Warning: If you don't want to know what happened in this episode, don't read this photo recap!
So now that Julia has discovered the hedge witches who live in New York City, she starts to learn their magic, from a large binder of spells they generally keep under wraps. Also? All this spell-learning is starting to take a toll on her relationship with James.
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Meanwhile, Dean Fogg has been growing new hands and has big, crazy fake eyes that he can’t see out of. And he has an announcement to make: that each of the students will specialize in a specific type of magic. Otherwise, messing around in magic you don’t know enough about could be deadly.
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Everyone is examined by various professors to find their magic specialty. Alice’s specialty turns out to be phosphoromancy (she can bend light!) while Quentin’s specialty is, well, he doesn’t have one. Either way they’re both sent to live with the “Physical Kids” – those who do physical magic.
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Quentin and Alice are tasked with finding their way into the house using magic. So, naturally, Alice bends sunlight to blow a giant hole in the door. Then Quentin and Alice get drunk with the physical kids, and Alice confesses that she wants to retry the spell that brought them The Beast.
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See, Alice meant to perform the spell to summon her brother, Charlie. Which absolutely did not work. Quentin agrees to help her look for the spirit of her brother, and they’re lead to a fountain on campus. But, now what?
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Uh, you guys, that fountain? Ever since Quentin and Alice went looking for Charlie, turns out there’s a dangerous spirit making drowny mischief in that fountain. Elsewhere, it seems like Charlie is sending Alice a message with the cunning use of tiny glass horses.
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Penny hears a lot of voices and that ends up being his specialty: he’s a psychic, which is kind of a letdown to him. The most he feels he’s capable of knowing is dumb stuff: like the fact that Quentin spends a lot of time in his head singing Taylor Swift songs.
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As Quentin and Alice set off to find out what’s happening in the fountain, Eliot interrupts and pulls Quentin away to find the book that Kady stole from the physical cottage. Alice, meanwhile, is left to ask Margo what she knows about Charlie’s death.
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It turns out that back when Charlie was at Brakebills, he helped a student named Emily Greenstreet, so they head off to find her. She wants nothing to do with them but tells them the story: she tried to make herself more beautiful, messed up her face, and Charlie tried to help her.
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…but in the process, Charlie’s magic got away from him and he made himself a niffin. A blue fire-ghost basically.
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At Brakebills, the books like each other quite a bit, so a missing book is best located by taking its mate out for a walk. That search leads Quentin and Eliot right to Julia and the hedge witches.
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Quentin and Julia finally have it out – he calls her out for always knowing that he was in love with her. Julia is angry that Quentin wouldn’t help her get into Brakebills, and he tells her that she’s just angry that she wasn’t good enough. So. Friendship over.
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When Penny drops in on the attic to meet the other psychics, he finds out that he’s not a psychic at all when he somehow transports himself to China. Penny turns out to be a traveler – someone who can, theoretically, move between worlds.
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You know who’s having a hard time holding everything together? Julia. All the hedge witches tell her that she has to manager her personal life. So she lies and tells James that she’s on drugs as an excuse for her weird behavior lately.
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Quentin warns Alice of all the ways that bringing Charlie back is dangerous, and as a precaution brings a “niffin box” to her spellcasting (against Alice’s wishes). When Charlie reveals to be a little bit evil and out of control…
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Quentin traps him in the niffin box, ruining any chance of her bringing him back permanently and also ruining his relationship with Alice, whose hope is lost for good. Alice is furious, packs up, and leaves Brakebills.
