The 4-1-1

First Aired

April 6, 2019

SYFY's The Magicians
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The 4-1-1 is the eleventh episode of the fourth season of The Magicians, and fiftieth episode overall.

Synopsis[]

The gang talks to a book; Tick threatens to drink some water.

Plot[]

At the penthouse, Margo recaps her adventure in the desert and how she obtained the axes. Alice suggests that they use an incorporate bond to trap the Monster once it is expelled from Eliot. Alice and Quentin go to Brakebills South to learn about incorporate bonds from Professor Mayakovsky. They find him incoherent - he does not recognize them.

Alice examines some surrounding spellwork and theorizes that Mayakovsky messed up a spell to restore his consciousness from his bear form and accidentally gave himself his consciousness from the future, in which he has dementia, by inverting two of the numbers. Quentin suggests that he talk to Mayakovsky in the past instead. They discuss Mayakovsky's timeshare spell to switch Quentin's present self with his past self. Alice will have to wipe past-Quentin's memory with a Japanese Memory Charm to make sure he doesn't remember the encounter until the present. They cast the spell and Quentin awakes in the past just as past Alice enters his room, and they start to have sex. He stops her and leaves the room. Past Quentin appears in the present and Alice begins the memory charm, but runs out of ambient magic before it can work. Alice lies that they have been teleported to the lab for testing and makes up a task for them to complete. Quentin softly kisses her on the head as they begin untying knots in ropes.

Quentin goes to past Mayakovsky and asks about incorporate bonds. The professor tells him he can't cast one without knowing his discipline, which Quentin doesn't know. He dismisses Quentin, but Quentin refuses to leave, so Mayakovsky agrees to test Quentin to learn his discipline, tosses him a bottle of vodka and tells him he does not want to drink alone. Mayakovsky performs the test on Quentin by holding him down and looking into his ear. Mayakovsky deduces that Quentin is from the future and says that he won't tell him anything until Quentin reveals what he is hiding. Quentin admits that he is from the future but is reluctant to say anything about the future for fear of changing the past. Mayakovsky writes down the basis for an incorporate bond and gives it to Quentin. He also tells Quentin that his discipline is repair of small objects.

Quentin returns to the lab to find Alice, who is examining the spellwork that brought Quentin to the past. Alice confronts him over leaving earlier and the pain on his face when first saw her. She refuses to accept that they are not together in the future and asks him to accept that he is the best thing that ever happened to her. In the present, Alice and past Quentin are tying knots, and he suggests that they have sex. Alice is uncertain, but they begin kissing when present Quentin returns. He stops kissing her and tells her he is back.

At Brakebills, Zelda and Dean Fogg meet with Kady. They ask her to help them steal Everett's book from the Poison Room. Kady is incredulous, but Zelda tells her that Librarians must enter the Poison Room in pairs and that she can protect them from its effects. Kady suggests that Fogg accompany her, but he says that the Library would know if he left the Brakebills campus and that him going to the Poison Room would draw too much attention.

Julia, Penny 23, and Margo examine the Binder that Julia received. It appears to be written in a dead language until Margo cuts her finger on one of the pages, and it snaps shut on her. Faint writing appears on page that has her blood on it. Margo says she has plenty of blood and takes the book to the bathroom and comes back with a tampon stuffed between the pages. She says that it's shark week and that they can thank her uterus. Writing appears on the pages in Latin and describes a spell. Penny casts it and a man climbs out of the book. He speaks in a third-person tense and says that pages are missing from his book, then collapses. They find signs that pages have indeed been ripped out of the Binder. Margo notices movement upstairs and goes to investigate. She finds the bedroom arranged romantically with flower petals on the bed and lit candles. A jar floats behind her and then knocks her out.

Julia and Penny go upstairs to find Margo gagged and bound in the closet. The lights go down and the candles flair up in a romantic setting. Margo tells them she was knocked out by a ghost that she can see with her fairy eye. The ghost appears to be pointing to Penny, but she cannot hear him. Penny meditates to psychically contact the ghost. It turns out to be Hyman Cooper. He explains that the original Penny changed his life but then died, then Penny 23 showed up. They were his favorite characters to watch but were no longer at Brakebills, so he left to find them only to find that he was endlessly waiting for Penny and Julia to hook up. He stole the pages from the Binder to lure Penny and Julia into the bedroom. Hyman agrees to return them but says that he cares about them because they don't care about themselves and are willing to sacrifice everything for others.

