'The Magicians': Everything you need to know about the tragic tale of Rupert Chatwin
Spoiler alert for Season 5 Episode 9: 'Cello Squirrel Daffodil'
It would appear that no matter how far ahead in time you go and no matter what apocalypses are getting in the way of things across the Multiverse, there's no escaping the Chatwins. Either one of their descendants end up being your student, as with Plum Meritt Chatwin (Riann Steel), or one of them calls himself the Dark King and takes over your magical kingdom for three years, as with Rupert Sebastian Chatwin (Sean Maguire). The Chatwins are like Skywalkers, apparently, leaving their stamp over everything and then hiding behind their middle names.
With this week's big reveal, it's worth taking a closer look at Rupert Chatwin and what we know of the sad, sad tale that brought him to where he is today.
Finding Fillory and magic
Rupert Chatwin (Brian Beckman/Arthur MacKinnon/Sean Maguire) was the oldest of the four Chatwin children who discovered Fillory, and such, the first to grow out of it. He never lost his connection to magic, however, as Earth had been hiding plenty of magic on its own. He was taught battle magic by the former Brakebills battle magic professor, the immortal pixie Bigby. He played a rather significant role in World War II, using the powerful, destructive Rhinemann Ultra in the Battle of the Bulge, which helped win the war. His time in the war left him with a distinctive limp.
In the 'Fillory and Further' novels, written by Christopher Plover, Rupert returned to Fillory in order to obtain a magical key from a sentient (and possibly sexist) cave. This key turned out to be the Truth Key. In the books, it was written that he retrieved the key for his friend, Lance Morrison (Mitch Ainley).
The Death of Lance Morisson
The truth was that Lance and Rupert were very much in love with each other but in the 1940s that kind of relationship was rarely accepted. Rupert retrieved the Truth Key to show the truth of his feelings to Lance. While in possession of the key, however, Lance began speaking of certain "ills" about his mother's side of the family - the McAllisters, who bolstered their magic by capturing and keeping fairy slaves. When Lance hands his father the key, his father's buried feelings of rage come to the fore and he strangles his son - though Brakebills ruled the death as a suicide.
Lance's ghost haunted the West Dorm for years. The Dean of the time sealed the dormitory from other students, but Lance's ghost continued to haunt the place until the present day, reliving his death and his first kiss with Rupert, over, and over, and over again.
The road to darkness
The most recent mention of Rupert tells of him returning to fight his brother, Martin (Charles Mesure) - and Rupert's gravestone is spotted in Fillory. The show leads its audience to believe that Rupert had died fighting Martin, but as of this episode, we know that that's not true.
When we first meet Rupert, he has adopted what is apparently a Chatwin family tradition and is going by his middle name - Sebastien. He is going up the Mountain of Echoes, in a pilgrimage for the man he loves, who we now know is Lance Morrison. Rupert, after faking his death, has apparently been amassing power for a while, using it to take over Fillory with the help of the Takers. Interestingly enough, as a High King of Fillory before the Brakebills graduates took the throne, he had more right to the kingdom than any of them - at least, he would have, if he had made his identity known.
Now, having amassed enough power over 300 years of Fillorian time, he is attempting to bring his decades-lost love back to life - no matter what the cost.
The questions that remain
The first and most pressing is how he attempts to bring Lance back to life. We have not actually seen a lot of resurrections on 'The Magicians' - fakeouts and alternate timeline replacements don't count. The closest we've seen is turning Alice Quinn (Olivia Dudley) back to human after being turned into a niffin, but she was never truly dead as a niffin, either. With the magical surges everywhere, however, Rupert certainly has enough power to do it, but at what cost?
The other questions pertain more to his backstory. Why did he hide his identity for so long, when he could have just taken over as rightful king? Why did he keep the Taker threat up, even after he'd won the throne? Also, at this point, it seems clear that whatever Fillorian apocalypse is approaching, it's going to have something to do with the Dark King - but how?
The next episode of 'The Magcians' airs March 11, on Syfy.