'The Magicians' Season 5 Episode 3 Review: A pilgrimage of grief, a battle and a shocking discovery
Spoiler alert for 'The Mountain of Ghosts' - Season 5, Episode 3 of 'The Magicians'
If there is one lesson that 'The Magicians' has tried to teach, it's that there are no clean resolutions for the sake of narrative convenience. No easy roads to a clear conscience, and no guarantees that answers will arrive when you need them the most.
Life is messy and feelings even more so. The show's leads are dealing with a lot, and nobody puts it across better than the astoundingly self-aware Margo (Summer Bishil), as she says, "Can I have a complicated emotion? Without having to resolve it so that you can feel better?"
Alice (Olivia Dudley) might have gained a measure of peace last episode in learning to say goodbye to Quentin (Jason Ralph), but there's one complication — the fragment of Quentin's soul that she used to power the golem didn't just fade away.
She's going to have to dispose of it manually from the top of Fillory's Mountain of Ghosts. Eliot (Hale Appleman), who is not going to pass up a chance to do something, anything, for Quentin's sake, joins her.
The trip up the mountain ends up being more of a pilgrimage of grief. Alice resents Quentin's presence for a number of reasons. Her stubborn independence has her wanting to find a way to grieve on her own, to do it "right", and without help.
Below that, there's the unspoken resentment that she wasn't the only one who was in love with Quentin — and that she wasn't the only one Quentin loved back.
The show has played coy concerning the nature of Quentin's sexuality, leaving enough room for fans who want it to see him as the show's STRAIGHT white male protagonist.
However, one thing this episode does is validate the complicated relationship that Quentin and Eliot shared - especially with the lifetime they shared together in the lost timeline back in Season 3.
Eliot has not been able to talk to anyone about that love, but a drunk conversation with a charming stranger (who, as it turns out, is the Dark King! A shocking twist that's an ENTIRELY separate story) opens the door to Eliot talking to Alice about it.
Alice knows, of course. She knew Eliot loved Quentin and knew Quentin enough to know that he was in love with Eliot, too. It's obvious that that knowledge hurt her, but Alice also knew how messy Quentin could be.
She loved him — for the best of him, the worst of him, and the mess that was in between — and that's something she will forever share with Eliot.
Margo has a lot of complicated feelings of her own this episode, with the aforementioned affair, and the decision she made to leave Josh and Fen to die in the past.
The ever-cheerful Fen is apparently being to take more of the spotlight this season, as the knowledge that her King, Margo, chose to leave her in the past (despite Eliot nullifying that decision) brings out a real bitterness in Fen.
Even Josh is hurt by Margo's confession. It's a surprising turn for characters who have been so unfailingly optimistic, that leaves quite an impact.
The Fillorian fight scenes are lively and fun, and the plot thread that Julia (Stella Maeve) is slowly picking at continues to unravel, but overall, it's an emotionally heavy episode.
'The Magicians' has an incredible handle on the complexities of its characters, and the way it manages to offer up emotionally satisfying moments without clear-cut emotional resolution might just be the most magical thing about the show.
The next episode of 'The Magicians' airs on February 5 on Syfy.