The Magicians: The Losses of Magic | Season 3, Episode 3 | Rating: 8.7/11 |
In case we forgot about last week’s exploding kitten (and I’m not talking about the card game) episode three kicks off by refreshing us with the disturbing incident. SyFy apparently missed the Internet’s pleas to never see that again. But exploding kittens aside, The Losses of Magic is yet another powerful episode that delicately touches on many sensitive cultural issues — like gender roles, and rape.
The episode begins with Alice visiting her parents who haven’t seen her since she, well, died. She’s searching for help from the lamprey. Then pirates attack the Muntjac, Julia & Kady summon a demon with the help of a Mayakovsky battery to save Penny, and Margo – who has gotten word of the pirate attack – convinces the Fairy Queen to bring her to the Muntjac. Before Margo arrives, Eliot, Fen and Fray discover a magical door in their Muntjac chamber and use the gold key to open it.
There’s a whole lot of death going on
They say death comes in three’s. Well, there’s no easy way to count all the dead pirates that the Fairy Queen took care of but as far as named characters go, The Losses of Magic ends with Alice killing the lamprey, and possibly her father & Penny dying during surgery at the hands of a demon. Insert a jaw dropped emoji here.
Death doesn’t have to me a physical loss of body though. We also experience a loss of limb, as Margo destroys her own eye after Tick pickpockets the Fairy Queen (and the eye can never be fixed). And there’s the threat of a loss as the pirate’s ship wants to take the Muntjac’s virginity.
Speaking of, ship on ship action might be the most appropriate use of what is known as “shipping” in the fandom world. That aside, Tick mentions how ships like the Muntjac, after they’re deflowered, are sometimes never the same. Many cannot sail again. A not-so-subtle moment about the after effects of rape.
Last season, The Magicians showed us how being raped mentally effected Julia. Most TV shows touch on the incident itself but never the prolonged psychological effects that occur after. The fact that they continue to drive this point home is incredible. But I do wonder, if the Fairy Queen hadn’t been moved to help by Margo’s compassionate speech asking for the Muntjac’s consent, if setting the mood for the Muntjac’s first time would have helped. You know, allow the Muntjac to get to know the other ship in a romantic dinner date type atmosphere — whatever that would entail for an enchanted ship.
Ponder This
- The Fairy Queen helps Margo reach the Muntjac via Pegasus, the mythological winged stallion. How did the fairies come to keep Pegasus? And why couldn’t we see a glimpse of this beautiful creature in the show?
- Where did Eliot, Fen and Fray go?! Are they in some hidden room inside the Muntjac? Or do we think the door was more like a portal to another place or even world altogether? I’d bet the Fairy Queen would sense if they were still aboard the Muntjac…
- The lamprey was laying eggs inside various humans close to Alice, because when the eggs hatch they basically kill the host body and then eat it. Alice gives Quentin some sort of egg poisoning formula to drink, and violently throws up for a bit. But the lamprey possessed quite a few bodies before Quentin. Will the eggs the lamprey left in other people hatch and remember what Alice did? Creating a continuous cycle of lamprey vengeance until they are all dead?
Episode 4 airs Wednesday, January 31st at 9/8c.
