'The Magicians' Season 5 Episode 13 Series Ending Explained: Return of the beast and the end of Fillory
Spoilers for 'The Magicians' Season 5, Episode 13 'Fillory and Further'
The show has come to an end and the phrase "explosive finale" has never been more appropriate. With one last goodbye, we see the end of Fillory, the start of a new one and a final time loop slipped in just before the end. Let's take a closer look at just what happened - and didn't happen - in this episode.
Christmas comes early
Santa Claus has a strange but vital legacy in the Narnia books that the Fillory novels are based on. In their hour of need, Santa shows up and provides each of the Pevensie children with a legendary item that proves to be of important use through the series' history. The Santa Claus of the show, played by Tom Wright, brings Christmas early to the characters and gives them gifts that are a mix of mundane and of vital importance.
Josh Hoberman (Trevor Einhorn), Zelda Schiff (Mageina Tovah) and Fen (Brittany Curran) each get practical stuff closely tied to their hobbies, but the others get gifts that help them through the episode. Margo Hanson (Summer Bishil) gets a container for her magic eye, to keep a literal eye on her boys with. Penny Adiyodi (Arjun Gupta) and Julia Wicker (Stella Maeve) get items that help them travel with their new Traveler baby. Eliot Waugh (Hale Appleman) gets a seemingly useless bracelet, but one that later allows Charlton (Spencer Daniels) to become his true self after taking Hyman's (Dustin Ingram) body and pursue a relationship with Eliot. Lastly, but most importantly, Alice Quinn (Olivia Dudley) got her gift months ago - the World Seed page that she thought was Quentin Coldwater's (Jason Ralph) was actually meant for her. It was a quest to help her get past her grief. As Santa explains, everything she's gone through this season wasn't a part of Quentin's story after all - it was hers.
The return of the beast
Rupert Chatwin's (Sean Maguire) well-intentioned but selfish desires to bring his love back to life had even worse consequences than he expected. Hiding behind the door was not his long lost love, but instead, Martin Chatwin (Charles Mesure) - the magicians' most dangerous foe, who had been killed by Alice but made deals with the dead to return them to the world if they'd help him. Moving from the land of the dead to the land of the Takers, to the Library just to get to Fillory, Zelda stops his progress by placing the fountains of the Neitherlands in "permafrost" - meaning that there is now no way for non-Travelers to pass between worlds. Martin makes it to Fillory JUST in time for it to be destroyed and with no way out, he perishes there. Rupert was saved at the last minute by his sister, Jane Chatwin (Esmé Bianco) and they now reside in the Clock Barrens, a pocket dimension all of its own.
High King Margo the Destroyer and the Creator
With Umber's (Nico Evers-Swindell) pocket dimension sealed in a magic seahorse snowglobe, transporting every single resident of Fillory is literally as easy as the push of a button, "Rapturing" its citizens like it's Catholic Doomsday. Margo, living up to her new title as the Destroyer, is the one who turns back the clock on Fillory and almost sacrifices her life to save it. In the new world, however, created by the best dreams and hopes of Fen, Alice, Josh and Margo, Fen declares Margo High King of the new world and gives her the honor of pressing the button that releases Fillorian residents, giving her the additional title of The Creator.
The Time Loop
The first time the characters tried to save the worlds, it all apparently went terribly wrong, so Plum Chatwin (Riann Steele) used the last of her time powers to loop back time for one last chance. She wasn't able to change much on her own, but fortunately, Dean Fogg (Rick Worthy) remembers loops and he knew exactly what to do. Even returned from the maddening ethereal realm, he was able to delay the creation of the new world, allowing Zelda time to make her final sacrifice and the others time to escape. He also cut the magical cord from Penny and Julia's new baby, allowing the cord to be reattached to Penny, which in turn allowed Penny to save Margo when Fillory was destroyed. Time loops, once again, have gotten the characters out of a bind - meaning this is timeline 41, now, and there's a timeline 40 in which things went devastatingly bad.
Fillory and further
While it's obviously never mentioned on the show, it's interesting to note that in the pilot episode, it's mentioned there were five original Fillory books and five seasons of 'The Magicians.' There were always conspiracy theories on message boards about a sixth book and now, the internet will always be talking about what the lost sixth season of 'The Magicians' may have been like. Unintentional, perhaps, but an interesting coincidence, nonetheless.
This was the final episode of 'The Magicians.'