The Magicians Season 2 Review: “The Rattening” and the Underworld Trip

Stella and Jules review: The Magicians takes a field trip to the Underworld

A good fantasy series knows when to stop running and let two characters talk. “The Rattening,” which aired on Syfy on April 5, 2017, is that kind of episode. Julia Wicker, played by Stella Maeve, and Quentin Coldwater, played by Jason Ralph, spend most of an hour in the afterlife, and the plot is simple enough to say in a sentence: get Julia's shade back. Everything interesting happens in the detours.

The setup comes from earlier in the season. In “Word as Bond,” a failed exorcism of a demigod cut Julia's shade loose, and the show spent that hour watching her turn fearless, funny and ruthless. The companion piece on that episode, The Magicians: Shadeless Julia Is Beastly, covers the damage. “The Rattening” is the repair attempt, and the pairing at its center gives this Stella and Jules review its shape: Maeve's Jules, with Quentin as the friend who will not give up on her.

The episode was directed by James L. Conway and written by Mike Moore. With two episodes still to come in a thirteen-episode season, it arrives at the point where the stakes tighten and the characters are asked what they will actually give up.

Recap: the dragon, the lobby and the bowling alley

Jules and Q track an Ancient One through the sewers beneath New York. She is a dragon, a Queen of the Great Wyrms in the episode's phrasing, and she has built a hoard that includes gold, baby teeth and assorted knickknacks. She will let them into the Underworld, but only for a price: the enchanted button that lets Quentin and the others travel between Earth and Fillory. Julia refuses. Quentin hands it over anyway, since getting the shade back matters more.

The deal carries a time limit. Their souls get twenty-four hours in the land of the dead while their bodies stay in the dragon's keep, and if they overstay, she mentions that she will eat them. The Underworld itself opens on a joke that has aged well: a terrible hotel lobby where the dead take a number and wait. A receptionist notices that the pair have died thirty-nine times, so their paperwork will take a while.

Their route leads to a bowling alley, where they meet Richard and the other members of Freetrader Beowulf, all killed earlier by Reynard. Richard is searching for his own son's shade and shares the map of the Underworld he has been drawing. He also acts as a decoy so that Q and Julia can search the receptionist's desk, where they find a note with a single letter, E.

Elysium, the painting and Alice

Julia works out that E stands for Elysium, the home of Persephone and Hades, who vanished some years earlier. The pair reach a large house full of young shades who are busy producing small miracles on Earth. A painting in the hallway shows Persephone, and Julia recognizes her as Our Lady Underground, the deity she and her friends had tried to summon only to get Reynard.

In one of the rooms she finds a coin with that deity's symbol, pockets it, and hears a noise in the closet. She tells the frightened shade inside not to be scared, assuming it is hers. It is Alice. Quentin walks in with Julia's shade in tow and sees Alice's soul, and the reunion is bittersweet. Julia's shade tells her that the two shades became friends in the Underworld and that Alice's shade talked about Quentin all the time.

The choice at the elevator

Quentin realizes why his math never worked: he had been trying to revive Alice without her shade in the equation. Alice's shade says a portal in the closet will return the pair to the reception area, and she says she is glad they got to say goodbye. Q promises to find her when he returns for good.

At the elevator, Julia sends Q through first and he holds the door. When she steps out, she is bringing Alice's shade, not her own. Quentin is stunned. Julia shrugs and says things change, confirms she knows this is her one chance, and goes through with it.

Details the episode plants

• Reynard and Persephone. The trickster god calls her an evil figure who left men and gods alike, which hints at a history that predates his war on her followers.
• The shades at work. The young shades in Elysium appear to be responsible for the small bits of magic that follow prayers to Our Lady Underground.
• The missing gods. Persephone and Hades have not been seen in Elysium for years, and nobody explains where they went.
• The button. Giving up the Fillory button costs the group its easy route between Earth and Fillory.

The Magicians Underworld episode review: the verdict

“The Rattening” earns its place among the strongest hours of the season because it spends its jokes on atmosphere and its drama on a single decision. The afterlife as a dull bureaucracy, with a waiting number and a pile of forms, is funny precisely because it is believable. Then the mood changes, and the lobby gag gives way to a closet and a girl who has been waiting for someone to come back.

Maeve has the best job in the episode. Julia has no shade, so she cannot feel much, and the performance has to show a woman who is aware of what she lacks. The turn at the elevator works because it arrives without speeches. The character who has done terrible things in the weeks before chooses a generous act, and the show lets it stay slightly mysterious. One reading is that being near her own shade gave Julia a flicker of humanity, enough to know what she wanted to do with her single shot.

The scene also changes how the season treats Alice. After her death, she became a niffin, a being of pure magic, and the Underworld gives her a quieter counterpart: a shade that has been waiting, apparently at peace, in a closet. Seeing both versions of her in the same season gives Quentin's grief a place to land.

There is a cost for that decision, and it is the right one for the story: Julia gives up her own chance at being whole. After the weeks she has had, it reads as a sincere attempt to make amends for her part in Alice's death, and it keeps her from sliding fully into Martin Chatwin's territory.

The supporting beats help. Richard's search for his son's shade mirrors Julia's search for her own, and it gives the bowling alley scene a purpose beyond a gag. The survivors of Freetrader Beowulf are also a reminder of what Reynard has already taken from the group's world, which keeps the afterlife from feeling like a sealed-off side quest. Even the dragon's rule that she will snack on their bodies after twenty-four hours adds a ticking clock without a single countdown graphic.

The mythology is a mixed bag. The reveal that shades generate the small miracles tied to Our Lady Underground is clever, and the glimpse of Reynard's grudge against Persephone makes him more than a monster. But the questions pile up faster than answers, and the missing gods stay missing. The show has also pulled gods from many traditions, with Reynard drawn from European fables and Persephone and Hades from Greek myth, and the episode keeps that mix lively.

Verdict: a strong, funny, moving episode that earns its emotional ending. Anyone following the season should watch it. It is the best use of Jason Ralph and Stella Maeve together in the second season, and the small coin Julia pockets in the Elysium bedroom looks like it will matter.

Sources

• The Magicians (American TV series), Wikipedia — cast, episode lists and air dates