The Secret Sea

For the fictional book of the same name, see The Secret Sea.

The Secret Sea

First Aired

April 13, 2019

SYFY's The Magicians
← Previous	Next →
The 4-1-1	No Better to Be Safe Than Sorry

The Secret Sea is the twelfth episode in the fourth season of the television series The Magicians, fifty-first episode overall.

Synopsis[]

Quentin yells at a plant. Margo stares at a fish.

Plot[]

Julia wakes up outdoors and the Monster is standing over her. He pins her to the ground with magic and says he does not want to damage his Sister's new body. A young woman is lying on a stone alter with with the four stone organs broken open beneath her. The Monster says he is going to have to kill his sister again but only for a moment. Julia prays to Our Lady Underground, who appears and freezes the Monster. She tells Julia that she can't stop him, but that Julia must make a choice to become a human or a god. Julia says that is a shit choice but before she can run, the Sister escapes her previous body and enters Julia. She turns on Our Lady Underground and snaps her neck with a snap of her fingers.

At Brakebills, Dean Fogg walks to his office but is stopped by Todd, who tells him there are men from the Library there to arrest him. Fogg comments that he wore the right suit that day and casts a spell over a book, making it look like the Costruzione di Mondi. He gives Todd the book to drop off at the Library's local chapter then turns himself in. At the Library, a librarian approaches him with prisoner clothes to wear. Fogg pins his tie bar on the Librarian and he disappears. Fogg then pulls one of the buttons on his cuff and his suit turns grey just like all of the other librarians' suits. He sneaks through the Library and follows a young Librarian who is putting the Costruzione di Mondi he gave Todd in the Poison Room. When she opens the shelf containing the poison-eating insects, he throws a cuff link toward her and turns her into a puppy.

Kady and Zelda are still locked in the Poison Room. Kady vomits and Zelda says their protection has run out. They find a candlelit table and are greeted by Christopher Plover,, who has been there for weeks. Kady recognizes him as the child molester that created the Beast. He offers to help them escape if they take him with them and they agree. He gives them a moss that grows in the Poison Room and says he it counteracts the poison. Zelda asks how he got there and he tells them that Alice, one of Zelda's former prisoners, trapped him there. Kady is still getting sick and Plover deduces that the anti-aging spells that Martin placed on him must still be keeping him alive. Kady laments that she will die just like the original Penny did. Zelda says that is not necessarily true... the Library has a cure. Kady exclaims that the Library let Penny die and Zelda says that Penny chose to ignore the warnings of the Library. Zelda admits that the Library has gone astray with its current authoritarian regime, but believes it can be reformed. Plover chimes in that authoritarian regimes always fail, and Kady says that even the pedophile agrees with her. He scoffs at that, saying no one will ever let him change.

Cyrus is waiting in Everett's office and tells him that Zelda snuck into the Poison Room with a hedge witch. Cyrus followed protocol and locked them inside. Everett causes Zelda to fall unconscious so they can have a talk. Zelda tells him that she read his book and knows of his plan to horde magic and become a god. He says that there are secrets the gods keep from them and he intends to rip them from them and give them to the Library. He also plans to kill the Monster and absorb its power as well. He says that Zelda will stop him from becoming consumed by hubris. He wants her to take over the Library once he ascends. She tells him to follow protocol, which means letting her die. He says she can still help him. He explains that when he redirected the magic of the Wellspring to the Reservoir, he triggered a protective spell that he can't figure out. But he knows someone who can: Quentin. If she can convince Quentin to remove the spell on the Reservoir, she can lead the Library. Kady slaps Zelda to wake her up.

Fogg is in the Poison Room and ready to take them out. He refuses to take Plover with them, saying he didn't risk his like to save a child molester. Plover counters that he knows how to undo the spell/curse on the Reservoir because Martin placed it and he knew all of Martin's secrets. They all leave the Poison Room together when an alarm goes off. Fogg holds the oncoming Librarians off with magic while the others run to the Fountain exit. He is captured shortly after.

Fen sends a rabbit to Quentin and Penny 23 saying that she has found magic and needs help. They travel to Fillory and find the secret stairway that Josh discovered. It leads to a room with quickly growing flowers and continue into a large dome-like structure filled with a sea. Quentin recognizes it as the Reservoir they were looking for, a magic-filled body of water. Fen comes up to them from behind holding a goldfish swimming in a bowl. Quentin goes to touch the water and Fen yells for him not to, saying that when Josh touched it he turned into the goldfish she is holding. Fen takes the Josh-fish back to the Penthouse where she explains the curse to Margo. Fen says it is a Fillorian Dying Fish, named so because they only live for a couple of days. They require constant eye contact, which they usually get from their mother. The Josh-fish starts to float as if dead and Fen convinces Margo to make eye contact. She does and the Josh-fish responds. Fen says it has bonded with her and thinks she is its mom.

Quentin, Alice, and Penny go over the Fillory and Further books to find any reference to the Reservoir. Quentin says the closest reference is the Secret Sea, an underground ocean that the Chatwins sailed across with a crew of rabbit pirates. However, there is no reference to the Secret Sea being full of magic or cursed. Alice sends a rabbit to Sheila asking for enough magic to cast the incorporate bond spell. Sheila refuses, saying that she can't slip Alice that much magic behind the Order's back. Sheila asks Alice to work with the Library, but Alice believes she and her friends will be arrested on sight. Sheila wishes Alice well and leaves.

