'The Magicians' Season 5 Episode 9 Review: Odd pairings uncover the Dark King's greatest secret
Spoiler alert for Season 5 Episode 9 : 'Cello Squirrel Daffodil'
It says a lot about 'The Magicians' that, after seeing the episode title, fans may be preparing themselves to see cello-playing squirrels on daffodils, or something equally literal and absurd. It turns out that they're just random words thrown together by an immortal pedophile cursed with tongue-twisting beetles, in an episode that includes time travel, a seance and a plan to replace an uncooperative moon with an entirely new one. In other words, it's a relatively quiet episode with one hell of a reveal at the end.
With Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) gone, the show has had a real opportunity to pair up characters who have not traditionally had a lot of interaction. The show has not really taken as much advantage of this opportunity as they could have, but this episode is definitely making up for lost time with Julia Wicker (Stella Maeve) and Eliot Waugh (Hale Appleman) trapped in the Dark King's (Sean Maguire) dungeon, Alice Quinn (Olivia Dudley) and Kady Orloff-Diaz (Jade Tailor) trying to fix the moon, Fen (Brittany Curran) and Margo Hanson (Summer Bishil) prying answers out of Christopher Plover (Charles Shaughnessy) and Penny Adiyodi (Arjun Gupta) having to make do with Plum Chatwin (Riann Steele) as they bumble their way through Brakebills history.
It's an episode that spends much of its time setting up big things for the rest of the season. The atypical pairings lets us see sides of characters we don't regularly get to see. Penny and Plum's adventures through time finally give us some Professor Adiyodi moments that we've been waiting for since the pilot episode. Penny's story definitely benefits from not being solely focused on Julia. Between the mystery of the Signal and his new responsibilities, his story is actually going in an interesting place. Though he's still being jerked around by forces beyond his control, this episode finally gives him a bit of agency as he figures out a solution to return to the right time period.
Eliot and Julia's scene together is interesting. The two aren't especially close, but they obviously have a level of comfort around each other and mutual respect. We get to see, for a moment, them in relatively normal modes. Their relationship with each other isn't as messy as many of their other relationships are. Eliot has spent the entire season dealing with one trauma after another. It's refreshing to see him be able to give an uncomplicated laugh and focus on someone else's problem, for once.
It's a shame that the scenes with Alice, Kady and the Library was all an illusion, because Kady and Alice are actually a very intriguing pair who should be working together more often. The leader of the hedges and someone strongly tied to the Library, they're from two very broken parts of magic society who ought to be allying with each other, in the way the illusion shows them to be. The scene with Alice and The Couple (Geoffrey Arend) was horrifying to watch but hopefully next episode will feature a team up with Alice and the real Kady, who is in definite need of more spotlight this season.
Where Margo and Fen's storyline is amusing, it feels like it's just waiting out the clock before the big reveal from Plover at the episode's end. The reveal, however, is pretty huge. Not just that the Dark King is, like Meritt, using his middle name and is actually Rupert Chatwin but that his entire motivation is to bring his love back to life. This season's biggest underlying theme, despite its many plot threads, is grief and that one of the villains is motivated by his own grief makes for a fascinating antagonist, much more compelling than whatever The Couple has up their sleeve for the moment.
It's a more grounded episode that feels like it touches on a status quo that 'The Magicians' used to have, dealing with the strange quirks of magic in a modern, urban setting and at Brakebills but Fillorian fantasy comes right back to the fore. However Rupert's story will end, his story is already a painful, sorrowful one that cuts a little too close to home.
The next episode of 'The Magicians' airs on March 11, on Syfy.