The Magicians episode review — 4.11 — The 4–1–1

Original air date: April 3, 2019
Director: Meera Menon
Writers: Henry Alonso Myers and Christina Strain

Rating: 8/10

I kind of loved this episode. There’s some real creativity in the fantasy that’s being portrayed, particularly with the Binder emerging from the book that was gifted to Julia.

And this episode revisits the Quentin-Alice relationship in a very satisfying way. The two of them have to go to Antarctica to find out how to do an Incorporate Bond spell from Mayakovsky, the only magician who can do it. But when they find that he’s senile, they realize that they’ll have to time travel to get the information from him.

Quentin’s consciousness in the present and past are reversed, with the now-past Quentin having to refuse sex with the past Alice, and the now-present Quentin trying to have sex with present Alice, who isn’t at all into it.

This type of storytelling allows both characters to explore the pain of their breakup in a really interesting way, and in a way that’s far more satisfying than this relationship has ever been in the show. Now in the past, Quentin learns from Mayakovsky — who’s able to figure out what’s going on pretty quickly — that his discipline is repair of small objects, which is an interesting wrinkle. Quentin has definitely been the main character of the show, but you can say he also has a bit of Main Character Syndrome. He believes he’s destined for great things, and he believes his interest in the Fillory books is kind of what’s started this whole journey for he and his friends, but now that he realizes he’s just some guy, that’s pretty interesting.

Julia learns from the Binder that she has to make a choice between being human and being a god, and Penny does his best to convince her that it’s better to be human.

Of course, he does this partially in response to speaking with the ghost of Hyman, that racist old pervert, who confesses that he thinks they are his favorite characters, and he would like to see the two of them get together again.

It kind of works, at least until the Monster shows up and says that he needs a more powerful body for his sister, and takes Julia.

Elsewhere, Kady breaks into the poison room with that one librarian, and discovers that one of the librarians is trying to become a god, and apparently succeeds, according to this book.

And back in Fillory, Josh and Fen are dealing with their kingdom’s problems and discover a secret passageway after interrogating a water niffin.

This is somewhat rare for the series, but basically every one of these plots works. There’s definitely a lot going on in this episode, but I was invested in all of it. I think the Quentin and Alice stuff was probably my favorite, but everything with the Binder was so creative that it was quite interesting as well.