‘The Magicians' Season 5 Episode 8 sees botanical magic spice things up as gang goes tree chopping to kill Seb
In a botanical-flavored episode, appropriately titled 'Garden Variety Homicide', the show has tied some pretty important plot points to plant magic. First and foremost, it brought the newest character, Professor of Botany Hamish Bax (Aaron Jennings), into the fold. Between his introduction in last week's episode 'Acting Dean' and this episode, he has become an invaluable resource.
He might well be the one who finally helps Alice Quinn (Olivia Taylor Dudley) decipher the page with magical information left behind by Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph). With Earth's apocalypse, Quentin's page had been sidelined for a few episodes.
But it looks like it is going to play an important part in this season's main arc since it is revealed to be an instruction manual to grow the "World Seed" -- a seed with limitless potential -- including world-building, as its name suggests. And since the Fillorians might need a new world to settle in if Fillory is destroyed, that is a pretty darned convenient seed to have in one's pocket.
The episode also introduced the scheming fungi spores with their own collective consciousness that can take over a host body and bend it to its will. The only catch is that when the spores infect too many bodies, they are "spread too thin" and become a dormant part of the host bodies. This is exactly what Alice and Hamish do in order to free Penny (Arjun Gupta) from his creepy, eyeball wiggling, "fungi zombie" state.
It is pretty fun that plant magic has finally been introduced to the show in a definite way. Before this, even though Julia Wicker (Stella Maeve) was a tree goddess, her power was depicted more as a healing one like when she restored the forest of the Sentient Trees in Fillory or took care of people's ailments. However, the plant magic being depicted in season 5 has a darker, more powerful edge.
Zombie-making fungi aside, there is also the tree magic tattoo that Seb, the Dark King, sports, connected to his miraculous regeneration abilities. Even with a sword in his chest, he pops right back up in a few minutes like how a green shoot emerges from the trunk of a dead tree.
Josh speculated in this episode that Seb's immortality seemed like a powered-up version of a "vitality conduit" -- like when a magician drew the life force out of stalk corn to fight a summer cold. According to him, it is an old form of "natural magic".
His speculation is based on what Seb told Eliot about a choice he made, a long time ago, "tied to a conduit". When he gets rid of his shirt before kissing Eliot, he inadvertently also reveals his tree tattoo. Fen later identifies the tree depicted (with jagged leaves) as a "blackwood tree".
The gang believes that cutting down this "conduit tree" will make Seb mortal and a 100 percent killable. But the tree magic Seb wields is more resilient than they anticipated. His life seems to be tied to this tree magic because of whatever deal he made in the past to keep Fillory safe.
Even the mysterious Takers that he summons, for that matter, emerge from the ground after he fertilizes it with gold. So Seb's "burden" and the Takers might be tied up to some arcane botanical magic that hopefully Julia, as a former tree goddess, will have some insight into.
Since it is the Fillorian month of the Red Monkey, which speeds things up, like crops growing, regeneration and healing and even pregnancy, can we expect Seb to get more powerful during this month?
In the meantime, we also have "The Couple" hunting for the page Alice has and they will be after the World Seed too. So expect a lot more green shenanigans in the episodes to come.
The next episode of 'The Magicians' airs on March 4 on Syfy.