powers. As seen throughout the series, and as Annabelle offhandedly mentions in episode 197, the tunnels beneath the Magnus Institute are completely untouched by the Eye, and the other powers can't influence them either (though it's still possible for agents of the powers to move around and use their powers there).
- Jon kills Jonah Magnus with his own two hands and a knife. After five seasons of Jonah getting away with everything, it is supremely amazing to see Jon deliver retribution for everyone Jonah's hurt, and do it without using a single speck of the power Jonah forced on him.
