The Magicians recap: Season 4, Episode 13, The Seam

The Magicians closes out its fourth season with a final confrontation between The Monster, his sister, and Everett and the death of a major character.

All season, The Magicians has been building up to a big showdown between The Monster and the Brakebills students. It does not disappoint here.

Picking up from the previous episode, Quentin and Alice are hopped up on that reservoir magic and attack The Sister (possessing Julia). With Penny’s help, they’re able to drive the spirit out of Julia and into a vessel and are able to get it safely under containment until they can get rid of it completely.

They take Julia to the hospital wing at Brakebills to heal Julia, but her invulnerability is reacting badly to her ax wound. Penny brings in The Binder, who has the knowledge on how to help Julia, and are faced with making a difficult choice for Julia since she’s unable to do so: Make her a human or a goddess. Penny chooses a human and the healing begins.

Soon (maybe too soon), Julia is back on her feet and reveals that she still has what The Monster and his sister were after in The Library: a scroll to get to the Old Gods. Julia passes it off to Quentin and Josh (who is no longer a fish) and the two accidentally use the scroll after The Monster finds them again.

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They’re transported to a world that looks like an office building and are greeted by a man with a gold club named Golf who congratulates them on successfully completing the quest. They explain that they weren’t actually on a quest and accidentally found the scroll and are just looking for a way from the Old Gods to defeat The Monster.

Golf informs them that the only way for them to stop The Monster and his sister is to drop them into The Seam, a barrier between our world and a dead world. Anything that goes in there won’t come back out.

Josh and Quentin make it back to Brakebills and concoct a plan to bottle The Monster and toss him and his sister into The Seam. Margo, Quentin, and Penny travel to Fillory where Dean Fogg has sent The Monster with a spell that has left him confused and successfully drives the spirit out of Eliot and into the bottle. Elsewhere, Kady is orchestrating a massive cooperative spell between a large network of Hedge Witches to keep a seal on the bottles until they can reach The Seam.

With Eliot now suffering from an ax wound, Margo rushes him to the hospital wing while Quentin, Alice, and Penny go to the Mirror World to find the seam. They find it with little difficulty but are careful not to use magic or travel here since the Mirror World reacts violently to it (that’s called foreshadowing, everyone).

They throw one of the bottles into The Seam but are stopped by Everett from throwing the second one in by breaking the mirror that it exists in. In a last-ditch effort, Quentin repairs the mirror and throws the bottle in and, as a result, Everett and himself are killed by the after-effects.

In the Underworld, Penny-40 meets with Quentin, who is now dead, to coax him into revealing the secrets he took to the grave. For Quentin, it boils down to one thing: “Did I do a brave thing to save my friends or did I finally find a way to kill myself?”

As an answer to this question, Penny-40 takes him to a campfire effigy being thrown in his honor by his friends as they properly his death. Since this is The Magicians, this is partly done by them singing “Take On Me” by A-ha as they throw mementos of his into the fire. Alice puts in the mug her repaired; Kady throws in the copy of “Fillory and Further” that Christopher Plover signed; Dean Fogg puts in his acceptance form into Brakebills; Penny-23 puts in his egg; Margo tosses in his crown; and Eliot puts in an onion.

The message that Penny-40 gets across is a simple one: He didn’t just save their lives, he changed them. The story will continue but it won’t be the same one. Satisfied, and after giving them all one last look, Quentin moves on to his door that will take him onto the next phase of his journey.

The Magicians airs Wednesday nights only on Syfy.