Alright, you heard your king. Let’s get into episode 310 – The Art of The Deal! Quentin and the gang freed themselves from Josh’s magical party land, the 5th key in hand. However, they aren’t the only ones who could use a little freedom. There are still some chains that need breaking.
Fillory’s Freedom Fighters
THE MAGICIANS — “All That Josh” Episode 309 — Pictured: (l-r) Summer Bishil as Margo Hanson, Hale Appleman as Eliot Waugh — (Photo by: Eric Milner/Syfy)
Last week, The Muntjac (clearly a Bowie fan) found it in her heartwood to whisk Margo and Eliot away from their execution, but that doesn’t give them back their thrones. Tick better not get too comfy ruling his “free” Fillory either. As we all learned in fifth-grade government, new rulers trying to set up shop can leave a country weak and easy for the taking. As Loria and The Floaters prepare to invade, Margo and Eliot leave Quentin to his key quest. They’ve worked too hard to abandon Fillory now, even if it has abandoned them. They each play to their strengths. Eliot seduces Es of Loria both with his body and with the promise of magic for himself and his people. Margo, being Margo, goes for the more direct approach with threats. If they can’t produce some magic soon, those threats and promises will be pretty empty. Is this finally setting up the WHOLE team to join together on the quest in the finale?
Equal Opportunity Shackles
Anyone else miss this guy? That suit they’ve had Penny hiding in all season is getting old! Now they have him chained to a book cart. Nothing screams “sexy” like a man shackled to a library cart for a billion years!
Penny confronts Sylvia for getting him caught. She gives him her sob story about her family moving on without her, receiving their metro cards after unburdening themselves in the “Secrets Taken to the Grave” room. The metro which leads to…heaven? hell? Nobody seems to know, but it ain’t the underworld! Sylvia can’t follow her family until she completes her library sentence. Given the way libraries come after you for book fines, you think they are lenient about sentences? The library was kind enough to offer to knock a million years off for help capturing Penny. A million years off a BILLION!? I didn’t even hear the splash from the drop in that bucket. However, her story does spark some inspiration for Penny’s escape plan.
Alas, man plans and gods laugh. Penny tricks a guy with a newly acquired metro card into thinking he’s received a one-way ticket to hell. We all knew it wasn’t going to be that easy for Penny to get home, right? Penny has an eye-opening chat with Hades. Penny is driven by a need to prove his importance, caused by some incident with his birth mother. Anyone know what Hades is referring to? Is this something we will find out about later, or was this covered in an earlier episode and I forgot? Either way, Hades promises Penny that he is free to attempt to find his way home, but an even greater destiny awaits if he stays…and joins Howard’s little book club. He looks so self-satisfied as he bites into Kathy’s cupcake, making my mouth water for the first time all season, even in a suit! The question is, was Hades telling the truth? Is magic merely a carrot the gods use to control humans?
Deadly Deals
THE MAGICIANS — “The Art of the Deal” Episode 310 — Pictured: (l-r) Candis Cayne as the Fairy Queen, Anja Savcic as Skye — (Photo by: Eike Schroter/Syfy)
Whether the key quest is pointless or not, Quentin is not giving up any time soon, but he’ll have to settle for Alice and Josh to help him find the sixth key. Julia and Fen have some fairies to free! If only they could find a way to get those deadly necklaces off, the fairies could use their magic to free themselves. The bigger problem is convincing them. Julia and Fen trick Irene McAllister into thinking they have brought her a new fairy to add to her collection, when in fact it is the Fairy Queen, come to give her lost subjects a rousing speech.
If the queen’s speech isn’t enough to rally them, perhaps a little betrayal will. They discover that one of their fellow slaves betrayed them. Not only is Dust helping remove those killer collars by slicing off fairy heads, Dust is the reason they are slaves at all. He made a deal enslaving the fairies on Earth, so humans would not go search for the fairies who escaped to Fillory with their queen (our Fairy Queen’s mother).
THE MAGICIANS — “The Art of the Deal” Episode 310 — Pictured: Jaime Ray Newman as Irene — (Photo by: Eike Schroter/Syfy)
Unfortunately, breaking a fairy deal is no small matter, but it is the only way to remove their collars. The Fairy Queen’s hand is forced as Uncle Edwin drags a screaming Skye away to be killed. She performs a ritual which breaks the deal, releasing them from the collars and making them invisible to their slavers. They exact their revenge on Uncle Edwin and the McAllister family dinner party (although Irene manages to escape), but at what cost? Fairy deals are at the center of their culture and necessary for their survival, but how? Does this leave them vulnerable to attack? Does it effect their magical abilities? The Fairy Queen tells Julia one of the keys to the quest is in the fairy realm, but it also powers the fairy realm. So not only are fairy deals necessary for their survival, but so is this key. Perhaps the fairies need to disappear to the fairy realm until time forgets that fairies can break a deal? How will Quentin and the gang convince them to give up the fairy realm?
