Season 1, Episode 12
Thirty-Nine Graves
Alice and Quentin fight following his infidelity, and she sleeps with Penny as revenge. Quentin, Alice, Penny, Eliot, and Margo travel to the Neitherlands, where they are ambushed and Quentin falls back to Earth. The others hide in the Neitherlands' library, until Eliot burns a book and gets them kicked out. They find Josh Hoberman, one of the missing class students from Brakebills. Two years ago, he and a classmate - a Traveler named Victoria - led their class to Fillory. Meanwhile on Earth, Quentin talks to Dean Fogg, who reveals that Eliza is Jane Chatwin. She had been using an enchanted watch, given to her by a god named Ember, to create a time loop so she can try different methods of killing the Beast. After thirty-nine failures, in which Quentin always died, she changed the starting circumstances by having Julia rejected from Brakebills so that she would learn magic by herself. Quentin reconciles with Julia to tell her the truth. Together, they find their way into Fillory by traveling back to 1942 and following young Jane Chatwin through a door to Fillory.
Tropes Present In This Episode:
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Hitler was a battle magician.
- Drugs Are Bad: The library has a ban on intoxicants and other things which alter mental states, meaning bottled emotions are a big no-no. Justified in that they have to protect their books.
- Foreshadowing: Julia casually glossing over successfully summoning a god, who granted her friends' wishes to travel in time, have their terminal diseases cured, etc. is an early sign that something may not be quite right with how she's describing the situation.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: Jane has been looping time to try and destroy the Beast, changing minor details every time in an attempt to make Quentin and the others stronger. Powerful magicians like the Dean are aware of the loop, but they can't break it.
- Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Hitler was apparently good enough at battle magic to kill the future time-travelers who came to assassinate him.
- I Always Wanted to Say That: Josh always wanted to say "Come with me if you want to live."
- Loving a Shadow: While reading the book (novella, really) on Mike's life, Eliot is disappointed to see that he's not as appealing as the guy who'd been possessing him.
- The Millstone: Eliot spends the entire episode getting high, getting kicked out of the library, and wandering outside Alice's invisibility spell.
- A Rare Sentence: Quentin and Julia discover a time portal to 1942 that was created for Hitler-killing purposes. It's coincidentally perfect for getting into Fillory.Quentin: I never thought I'd say it, but thank God for Hitler.
Julia: Yeah, no, that still sounds bad. - Shipper on Deck: Weirdly, Quentin with his emotions removed thinks that Penny and Alice make a cute couple.
- Skewed Priorities: When the librarian destroys everybody's emotion vials, Margo's first reaction is to be angry because she based her entire outfit around having the vial around her neck.
- Truth Serum: Quentin slips one into Dean Fogg's drink, as he has done so in twenty-seven prior loops.
