The Magicians: Plan B Recap

Synopsis: Everyone needs loads of gold, so it’s time for a good old-fashioned bank heist, complete with disco balls and battle magicians.

So Here’s the Skinny:

• Alice’s niffin is tormenting Quentin as she’s trapped in his back tattoo, while he’s the only one who can see her. To save Penny when the bank heist goes wrong, Quentin agrees to let Niffin Alice traipse around in his skin for thirty minutes a day. Oh, the trouble she will cause.
• Kady and Julian find safe haven at Brakebills, where Kady has an intimate reunion with Penny.
• The gang performs a bank heist, but a sigil traps Penny in the vault with limited air. Eliot’s golem is gravely wounded when everyone faces a battle magician security guard after freeing Penny.
• An army of goblins is coming for Julia’s head and won’t stop until she’s dead or her baby is.

The episode begins with Quentin walking through the library of Brakebills and ignoring niffin Alice, who’s much more lively and mean-spirited than her counterpart.We’re just going to refer to Alice’s niffin as Niffin Alice because otherwise this will become far too confusing for everyone involved. On the other hand, it’s a pretty funny treat to watch Olivia Taylor Dudley’s bizarre performance, since Alice was relatively calm and emotionally stable.

Quentin looks for a way to complete the original Alice’s niffin reversal spell, but he’s out of luck. Even worse, her niffin incessantly rattles off saucy jabs at him until she voices the conclusion that his plot will fail. She argues that she doesn’t want to hurt anyone (I doubt, as I’m sure you would if you knew the true nature of a niffin) and she only wants freedom. Quentin remains iron-willed and, to my disbelief, she disappears to let him search for a fix in peace.

Kady and Julia visit a tiny Asian restaurant. The two magicians that they meet in the back do an amusing ritual of sorts. One of them explains that she will exorcise the baby instead of aborting it and offers her services for a mere 1,000,000 dollars… in gold. She makes it sound like an easy task and, although the pair are slightly resistant at first, they give in with no other choice. Let’s rob a bank.

In Eliot and Margo’s world, the Lorian troops are only days away from Filllory. The unsteadiness of the wellspring hinders any preparation attempts and the hold-ups have Margo about ready to introduce the idea of the guillotine to her kingdom any second.

The advisor enlightens Fillory’s royalty on their current financial status: broke. Considering the costs of going to war and repairing the wellspring, they’re fresh out of funds.

On Earth, Kady and Julia case a joint in anticipation of their bank heist. Regular banks have magical wards on them, or at least “ones connected to the federal reserve do.” Guess it won’t be so easy after all. Julia’s haxenpaxen trades its life for hers when an invisible creature attacks the two girls and makes a clean getaway as promptly as it appeared. Kady suggests they hide somewhere safe, but Julia will not like where they end up. Next, we see them back at Brakebills.

They sit in Dean Fogg’s office accompanied by Fogg and Professor Lipson as the latter provides Julia with a reading of her current situation. With disgust and horror, she makes an ill-fated stab at the twilight movies, undeniably just and equally amusing. Don’t worry, nothing serious, just a blatant comment that you’re better off not acknowledging the film series’ existence.

Lipson tells Julia that the baby is linked not just to her uterus, but also to her soul, which will prove much more complicated to remedy. The professor also suggests that the pair find the same kind of magician they consulted earlier (the one who requested a whopping one million bucks! Since when did exorcism become so expensive?).

The two professors step out of the room to speak.

Lipson: Whoo, that girl is f**ked.

Damn Lipson, back at it again with the obscene facts. Still, the professor suggests that the Dean give the two girls safe haven at the school. He accepts.

Quentin catches Kady and Julia casually strolling into the physical house. He speaks to Julia about the horror of her curse. Of course with Niffin Alice is still in his head, it makes it hard for him to carry a conversation. It’s easy to forget that Alice’s death was Julia’s fault, even though she had her reasons, and that Niffin Alice’s frustration with Julia is well deserved. Quentin reaffirms his promise to help Julia with Reynard. Where there’s a will, there’s a group of juvenile magicians ready to commit grand burglary. Niffin Alice, our twisted Jiminy Cricket, perks up at the request and insists on it.

Penny finds himself in Brakebills’ library searching for a book to aid Mayakovsky. To his dismay, the book he’s searching for was destroyed by other books because of their anti-semitic nature. A Jewish author wrote the book in question. What do ya know? Books can act on racist, evil presumptions too. You learn something new every day. But justice has been served. Faculty imprisoned the books with other restricted texts in the restricted section. Along came Kady. Her appearance leaves Penny speechless before they charge each other for intense lip-locks.

