Episode Recap: The Secret Sea

Julia comes to in the forest. Evil Eliot is there and he’s about to kill the woman he kidnapped from the bar so he can move his sister into Julia’s body. Julia calls for Our Lady Underground and she appears, freezing time. She says she can’t fix things – Julia needs to decide if she is a human or a god. Then Lady Underground can no longer hold time, and the evil spirit enters Julia’s body. She immediately kills Our Lady Underground. OK, then.

Back at Brakebills, Fogg is detained by The Order for the magical spells he had cast before in order to distract them and help Kady and Zelda in their Poison Room adventure. And that – yeah, that’s not going well. They are locked in and the clock is ticking on their antidote. Suddenly a new person enters the scene: Christopher Plover. Everyone’s least favorite Fillory and Further author and child molester. Alice had trapped him there a few weeks ago and he says he can show them how to survive if they, in turn, help him escape.

Quentin and Penny witness Fogg being taken away from Brakebills. They had gone there to ask for his help accessing magic. They have the ice axes and the bottles to hold a demon – and they also now have the incorporate bond. But they still need magic.

Quentin and Penny head back to the apartment in NYC, and as they, Alice and Margo discuss what to do next, some talking rabbits appear on the kitchen counter. It’s a message from Fen: She’s found magic.

Quentin and Penny travel to Fillory and head down to the magic room that Fen, Josh and Tick uncovered. Then Fen walks up with a fishbowl and a fish inside. There is an amazing reservoir of magic, but they can’t touch it. That’s what turned Josh into a fish. Or, as Fen clarifies, a Fillorian Dying Fish. They only live a few days and apparently need constant eye contact in order to survive. Fen gives him to Margo to take care of back in NYC.

Christopher Plover tells Kady and Zelda that he’s been staying healthy in the Poison Room by eating moss, and he shares it with them. But when Kady and Zelda start to get worse from the poison, Plover realizes it’s old spells from Martin keeping him alive. As Kady gets angry about her impending death – the same way that Penny 40 died – Zelda says there is a cure. Kady is righteously outraged. Zelda is apologetic but it’s not enough.

Fogg is being jailed by The Library, and happened to wear a pretty amazing magical suit. He uses it to disable a guard and then stealth into the stacks.

In the Best Apartment Ever, Margo updates Alice and Quentin on the Josh-is-a-fish- sitch. And mentions in passing that they have been banging. Alice and Quentin share a glance, and when Margo says she definitely is not in love with Josh Hoberman, Alice says it sounds like she just might be. Margo agrees. Damn. She’s gotta help this fish. Then Quentin finds a card for the magician-vet that Julia once met through Pete. Maybe he’ll know what to do….

Margo quickly calls him and walks off. And then – another moment. Quentin tells Alice how he has been feeling – that he wasn’t sure he could ever trust her again but now he finds himself wanting to. That he wants her to be in his life, he wants to try again. She does, too. They kiss.

Kady and Zelda are deteriorating in the Poison Room. Everett and others in The Order are aware. Suddenly Zelda collapses and Everett is talking to her in an alternate plane. Zelda tells him that he should have freed her – and she knows what he is up to, trying to become a god. Everett wants to become a god in order to take their powers and understand how to defeat them.

At the same time Fogg wanders the library stacks creating distractions and uses a ploy to get into the Poison Room to rescue Kady and Zelda. And Everett tells Zelda that he should have taken her into his confidence sooner – that he should have trusted her and he needs her help. He has redirected magic to a reservoir in Fillory but he can’t activate it due to a puzzle. He thinks that Quentin can, and asks Zelda to help him use Quentin to solve the puzzle. Then Zelda wakes up as Kady slaps her, and Fogg is there to get them out. He wants to leave Plover behind, but then he says he can help them access the reservoir. They leave the Poison Room together, and when they are attacked by Librarians, Fogg holds them off and is captured.

Gordie the vet sees Margo and her fish, Josh. He sees both the werewolf-ness happening, and notices Margo’s magical eye. And Gordie’s got an idea. If the eye is removable, maybe Margo should pop it out and let it keep Josh-Fish happy so she can have the break she needs. Good idea!

A roughed-up Kady and Zelda return to Alice and Quentin in the Best Apartment Ever with Christopher Plover by their side. No one is very excited to see him, and he insists that he is the only one who can help them access the reservoir and save their friends. He sits with the gang and starts talking about the Fillory and Further books and smashes his image even further, criticizing the tales of Jane Chatwin. It’s gross and he suuuuccckkkkkksssssss. But he does have info: Martin Chatwin drained the reservoir, aka the “Secret Sea,” and set up a trap for those who wanted to refill it. Hence Josh- Fish. The key: A garden outside the reservoir has a flower that, in order to bloom, must sense that someone truly loves Fillory. Zelda tells Quentin that it has to be him that makes the flower bloom, as he has the best chance of making the garden grow.

Zelda leaves to find someone to provide her treatment for the Poison Room for the Order, and Kady stays behind. She seems like she does not want to get healed by the Library – that maybe she has a twisted death wish because of what happened to Penny 40. Penny 23 confronts her and tells her that she needs to survive.

Evil Julia and Evil Eliot are hanging out in Central Park. They are reunited, and she seems to think that EE has gone soft and become too human. She’s cold and she wants revenge. What EE has done is not enough – she wants to get the gods that are even higher up. And he just wants to be with her and to be reunited with his sister. But she’s already moving on: How do you kill an old god? She says that had a scroll that should act as a key to their old world and it must be somewhere in the Library.

Quentin is with Plover in the garden of Fillory. He finds the flower to talk to and gives it a shot, but quickly feels pressure from Penny, Alice and Plover. First Plover leaves, then Alice gives Quentin a pep talk about finding his belief in Fillory and they leave him alone down there. He has an emotional response to the task at hand and remembers how the idea of Fillory once saved him. A tiny bud sprouts.

In the library, Evil Eliot and Evil Julia walk the halls killing Librarians. They are merciless, and head to the Poison Room. Evil Julia finds the scroll she wanted and they kill a few more, then head separate ways down the hall. Alice’s friend Sheila gets a message to Alice alerting them to the fact that the Monsters are in the library. Quentin gives a flower petal to Penny to pass along to Josh, and he and Alice head to the magical reservoir. They eat a flower petal, and then power up with magic from the reservoir. It’s working!

Penny travels to NYC, hands Margo a flower petal for Fish-Josh and grabs the ice axes. She can’t leave – she needs to stay to make sure that Josh recovers. So Penny promises to do his best to save Eliot.

In the Library, Fogg is in a cell. Screams shatter the hall and blood splashes on his door. Evils Eliot and Julia are still rampaging down the halls. Julia opens Fogg’s cell door. She’s about to kill Fogg when Quentin calls to her. He’s got the ice axes, Alice is by his side with the jars, and they are ready to do this. OMG cliffhanger! Aaaahhhhh!