After they restore the missing pages, the Binder says that his story begins in the Library and that he was a specialist in the magic inherent in gods. He then puts on a puppet show on the wall showing himself, Bacchus, Heka, Iris, and Aengus. He learned that when a god dies their energy can be bound into a physical object and absorbed by a magician of sufficient training and skill, thus making them a god. To avoid the Old Gods' retribution when a god is killed, they found experiments of the Old Gods that were considered a mistake: two fetal siblings that were created with the power of many gods and could not be killed in any way. The Binder knew that if one of the siblings was taken away, the other would not remember anything and may not even know if the other existed, staying in a child-like state forever. They divided the female sibling into four pieces and locked the male sibling away in Castle Blackspire.

The Binder came to regret what he had done, but the New Gods he had "built" were afraid of him because he alone knew the secret that could make them human again. They turned him into a book and hid him from the world and the rest of the Order. When he learned of Julia's quest, he knew he could help her either become a goddess or a human again - the choice was hers. However, in exchange for helping her, she must burn his book so that he would not be used again. Julia discusses her options with Penny and considers being mortal again, saying she would get to feel things. She kisses Penny, but then the Monster appears, saying that his sister was dying. He found a body for her, but it wasn't strong enough. He says he needs a body that is more durable, grabs Julia, and disappears.

In the Library, Kady (disguised as a Librarian) and Zelda approach the Poison Room. Zelda explains that Everett is in a meeting and that they should have some time, but then he appears from around a corner and Kady acts as if she is perusing books. Everett says that he escaped from the meeting and asks what Zelda is doing. She says she wanted to speak with him and leads him away. She calls Fogg through a banana and asks for help. Fogg then addresses a group of "surviving" first year students while drunk and demonstrates a cloaking spell that the Library does not want him to teach. He invisibly stumbles around the room while cursing. An aid interrupts Everett and Zelda having tea to say that there is a problem at Brakebills. Everett goes to speak with Fogg and Zelda covertly makes a copy of one of his keys.

Zelda and Kady approach the Poison Room again and Zelda gives Kady a bottle of tiny insects to ingest that will eat up any poison that enters her bloodstream for an hour. They enter the Poison Room together. Zelda finds Everett's book and reads it, then tells Kady that Everett has been lying to them. He's been hoarding magic in order to become a god. They attempt to exit the Poison Room, but the door has been locked from the other side.

In Fillory, Josh is eating a biscuit off the floor when a wind rolls over him and has a vision of himself hosting a TV show called "Eating Out with Josh Hoberman" in which he addresses the merits of a good biscuit. Tick explains that the Winds of Fate have come unseasonably early this year. Fen believes that this is another sign that Fillory's ecosystem is in danger. They interrogate an imprisoned naiad who was arrested for murdering farmers. Fen comments on the excellent knife skills of the naiad.

In her cell, the naiad, Ismenie, says that she killed the farmers as a warning. She says that waters are moving and that it is the fault of the Thirteenth. She says that he built something that contains them and that the waters should flow free. She refuses to say anything else, much to Tick's anger. Fen and Josh discover that all references to the Thirteenth King of Fillory have been erased from the royal archives, but Fen says the name sounds familiar. They return to Ismenie in her cell and demand information, but Ismenie refuses to speak the Thirteenth's name. Tick then enters with a glass of water from Ismenie's well and threatens to drink it, pee it out, and then have Josh drink the pee. The naiad screams in fear as Tick begins to drink, but then Fen remembers a nursery rhyme about the Thirteenth King of Fillory, thirsty Roderick, who built a cistern to hoard water under the castle. They used it while playing bearskip. Josh theorizes that the rhyme is not actually about water, but magic. Tick takes a little sip as they leave and the naiad screams.

They find a hallway laid out in the exact format of a bearskip board. Fen and Tick coach Josh on how to play, and he skips across the tiles, throws a sweet berry at the final tile, and proclaims "honey or die!" A panel in the wall opens up and reveals a circular stairway.

Later, Alice and Quentin discuss his newly discovered discipline and Quentin is disappointed. Alice comforts him and asks him to show her a minor mending, which he then performs on a broken coffee mug. She asks him how it feels, and he says it was like he helped it wake up and remember what it was before, and they look at each other.