Not only does it obliquely address the “bury your gays” trope that Eliot is in danger of embodying several times over in The Magicians it also provides a magnificent opportunity to see each actor’s impression of the other’s character in a body-swapping plot that adds to the drama by threatening a permanent switch if they tell anyone who they really are. Similar narrative acrobatics are on display in Fillory where Eliot’s misgivings about using his inside man status to take out the Dark King lead to a promise from Margo that she’ll keep his hands clean. Alice’s epiphany during the conversation with Hamish, therefore, had a dual purpose: it gave us more bonding between these two over their grief and the idea that “it gets quieter” leads to the spore dilution idea.
![the magicians land chapter 5 the magicians land chapter 5](https://www.funmanga.com/uploads/chapter_files/14775/4/p_00005.jpg)
Involving Fogg 17 in the investigation was a nice touch, too, and The Magicians is able to plant (so to speak) the expectation that we were about to see a zombie plague at Brakebills.
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The spores think the plant drawing is important, so it must be, and although that’s all we really need to know, “Garden Variety Homicide” added in a fun body-snatching adventure for good measure. No one should go head-to-head with Alice in academic knowledge anyway, but the fact that her instincts paid off in attaching great importance to Quentin’s unfinished work gives her a wonderful new quest in the back half of the season that has all the marks of eventually being relevant in any fight against the end of a world.
#The magicians land chapter 5 plus#
Plus plans are being laid for Alice and Quentin’s world-building seed, a glorious reference from the final entry in Lev Grossman’s book trilogy, The Magician’s Land, which builds enticingly on the nod to a character from that book in the form of Hamish Bax, who is quickly growing on us.įortunately, the condescending Hamish quote from the book, “I’m going to say a word you don’t know,” is attributed to a spore-possessed taxonomist here in the show, fitting quite nicely with The Magicians’ penchant for tackling mansplaining head-on. Is everyone ready to roll back that smug conviction we had last week about the Dark King’s duplicity? We should know by now that The Magicians likes to play with our expectations, and the Fillory storyline not only gave us a great Freaky Friday sequence between Margo and Eliot it also had us questioning whether assassinating Sebastian, impermanent though it was, was the right move.
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This The Magicians review contains spoilers.