Season 5, Episode 9
Cello Squirrel Daffodil
Penny helps Plum investigate the mysterious signal and hone her Traveler abilities, Alice and Kady investigate "The Couple", Julia and Eliot are forced to help the Dark King with a ritual, and Margo and Fen learn more about the Dark King's origins.Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Be Careful What You Wish For: While trying to convince Hyman that his Traveler powers were meant to be used, Penny realizes that he misses the powers he'd always resented.
- Blunt "Yes": Past!Hyman scoffs at the notion that Plum and Penny come from the future, mockingly asking if automatons have taken over the work of humans. Penny thinks for a second and says yes.
- Brutal Honesty: After Penny explains to Plum that Traveling doesn't need a map, she mentions that was the most teaching he's done since he became a professor.
- The Bus Came Back: Gordy the veterinarian returns to help the Tongue-Twistered Plover.
- Contrived Coincidence: Kady just happens to find the book Alice's page came from, which Alice refuses to accept as mere coincidence. And she's right.
- Curse of Babel: Plover returns, afflicted by insects which burrow into people and cause them to speak gibberish. Their magical nature allows Margo to exorcise them with the exorcism axe.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Seb casts a spell which is supposed to allow him to communicate with Lance through Eliot's body.
- Fingore: Alice and Kady's captor tortures Alice by cutting off her fingers.
- Forced Sleep: After Rupert hijacked the spell that was meant to tie Martin's lifeforce to Fillory, Martin put him to sleep for what was intended to be forever. One of the magic surges woke him up, however.
- Foreshadowing: When Plum bemoans being a Chatwin because it's a curse, Penny assures her that he's known two Chatwins and only one was terrible, so she seems to have taken after the good one. As we learn later, the Dark King happens to fall on the other side of the coin.
- A Glitch in the Matrix: The Library has occasional power outages and other weird mistakes as Alice and Kady are working. Alice eventually realizes that these can't simply be the help botching things over and over, and puts together that she's trapped in an illusion.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: for a rather broad definition of "Heel". Past!Hyman decides to take his expulsion from Brakebills as a sign that he needs to stop abusing his Traveler powers and change his life. unfortunately for the sake of the future, Penny has to trick him into astrally projecting one last time in order to put his body in stasis and hide it.
- Kick The Son Of A Bitch: After getting everything she needs from Plover, Margo reinfects him with the tongue twister insects then locks him out of the penthouse so he'll be stuck as a crazy homeless guy instead of getting a second chance to be a writer.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The Couple puts Alice into one to trick her into revealing location of the page. Unfortunately for him she figures it out. After 18 times he gets bored and moves to torture.
- Love Hurts: Eliot worries that his betrayal may have ruined things with the Dark King but Julia points out that Seb wouldn't be so hurt by Eliot's actions if he didn't still care about him.
- Love Makes You Evil: The Dark King's sole motivation is to resurrect his dead lover, and it's led him to terrorize Fillory with unkillable abominations for 300 years. To be fair, Lance is not just dead but stuck in a ghost loop unable to go through the door to the afterlife, which is A Fate Worse Than Death.
- No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: Because Brakebills was segregated in 1920, Penny (Indian) and Plum (biracial black) are treated as intruders and refused access to the library. Penny is mistaken for the janitor and they have to pass themselves off as "wizards from the West Indies and the Dark Continent" to get anywhere.
- Oblivious to His Own Description: Hyman is outraged when he learns that someone eavesdropped on his private converstion with Penny and Plum about his being the Pervert Ghost of Brakebills.
- The Reveal:
- The Dark King gained his immortality by binding himself to Fillory itself. Because all the trees on Fillory are interconnected, nothing short of destroying Fillory completely can kill him.
- The Dark King is Rupert Chatwin, Martin and Jane's brother. He made himself immortal to prevent his brother from doing it, and plans to resurrect his lover somehow.
- Shout-Out: The Pervert Ghost of Brakebills has pennants from Prufrock Preparatory School decorating his dorm room.
- Spotting the Thread: Alice realizes she's not really in the Library because the magic glitches that should only be happening on Earth are still happening there.
- Start My Own: The book they're studying in the Library gives Alice the idea to destroy the now-fractious moon and recreate a new one in its place. Unfortunately, the book isn't what it looks like.
- Time Travel: Plum can not only Travel through space, but time as well. This causes problems when she accidentally jumps herself and Penny back a century.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Plum realizes she and Penny are in a Stable Time Loop where they were always going to be the ones who hid Hyman's body. Penny (who, mind you, is from an alternate timeline) points out that time travel has never worked that way before, but this just gets Hand Waved.
- You Already Changed the Past: Penny and Plum jump back to a time when Hyman was still alive. When they learn he'll be expelled for being a pervert, Penny realizes he has to be the one to hide Hyman's body so Hyman will be there for Penny 40. Plum then reveals she swiped a stasis charm from Lipson and convinces Penny to stuff Hyman's body under a couch so they can put his spirit back in it once they get to the future without disturbing the timeline.
