The Magicians - Season 3
- Thread starter JD
- Start date
"Those fairy bitches wanna come for my crown, well, I'll shove it up their fuckin' eggholes."
I really liked Margo taking full ownership of being Queen of Fillory.
I really liked Margo taking full ownership of being Queen of Fillory.
I like it how Eliot and Margo both have good points that don't align. Margo is right to feel that she shouldn't abandon her responsibility to her people, but Eliot has a point that they may have done more harm than good to Fillory. It's hard to see a good way out of this short of bringing back magic so the Fillorians won't be at the fairies' mercy anymore.
I only just found out that the Fairy Queen is the same actress who played Ms. Hudson on Elementary.
I only just found out that the Fairy Queen is the same actress who played Ms. Hudson on Elementary.
Wow. A hell of an episode tonight. It was directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield, i.e. Elisa Maza from Gargoyles and Alison Blake from Eureka. And she did a terrific job with a very unusual and effectively directed episode.
The "deaf" sequence with Harriet was really powerful. Not only because of the startling and sad revelations about her relationship to the Librarian, but somehow the silence itself made their interactions feel more potent to me. Maybe it's because I had to pay attention and internalize the words rather than just passively listening. Maybe it was the lack of distracting sounds concentrating my attention. Maybe it was just that it was so unusual a way of presenting a scene. Whatever the case, it was brilliant. (Although I wish they'd put in a moment of dead air after the end of the act instead of jumping right to a loud Taco Bell commercial and ruining the mood.)
Also, I thought the actress playing the young adult Harriet did a fairly good job emulating Marlee Matlin's mannerisms.
In other news, I'll never think of the term "fairy dust" the same way. Good grief!
The "deaf" sequence with Harriet was really powerful. Not only because of the startling and sad revelations about her relationship to the Librarian, but somehow the silence itself made their interactions feel more potent to me. Maybe it's because I had to pay attention and internalize the words rather than just passively listening. Maybe it was the lack of distracting sounds concentrating my attention. Maybe it was just that it was so unusual a way of presenting a scene. Whatever the case, it was brilliant. (Although I wish they'd put in a moment of dead air after the end of the act instead of jumping right to a loud Taco Bell commercial and ruining the mood.)
Also, I thought the actress playing the young adult Harriet did a fairly good job emulating Marlee Matlin's mannerisms.
In other news, I'll never think of the term "fairy dust" the same way. Good grief!
The twisty storytelling and nature of the hunt reminded me a lot of an episode of Legion. Even the deaf sequence has parallels with the silent sequences in Legion. I'm not saying it's a ripoff or even an homage but it put me in mind of that. As such though it was an interesting episode and I like that this season has offered some unusual storytelling ideas and techniques even if I get a bit lost occasionally what's going on.
I hope there's some significance to Cassandra looking like Alice, rather than it just being an excuse to avoid casting a guest actress. Also, Cassandra was a Trojan princess, so really she should look more like someone from the eastern Mediterranean. Could it be that Alice, or some incarnation of her, will be flung back in time to become Cassandra? Or maybe that already happened to a version of her in one of the earlier iterations of the time loop.
Okay, this was their musical episode, and they came up with a reasonably effective excuse for the contrived situation that required the characters to sing. It was a challenge they had to solve, so it was contrived by design. And ultimately it was based on using music to bring all the questers together, in harmony, which kind of makes sense in a way. There was less singing overall than I expected, since it was mostly saved for the end.
I have a mixed reaction to Jade Tailor's singing. The timbre of her voice is strong and lovely, but she has an oddly staccato singing style that makes her songs sound weird and the lyrics hard to understand (though I've never been great at understanding sung lyrics). Most of the others seemed pretty good from what I could hear.
The fairy thing is taking a very dark turn, with the Earth fairies being enslaved and treated so brutally. I may be way off base, but I wonder if the efforts of the Fillorian fairies might be about retaliating against Earth people for how fairies are treated there, or perhaps about building an army to liberate the Earth fairies. If that's not the case, then maybe the gang will arrange some kind of deal to help free the Earth fairies in exchange for the other fairies leaving Fillory alone.
I have a mixed reaction to Jade Tailor's singing. The timbre of her voice is strong and lovely, but she has an oddly staccato singing style that makes her songs sound weird and the lyrics hard to understand (though I've never been great at understanding sung lyrics). Most of the others seemed pretty good from what I could hear.
The fairy thing is taking a very dark turn, with the Earth fairies being enslaved and treated so brutally. I may be way off base, but I wonder if the efforts of the Fillorian fairies might be about retaliating against Earth people for how fairies are treated there, or perhaps about building an army to liberate the Earth fairies. If that's not the case, then maybe the gang will arrange some kind of deal to help free the Earth fairies in exchange for the other fairies leaving Fillory alone.
