Season 5, Episode 10
Purgatory
Josh is sent to the Taker realm by the Dark King, so Alice, Kady, Margo, and Fen look for a way to get him out. Meanwhile, Eliot and Julia attempt to break out of prison, and Penny and Plum try to escape the strange room they've been summoned to.Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Brought Down to Badass: Eli's device removes the material in Plum's blood that allows her to time travel without disrupting her Traveler powers. Penny frees her before she is completely drained.
- Brought Down to Normal: Alice has her fingers reattached, but like Penny's regrown hands in season 2, her reattached fingers have no connection to magic so Alice is locked out of casting anything that requires more than one hand.
- Commonality Connection: Alice is able to recognize that Hades is mourning Persephone because she let her life fall apart the same way after Quentin died.
- Deader than Dead: Hades explains that while mortals have an afterlife that he personally designed, gods do not since they weren't supposed to need one, and so he has no idea what happens to gods when they die. Persephone's death weighs especially heavily on him for this reason.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Fogg's sex-ed Do's and Don'ts:
- Avoid rapid finger movements
- If an enlargement spell lasts for more than 4 hours, call a doctor
- No mind control spells
- Stretch
- Hydrate (potions don't count)
- However magical the creature, if it can talk, it can give consent
- Hexes are temporary, curses are forever
- If using levitation, remember that you will fall post climax
- Don't use motion potion for lotion
- Funny Background Event: During Eliot's memory of Fogg's lecture you can see him snacking on the edibles that got him stoned while the camera is on Charlton.
- The Gods Must Be Lazy: Even though Hades treats the breach of Purgatory so seriously that it snaps him out of his funk and gets him to intervene in Josh's predicament, he tasks the protagonists with stopping Seb instead of making any effort to do so himself.
- Godzilla Threshold: Penny-40 treats consulting Benedict the mapmaker this way, since he's annoyingly clingy (by his standards).
- Have You Seen My God?: Following Persephone's death, Hades abandoned the Underworld to wallow in his grief in a crappy apartment on Earth.
- I Gave My Word: Even with all the crazy crap happening to the Library, Penny-40's still working the in Underworld Branch because of this.
- Internal Reveal: Penny learns of Julia's pregnancy.
- It's All My Fault: Julia in a brief meltdown blames herself for the conditions of magic on Earth and for getting captured by the Dark King because she appropriated Sir Effington's quest from whomever he intended it for.
- Knight Templar: Eli has taken it upon himself to act as the Time Police. He's frazzled from doing it all by himself, but according to him, he tried to get help from other time travelers, and they betrayed him.
- Kryptonite Factor: Seb enchants a gold necklace with a spell that poisons Takers, then summons one to drag Josh into Purgatory. The Takers are instinctively drawn to it because it's gold and poison themselves en masse.
- Lies to Children: The girl Josh meets in Purgatory is resentful about these and briefly refuses to help Josh as a result. Getting saved from a Taker helps her outlook.
- Maternity Crisis: Invoked and subverted.
- Eliot has Julia fake one so he can get some extra supplies from a guard.
- Later Eliot creates an illusion of this happening to make Julia sufficiently scared so she will tap into the baby's powers, but it's never really an issue.
- Motivated by Fear: When Julia is convinced that she's in a life-or-death situation, her psychic traveler fetus teleports her out of the cell. After the first time, she can tell it do so of her own free will.
- The Mourning After: Hades is broken up by Persephone's death.
- Mystical Pregnancy:
- Charlton's mother, as a midwife, had a patient who was pregnant by a nixie and found herself compelled to walk into the sea when she slept—fortunately she developed gestational gills.
- Because Penny is a Traveler, Julia is able to use the Traveler powers of her baby.
- The Needless: In the Place Beyond Time, Plum and Penny go for an entire month without any need to eat, sleep, or perform any bodily functions.
- Now You Tell Me: Eliot tells Julia that her attempts at crafting a magic explosive by braiding hay weren't going to do any good because they're in a magic-proof cell. She would've like to have known that 45 minutes ago, but he thought she needed something to keep her occupied.
- Oh, Crap!: Hades immediately freaks out when he hears that Josh somehow ended up in the Taker realm, as it means someone opened a portal into Purgatory and could destroy the barrier between life and death unless they're stopped.
- Pensieve Flashback: Charlton goes into Eliot's memories of his sex-ed class at Brakebills, since Eliot was so stoned at the time he has no conscious recollection of the events other than knowing he was there. While inside the memory, Charlton is able to interact with the characters and ask questions, with Dean Fogg even lampshading that it's a memory and he can't answer anything beyond what Eliot himself experienced.
- Phlebotinum Dependence: Eli captures time travelers and juices them of the chemical in the blood that enables their powers to maintain his own supply, since all time travelers stop producing it in childhood. When Penny figures it out, he threatens to destroy the vial taken from Plum unless Eli frees them.
- Place Beyond Time: Eli traps Plum and Penny in a small room out of time until Plum agrees to give up her time travel powers.
- Psychic Nosebleed: Margo gets one of these while trying to focus on her fairy eye when it's in Purgatory.
- Psychic Powers: Julia's baby is a strong enough psychic that it was able to detect three attempts to trick it into teleporting before the fourth one worked.
- The Reveal: The Takers' realm is a defensive barrier between the living and the dead, preventing souls from escaping the Underworld and returning to the world of the living and the living from opening the door to the Underworld. Were Seb to succeed in getting past them and cracking the door to the Underworld open, he would release many more dead than the one soul he wants to save.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Fogg has some catchy rhymes for things that you should see a doctor for after magical sex.
- Shout-Out: Hades is shown playing Untitled Goose Game.
- Teleportation: Julia's Traveler baby can do this even though it hasn't even been born yet. Fortunately, it takes her along.
- Teleport Interdiction: Eli is able to anchor Plum to his Place Beyond Time, preventing her from Traveling out and dragging her back even if she manages to do so in spite of the block.
- Time Police: Eli has made it his mission to stop other time travelers from interfering with time and cleaning up when they do. Unfortunately, this necessitates him capturing time travelers and draining their powers to maintain his own.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Eliot refuses to tell Julia about his plan to help her to use her unborn child's powers because it won't work if she knows what's coming. It's only after the fact that she realizes he created a fear illusion in her mind to teach her how to do so.
- Villains Out Shopping: Eli likes to make lamps when he's not kidnapping time travelers and draining their juices.
- Wham Shot: When Josh finally gets out of Purgatory, he sees dozens of dead Takers. All the Takers, in fact.
