WARNING: If you don't want to know what happened in this episode, don't read this photo recap!
The High Kings and Queens of Fillory, having been dethroned, are now all wanted by the current government (mostly run by Tick). The gang knows they need to contact Julia to help find the sixth key, and so they're sending Josh. Are we facing a Josh and Julia solo adventure?
374302
Turns out Julia has some pretty serious power since she's helped the fairies. In fact, her powers seem to be growing stronger the more she does good deeds. And since the Fairy Queen told her she could never have the sixth key, her meeting with Josh seems like a dead end. BUT...then suddenly, they're in a Tesla Flexion. Remember that?
374303
Okay, now here's where this gets tricky. You'll remember a long time back when Julia used a Tesla Flexion to contact Alice from Timeline 23. Well, Josh 23 arrives from Timeline 23 with news: the beast is still alive there, magic's gone, and they need Julia and Josh's help. And, it turns out - the Beast in Timeline 23, has one of the keys!
374304
So, Julia and Josh actually travel into Timeline 23 and decide to help. And you know who they discover? MARINA!? (Well, Marina 23, in the current timeline, she's actually dead, but here she's very much alive.) Marina and Josh 23 tell them that since almost all Magicians are dead now, they teamed up to find the Tesla Flexion to bring them in to help kill the beast.
374305
It turns out (of course) that the whole thing is a trap. While they strike a deal to take the key from the Beast as long as they kill him, finally Marina confesses: sorry, it's a trap and it turns out the Beast is after Julia. So they brought them here from the timeline.
374306
But, let's remember, Julia has God-like power. She can kill the beast herself. Marina is skeptical until Julia heals all of her pain and scars. And so now they're all linked up, and after a quick visit to Dean Fogg, they learn that everyone is either a ghost or still sort of alive and the spell they'll need is somewhere in the library, being worked on by the ghosts of Eliot and Margo.
374307
While they do find the spell they need (which also happens to be the spell that killed Margo and Eliot in Timeline 23), they meet a familiar face: Penny 23. In this timeline, he and Julia are way in love. It's nice to have him back, even if he's still a little awkward.
374308
While they all start plotting their next moves, they encounter, OH NO! THE BEAST! It's been a while since we've seen him! But he definitely kills Josh 23, and when he turns on the gang, Julia blasts him with her near God-level magic, which removes his secret identity. The moths clear to reveal...
374309
Quentin! In this timeline, he's the beast! But how? Didn't Alice 23 say that she killed the beast when they last saw her in the Tesla Flexion? Didn't she say the beast ripped Quentin apart both physically and his shade? Everything!?
374310
Penny is a traveler, and his tattoos, combined with Julia's magic, allows them all to jump out of that predicament and straight to the Muntjac! Which is now overrun by the bunnies. They're there looking for Alice 23. And they find her…
374311
Turns out, in this timeline, Alice works for the bunnies. (She's a radish smuggler.) It also turns out that in this timeline, when Alice saw Quentin and Julia in the Tesla Flexion, she was granted the power to bring Quentin back, but without his shade. And without his shade, Quentin became a new incarnation of the Beast. Also, Alice 23 promised herself to someone for eternity. Where have we seen a captured Alice before? Library perhaps?
374312
And so, Julia agrees to kill Beast-Quentin, with the dagger that she had previously used to kill the other Beast and Reynard and…it's a lot of old stories come back to haunt them, no?
374313
When Marina pulls Julia aside with a plan - that killing Quentin will be easier if they sacrifice Alice - Julia tells her the truth about the other timeline. Julia used Marina as bait to kill Reynard, but it backfired and Marina ended up dead. Now, Julia can't replicate that. Marina is strangely touched.
374314
The gang arrive in Fillory and find that Beast-Quentin has been fan-boy stockpiling Fillory stuff for a long time, and living in his creepy Fillorian paradise.
374315
Julia gives Beast-Quentin her shade and tortures him with it into giving her the key around his neck. Now that he can feel the full weight and guilt of what he's done, Beast-Quentin is devastated. He tells her that in this timeline, he killed her because he saw visions of the future where Julia opened the locks to bring magic in, but instead, she let in a terrible monster. Then? He takes his own life.
374316
And so, the gang heads back to their own timeline, but this time, they have Marina with them and also Penny 23. Is that good or bad? Julia says she honestly doesn't know.