Remember the pop culture coded communication? Magicians has given us episodes that echoed moments of both Hush and Once More With Feeling now. 
I wouldn't want to be Tick when Margo catches up with him. The fairies situation on Earth might be one reason Children of Earth (or however they refer to Earth people) are "chosen" to rule Fillory with a mind to potentially rectifying the fairy incarceration on Earth. It looks like the library is involved in the fairy dust production.
And Julie achieved a "level-up". Where does Reynard fit in with this? Is he really in contact with her or is it her imagination or fears making her see and hear him?
Still counting the fucks. It never really jumped out at me, but now i can't help being aware.
And Julie achieved a "level-up". Where does Reynard fit in with this? Is he really in contact with her or is it her imagination or fears making her see and hear him?
Still counting the fucks. It never really jumped out at me, but now i can't help being aware.
Interesting what the Quest has brought out in the characters. Who thought the Fairy Queen would ever have a redemptive moment? I loved Eliot and Margo's reaction to not being king and queen of Fillory. I'm curious what this means for Penny as well, wasn't really expecting that.
Can they just bring the other keys to the fairy kingdom when they retrieve them?
Can they just bring the other keys to the fairy kingdom when they retrieve them?
I'm concerned that Julia has made an ally of the Fairy Queen even as Eliot and Margo are organizing an alliance against her. We could find our questers ending up at odds with one another.
I'm confused -- what exactly did the Queen do to break the deal? She just drew some kind of character on the wall in her blood -- what did that do? I thought it would be something that had a greater cost, like killing the 400-year-old fairy who made the deal. I mean, it seems logical that the only way to break a deal would involve the individual who made it.
So the new owners of Brakebills have all been slaughtered by the fairy uprising (unless Jaimie Ray Newman managed to escape somehow -- I don't think we saw her meet her fate)... does that mean Dean Fogg can get the school back? Or do the fairies control it now as a spoil of war?
I'm confused -- what exactly did the Queen do to break the deal? She just drew some kind of character on the wall in her blood -- what did that do? I thought it would be something that had a greater cost, like killing the 400-year-old fairy who made the deal. I mean, it seems logical that the only way to break a deal would involve the individual who made it.
So the new owners of Brakebills have all been slaughtered by the fairy uprising (unless Jaimie Ray Newman managed to escape somehow -- I don't think we saw her meet her fate)... does that mean Dean Fogg can get the school back? Or do the fairies control it now as a spoil of war?
Some interesting new stuff with the Fairies in this one, and we got to see a new side of the Fairie Queen in the process.
Fen and Julia is not a pairing I would have expected before the last couple episodes.
As for breaking the deal, I just assumed the Glyph just broke whatever connection the Fairies and the people they made the deal with.
Hades was pretty cool, and I'm curious if what he said about magic, gods, and humans will end up being significant later.
I wonder if this means Penny will be staying in the Underworld Library?
Fen and Julia is not a pairing I would have expected before the last couple episodes.
As for breaking the deal, I just assumed the Glyph just broke whatever connection the Fairies and the people they made the deal with.
Hades was pretty cool, and I'm curious if what he said about magic, gods, and humans will end up being significant later.
I wonder if this means Penny will be staying in the Underworld Library?
That just seems oddly arbitrary. There should be an inbuilt logic to something like that, something that makes it feel believable rather than just being a deus ex machina.
Although now that I think about it, I suppose part of it makes sense. I was thinking that the nature of a deal was that it was attached to the specific people who made it, so I figured only the fairy who made the deal could break it, or that it could only be broken by his death or something. I guess I was thinking of how only the specific human who makes a fairy deal can see the fairies. But conversely, that human can see all fairies, not just the one who made the deal, so evidently the magic is collective on the fairies' side. So if a fairy deal is with all fairies collectively, then I guess it's logical that the queen would be the one who could break that deal. Still, the exact mechanism with the glyph and all seemed a bit random.
There was dialog that the magic binding the collars was fairy deals (whatever that means) so I guess breaking the collars meant breaking the deals that were made.
The way you phrased that is a little unclear. If you mean that breaking the collars was what broke the deal, no, it was the other way around -- breaking the deal was the only way to escape the unbreakable collars. If you mean that breaking the deal was what defeated the collars, that's right, but it doesn't answer my question about how the deal was broken.
I think a fairy deal has power based on the implied integrity of the fairies to honor them. It's not so much Dust himself making a deal but Dust making a deal based on his bond as a fairy. By knowingly breaking the deal the fairy queen hasn't made Dust personally culpable but impugned the integrity of fairies as a whole to honor their bonds.
It was a truce.
The faeries leaving Earth, left behind Slaves who could be bound, in exchange for no one following them.
The queen cancelled the deal by drawing on the wall in the cell.
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