Margo is watching the Josh-fish when Quentin and Alice arrive. She sent Fen out for fish flakes alone in Manhattan hours ago. Margo admits to feeling fond for Josh but bristles when Alice implies that she is in love with him. Alice comments that having feelings doesn't make Margo any less herself; she can still be a bitch. Margo considers that she might actually be in love with Josh. Quentin finds a business card for a hedge witch veterinarian named Gordy and Margo calls him. Quentin sits Alice down and tells her that he was clinging to naïve expectations about people and the world. He says that he should be able to forgive people and asks if they can try again. They kiss.

Margo takes the Josh-fish to Gordy's clinic. He examines it with a shard of glass and says it is also a werewolf. He then notes that Margo is to and asks if she fucked the fish. Margo explains that he is a human who is cursed, but that she has to keep looking at it or it will die. She says that she is going to have to leave the fish eventually and that she can't keep looking at it forever. He says that without knowing how it was cast there is not much he can do. He also notes her fairy eye and that there is a bond being formed between her and the Josh-fish. He suggests she pop out her fairy eye and point it at the Josh-fish. She tries but says it's stuck, then Gordy slaps her on the back of the head, knocking it out. Margo can still see through it. She sets it down by the bowl and the Josh-fish is happy again. Gordy gives her a pirate-themed eyepatch.

Kady arrives at the Penthouse after escaping the Poison Room with Plover and Zelda in tow. Quentin and Alice are angry that Plover is there, but he says that he is the only one who can help them access the Reservoir and save their friends. He explains that was the name that Martin gave it but that he thought it lacked poetry, so he renamed it the Secret Sea in the fourth Fillory book. He signs Quentin's first edition copy of the book but Quentin is not enthused. When Quentin asks about the plot of the book in which the Watcher Woman is attempting to steal all magic for herself, Plover says most of the book is made up because he couldn't publish the actual stories the children told him such as recreational drug use and centaurs practicing necrophilia to honor their dead. Instead he made up most of the stories such as Martin slaying a hundred mercenaries and Jane riding a horse a hundred feet tall.

However, he says that some of the events in The Secret Sea were true. The Thirteenth King of Fillory built the Reservoir to consolidate power. Martin drained it and used the last few drops to set a trap for anyone who would try to refill it - the curse that turns anyone who touches the water into a fish. Martin was thirteen years old at the time. There is a garden beside the Reservoir called the Drowned Garden that reacts to a person's emotions. To avoid the curse, one must make the Drowned Garden bloom and consume a petal of one of its flowers. A different type of flower blooms for each emotion. To make it bloom, one must truly love Fillory. Quentin says that his love for Fillory has faded after everything it has taken from them. Zelda, who has read Quentin's book, says it must be him.

Zelda tells Kady that she has a contact in the Library that can get them they cure and that they don't have much time. Zelda leaves. Penny angrily tells Kady to go with Zelda and deduces that she doesn't want to be cured. She wants to die and be with the original Penny in the afterlife. Penny says that would be a waste, she replies that most things are and leaves.

In Fillory, Plover, Quentin, Penny, and Alice enter the Drowned Garden. Quentin attempts to express his love for Fillory to the Garden but nothing happens. He compliments the Upside Down Desert and the Fizzy River, but his heart is not in it. He quits and tells Alice that he no longer loves Fillory the way he used to because now he knows what it really is. Alice tells him that being an adult doesn't mean giving up the things that you love, just seeing the world through new eyes. She also tells him that the Cozy Horse is real - she saw it when she was a niffin. He tries again.

This time, Quentin admits that he got exactly what he wanted: magic, adventures in Fillory and purpose - but it wasn't good enough. All of it was just random to the point that he has to yell at a plant in order to save his friends. Fillory used to be a promise that people like him could find an escape. He asks if loving the idea of Fillory shouldn't be enough and a flower blooms.

The Monster and his sister walk through a park. Sister notes that much has changed and the Monster notes that the humans have made lots of good stuff. He asks if he has a name, she asks why he would need one. She says that she feels sorry for him. Nameless acts like a human and cares about them. Nameless says that he ate a few, but Sister is not convinced. She asks if he is scared of her but he says he is not. She says all she ever thought about is revenge and he says he got it for her by killing Bacchus, Iris, and Aengus. Sister says that she wants revenge against their parents, the Old Gods, who deemed them a mistake. Nameless asks if they can just enjoy being together for a little while, but Sister says that is not what they were made for. Nameless asks how they would even kill intangible thought creatures but Sister replies that they are vulnerable if they can get into the Old Gods' realm. She says there is a scroll that is a key to their realm that is in the possession of the Library, though they don't even know what it is.

Nameless and Sister attack the Library. Nameless slices some apart while Sister turns a Librarian's own fire spell against him, then removes a set of keys from the ashes. They enter the Poison Room and she removes a scroll from a case, saying it is the key to the realm of the Old Gods. Sheila is hiding from them and goes to the rabbit that Alice sent earlier. She sends a message of "monsters in Library!" to Alice. Penny leaves to get the ice axes and Margo, they plan to meet at the Library and extract the monsters from their friends. Alice and Quentin each eat a petal from the flower and take sips from the Reservoir in order to gain enough power to case the incorporate bond. Their eyes glow blue and they continue to drink.

Penny travels back to the Penthouse to give Margo the flower petal and take Margo to the Library but Margo says she can't leave until Josh is cured because if she does he will die. Penny promises to bring Eliot back.

In a cell in the Library, Fogg is wearing prison clothes and hears screaming outside. Blood splatters his cell door window and Sister enters, asking what he did to get locked in the cell. He says he did something that went against his every instinct: tried to make a difference. He apologizes to Julia for what has happened to her as Sister prepares to kill him, but Quentin calls out to her from the hall. She leaves the cell to find Quentin and Alice powered up and equipped with one ice axe and a gourd. She simply says "adorable."