'The Magicians' Season 5 Episode 10: Takers were guarding the living from the dead and Josh has killed them
In a surprise twist, Hades tells Alice Quinn (Olivia Dudley) and Kady Orloff-Diaz (Jade Tailor) that the Takers are essentially the security fail-safe of the multiverse -- they are the guardians protecting the living realms from being overrun by the dead.
By calling them out into Fillory and then killing them, the Dark King, Rupert "Sebastian" Chatwin (Sean Maguire), has essentially been thinning the herd. In this week's episode, he sends Josh as a trojan virus into the "Takers' Home Base". We find out that the Takers' homeworld divides the Underworld from the living realms.
He festoons Josh Hoberman (Trevor Einhorn) with a gold pendant with his blood on it and gets a Taker to drag him down to the Takers' world. This pendant acts like "Takers Kryptonite" (as Josh calls it). Once infected by it, the Takers die one by one.
By the time Josh has figured out how to get back to Fillory, the pendant he has left behind has killed all the remaining Takers. This means that Seb only has to open the doorway between the dead and living to let Lance and every other dead thing cross over.
In last week's episode, we had Seb tell Lance, who had possessed Eliot Waugh (Hale Appleman), the medium at Seb's seance, to "wait by the gate". But as Hades tells Alice and Kady, Lance won't be the only one crossing over. All the dead will too since there are no Takers to grab them and put them back in the Underworld.
Since we have always seen the Takers as bad creatures, it is a twist to have them revealed as a force for keeping the balance. Seb, mad with grief for losing Lance, is essentially endangering all lives to reunite with him.
Thankfully, with Hades now handling the Underworld's side of things, the gang can concentrate on getting Rupert to back down from his crazy plan. Julia Wicker (Stella Maeve) and Penny-23's (Arjun Gupta) yet-to-be-born traveler baby, got her and Eliot (and Charlton) out of Seb's dungeon and back on Earth.
Penny-23 and Plum Chatwin (Rainn Steele) also manage to get back to Earth after hard balling the junkie time traveler, Eli, who was keeping them trapped to drain Plum of her "Time traveling" plasma in her blood.
We will undoubtedly be seeing Eli again because of his God-complex that guarantees he will make Plum's life hell if she ever uses her limited amount of time traveling abilities from the little plasma still left in her.
This is the third time this season that we are seeing the writers setting up storylines around the "Do over" card of time magic. The first instance was the talking whales casting the Rewind spell after the destruction of the moon. The second instance was Josh and Fen's (Brittany Curran) deaths being prevented by time-traveling mail.
The third time-traveling storyline is being set up through Plum's abilities. We still don't know if she is the granddaughter of Seb (like in the books) but if she is, could she be manipulated or forced by Seb to change the events leading to Lance's death?
As Eli had mentioned, it is just too tempting to change the past and Plum could find herself forced to use her abilities. But as a precaution maybe she should just wear the patch to guard against the Signal (and Eli's control), just in case?
'The Magicians' airs on Wednesdays at 10/9c on Syfy.