Fen comes upon Eliot’s unconscious body in his bedroom, unaware that Eliot’s mind is in his golem in the physical house at Brakebills. Quentin converses with Margo and Eliot. They reveal that Fillory is broke and gearing up for war, one catastrophe short of a perfect storm. Did you know that Fillory once had beetles that pooped gold? Must have been pretty painful, but they pooped it nonetheless. Sadly, they’re now extinct. At least, Margo says so.

Exasperated and sitting on the library floor, Penny asks Kady what she’s up to. She lets the heist out of the bag. Penny flips his lid on Kady for offering help to Julia, but she defends Julia’s misgivings with the true fact that she was raped by a fox god, which reasonably exonerates her actions. That’s that. Penny’s already on cloud nine and his demeanor is already more upbeat. He’s in on the scheme.

Looks like everyone just happens to need gold for their own personal reasons. So, hi ho hi ho, it’s off to heist they go.

Next, we see almost the whole gang back together again like old times, before it all went down. They toast to their plan with martinis in hand, courtesy of Eliot. Margo delivers her best attempt at breaking the tension between her and Julia. It leaves much to be desired, but it’s honest and relatively forgiving. Sigh, they grow up so fast.

Margo admits to robbing a bank during her senior year of high school, so she’ll take the lead in this field trip. She explains that banks are all owned by magicians. The inner workings of banks and their use of magic security is shockingly intricate, yet to be expected. According to Margo once again, only lames trip all the standard alarms, but the magic wards catch even magicians.

The invisible attacker from earlier returns with friends as everyone heads off to the pull the caper. Kady kills them and returns their wooden spoon, dropped upon death, to the magicians she and Julia consulted with earlier. Apparently, one of them has raised an army of goblins that will not stop until Julia is dead, so sadly she’s gonna miss out on this bank heist.

Margo divvies out the bank managers that everyone will take fingers from. Allow me to explain. Some tricky magic lets them duplicate someone’s fingers by putting it in an orifice of choice. I say orifice because even though the others were able to use their mouths, Quentin’s luck was on the poor side. Let’s just say he’ll be carrying his own, personal seat pillow with him at all times.

Julia watches the bank heist from the safety of Brakebills. Margo on the other hand is far too excited and knowledgable. To the magicians’ fortunes, the security guards leave to hook up in the back. The magicians send an army of bees into the bank to clear it out and enter, dressed to the nines in beekeeper suits.

Quentin and Kady shut down the alarms. They levitate Penny a la Mission Impossible as he teleports into the bank’s vault. Right as Penny puts the last gold bar into the bag, the tip of his feet touch the sigil on the floor and it traps him in the vault with limited air.

Everyone goes back in. The two security guards from earlier return to their posts. Eliot brings out his “perfect weapon,” a disco ball bomb and the guards start dancing uncontrollably to the musical stylings of 2ne1, a Korean pop group as prevalent as Destiny’s Child. They reach the vault, but no one has the power to pick the lock. Niffin Alice agrees to help break Penny out if Quentin allows her half a minute every day to possess him and take a breather. Alice’s math works and Quentin opens the vault, in front of a suspicious Penny.

Their time runs out and the alarm regains power, which Quentin sets off when he tries to leave. The battle magician waiting in the depths of the bank rises from her desk in her work-appropriate red pants and blazer. Everyone tries to rush out, but she’s already waiting for them.

Quentin panics and locks them all back in the vault. The battle magician opens the vault, but the gang’s  “reline” works and Julia jumps everyone back 15 seconds. They try to outsmart the magician, but she beats them every time. On their last attempt, they manage to escape, but Eliot’s golem is gravely wounded and they’re forced to leave him behind.

Back in Fillory, Eliot does not wake up, but his consequent seizure causes Fen to call the guards for help. Apart from the others, Julia and Margo face an attack from more goblins. The others return and Kady puts the battle magician’s awesome whip of pure electricity to use to save Julia again.

Julia awakens to Kady watching her. Kady tells her that the exorcism procedure was completed, but… there was a complication. Roll credits.

What do you think? Did this episode suit your likings? Are you a fan of 2ne1 and appreciated the use of their song? Leave us a comment and let us know. We’d love to hear anything you have to say.