Synopsis of 3×02: The quest for the keys begins in ‘Heroes and Morons,’ taking Eliot and his family to an obscure island outside of Fillory’s borders. On Earth, the race is on to find one of Mayakovsky’s magic batteries and the mystery woman who’s been flaunting it around town.
So here’s the skinny:
- The quest has begun and the first key is on an island on the outer boundaries of Fillory’s borders.
- The Fairy Queen reunites Eliot and Fen with their daughter, Fray, but the Fairy Realm has aged her up to her teen years. Fen and Fray join Eliot on his voyage to After Island. On the island, Eliot gets the first key from the village’s monk, who’s been using it to fool the villagers into blindly obeying him.
- All of the other members of the quest search for one of Mayakovsky’s magic batteries. They follow tips about a woman using the battery around New York City to perform kind or foolishly perverse acts of magic. They finally find the woman, Professor Lipson, but the battery is destroyed during her failed suicide attempt.
- Kady relieves Emily Greenstreet of her secret magical battery, by force, and takes it with her to heal Penny.
- The Lamia is getting closer to catching Alice and possesses Quentin in the final moments of the episode.
Chapter 1.
The Tale of the Seven Keys reveals the details of the quest. Only the first few pages possess any words and they explain that acquiring the seven keys will allow entry into the Castle at the End of the World. The first key will be found on an island outside of Fillory’s kingdom on outlying islands.
Magic might be dead, but Google isn’t.
Julia, Quentin, and Josh search for a lead on Mayakovsky’s location. Since he had magic batteries in the past and he disappeared after magic was shut off, they assume that he has more magic batteries.
Cat shopping.
Alice goes shopping for cats and buys a five-month-old kitten. Meanwhile, an innocent construction worker is possessed by a mysterious magical creature.
It goes down in hedge bars.
Julia gets Kady’s help finding the hedge bar Mayakovsky was last seen in. She gets them in and they question the bartender about the “bear in the room.” During his visit to the bar, he transformed into a bear. Mayakovsky came in with a woman, the woman in question was the love-stricken Emily Greenstreet.
Quentin visits her alone. She explains how such a bizarre situation came to be, including her impromptu marriage to the professor. According to her, a woman he owed something to most likely turned him into a bear while she was in the bathroom.
She has such a lovely personality.
Eliot meets the Muntjac for the first time, I say “meets” because the boat’s construction from sentient trees grants it life and a personality.
Not the family reunion they were looking for.
Fen requests to come on the voyage with Eliot since she found the boat. By the way, she’s still experiencing delusions over the baby the fairies stole from her. At that moment, the Fairy Queen appears and insists that Fen accompanies Eliot. She also introduces them to Fray, short for “frail human.” According to the Fairy Queen, Fray is the daughter the fairies stole from the royal couple. Only she’s aged exponentially faster in the fairy realm and is now a teenager.
Upon hearing the shocking revelation, Fen drops to her knees with giddy laughter and latches onto her daughter’s waist. Fray doesn’t hold the same warm feelings and remains loyal only to the Fairy Queen.
We’re gonna check out the Central Park orgy sessions.
Kady, Julia, Quentin, and Josh unearth a lead on the whereabouts of their mystery magic woman. Kady and Josh follow the tip about a magical dinosaur sighting at St. Brennan’s. Julia and Quentin follow the other tip about makeout sessions in Central Park.
“Andro” the dinosaur.
At St. Brennan’s Kady and Josh get some more info about the conjured dinosaur. As expected, a mysterious woman conjured it.
The Fairy Queen’s little spy.
Eliot and Fen discuss Fray as Fen watches her sleep. They’re in two different camps. Fen wants to shower her with love, but Eliot wants to err on the side of caution and keep her at arm’s length. I must admit, Fray does have Eliot’s eyes and his chin too.
Quentin’s past considerations of suicide were troublingly thorough.
Initially, Julia and Quentin have little luck at the Central Park orgy session, but they cross paths with Alice. The awkward silence between them is broken only by the moans and sounds of public indecency in the air.
Oddly enough, Alice brought her feline friend along with her in a cat carrier. This means something, trust me. Julia discovers that the woman who cast all of this magic asked for the nearest building to jump off of when she left. Quentin knows exactly where to go because he researched such things intensively back when he considered it as a possibility.
No need to bow, I have an extremely healthy self-image.
Eliot declares the island they’ve landed on, “After Island,” a province of Fillory. On the island, Father Poe is the closest thing to a leader. According to a local, a monster attacks every few days and Father Poe protects them.
Eliot demands the key, which Father Poe happens to wear around his neck, and the rumored monster immediately emerges to attack.
Eliot hides with the others, all except one of the locals, who was unable to hide in time.
Teaching is my life, without it I might as well jump off a building.
Quentin and Julia find the mysterious magic woman moments from her attempted suicide. Quentin comes to her aid and the woman reveals herself to be Professor Lipson.
She spills the beans about her feelings for Mayakovsky and her role in creating the batteries. Lipson also debunks the theory about her turning him into a bear. She has no idea who did. Quentin saves her before she can make the leap, but the magical battery plummets to the cement and bursts into pieces.
So that’s what the cat was for!
The group reconvenes and discusses next steps after failing to procure a magical battery. Quentin points out that Lipson was oblivious to the source of Mayakovsky’s transformation. This leads them to reason that Emily must have used a battery to perform the magic herself and lied about it.
Also, we finally observe the cat’s purpose. The cat was an early warning system for the Lamia pursuing Alice. The cat hisses and throws a fit before bursting into a mess of blood, shooting out of the cat carrier and painting Alice’s shoes red.
You’re not even slick, dude.
Fray has more information about the monster creature on After Island than anyone else does.
When the creature has gone and everyone leaves their hiding places, they come across a dead body.
The locals complete a brief funeral ceremony for the deceased villager, but Fray notices something questionable. The villager was supposedly killed by the shadow bat that had been terrorizing the village, but his wounds don’t match those that a shadow bat would make. Fen’s expertise as the daughter of a blade maker confirms that the villager was killed by a blade.
When the villagers return from their ceremony, Eliot calls Father Poe’s bluff and forces him to show everyone how he has really been using the key. The shadow bat appears and uses the key to make it disappear.
It becomes clear that Father Poe had been using illusion magic to conjure a phony monster, with the power of the key. Eliot and the others take the key, but not before leaving Father Poe to the hands of the other villagers.
On the sail back, Eliot and Fen exercise their parental authority by sending Fray “to her room.” They could get used to this.
Kady’s the only one that hits that hard.
Julia, Quentin, and Josh visit Emily to collect the battery. Unfortunately for Emily, Kady already beat them to it and left her with an aching consolation prize.
They head after Kady. Penny comes to Kady, almost on his deathbed and she shows him the battery that she’ll use to heal him.
Nothing good ever happens in alleyways.
The construction worker, from earlier, attacks Quentin while he’s alone and the creature possessing him takes over Quentin instead. At this point, it’s pretty obvious that the creature switching skin suits like a movie shopping montage is the Lamia.
I think this was a great start to the quest. What did you think? Let us know in the comments below. We’d love to hear it and respond.
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