The Magicians: The Fillorian Candidate Recap

Synopsis of 3×12: Fillory’s first democratic elections are off to a start in ‘The Fillorian Candidate,’ with Tick’s reasonably sensible policy decisions vs. Eliot’s cunning wiles and charisma. Julia crashes Reynard’s bachelor pad with Margo and Penny 23, looking for answers about the castle at the end of the world.

So here’s the skinny:

• Eliot and Margo campaign against Tick for their crowns through a democratic election. One funny montage later, Margo has won the election and become the sole High King of Fillory. The Fairy Queen makes a deal with her to gain a new home in Fillory in exchange for the seventh key. She even replaces Margo’s empty eye socket with an unassuming fairy eye, for old times sake.
• Julia starts performing miracles on par with those reiterated in mythical tales of powerful gods. Kady, Julia, and Penny 23 swing by Reynard’s pitiful studio home (by the looks of it). He unwillingly hints at the possible monsters hidden in the castle at the end of the world. He tries to attack Julia with a god-killing gun, but Julia takes it off his hands easy and leaves him frozen in place in his home.
• We learn that the “unity” key has replaced the original Penny with Penny 23. I guess Penny 23 is going to be more permanent than I previously believed.
• With the quest at its end, Quentin decides to push ahead and delivers a heartfelt apology to his father for whatever condition his magic-induced cancer may take once magic returns.

Points for starting out the episode with a montage recap as told by Josh to Penny 23, the Penny we met in the last episode. It gets very meta and it’s definitely my favorite recap style of all three seasons.

I’m not your Penny.

Kady mistakes Penny 23 for her Penny until he pushes her away like a stranger and drops the news. 

Quentin, Julia, and Alice discuss the next steps on the quest after finding out the keys might free an apocalyptic monster.

Julia stumbles through an awkward bit of possibly sexual tension when she asks Penny to astrally project to spy on Alice as she goes to the library for help.

The librarians give Alice a siphon, to steal Julia’s power by force, which could kill her. Alice doesn’t say yes but, as Penny 23 points out later, she doesn’t say no.

‘Til Death do us part.

Fen returns to Fillory and Eliot. In decreasingly romantic fashion, she explains that they’re stuck together, for better or worse.

Margo, Eliot, and Fen visit their “ex-daughter,” Fray, to broker a peace treaty between themselves and the Fairy Queen. Eliot provides Fray his blessing to marry her grizzly boyfriend. She finally calls him “dad,” and means it.

Give it to us straight, Penny.

Penny tells the others what he learned from shadowing Alice. Penny 23 intrudes on Kady attempting to speak with her Penny by way of the unity key. She snaps at him at first, but then they share a purely platonic drink. He suggests that they find Reynard to learn the nature of what lies in the castle at the end of the world.

A peace treaty.

The Fairy Queen meets Eliot and the others at Fray’s animal bar. She talks big at first, but they convince her to relinquish her key if they can regain their crowns.

So, I can just hear prayers now.

As expected, Julia’s becoming even more powerful. At this point, she hears prayers. 

That’s the way you run a campaign.

Margo devises an invaluable plan: to force Tick into enacting a democratic election by making the Fillorians believe that he had already declared one. It’s pretty genius and involves Kinko’s, hundreds of posters, and simpleminded commoners.

Julia randomly appears at the very moment Josh decides to return to Earth and find her, as if summoned by his need for her. They take a trip to the site of one of Julia’s worst blunders of the series, you know, during those dark shade-deprived times when she destroyed a whole forest of living trees. I had actually forgotten how careless her actions had become without her shade. Julia sprouts the whole forest of living trees up from the dirt in seconds.

The library needs to calm that down.

Quentin confronts Alice about her plan to supply the library with the ability to control magic once it comes back. He convinces her to surrender the siphon to him. She reminds him that when magic returns, his father’s cancer will return as well. 

Tick might be a delusional nut, but he’s apparently got some solid political policies.

Eliot and Tick go all out for their respective campaigns. Eliot makes a whole bunch of promises that he definitely won’t be able to keep, but he’s got the whole democratic thing figured out. You don’t have to keep the promises, just make them. Tick, on the other hand, is busting out political terms and phrases I won’t pretend to have knowledge of.

You got the juice now.

Kady comes to Julia, begging her to help find Reynard. Julia finds Reynard with her mind and instantly blinks them to his location. They pop up in front of a gated mansion, immediately disappointed in how well Reynard has been living since his disgusting deeds of the past. That’s when a pizza delivery car pulls up and Reynard steps out, carrying a pizza delivery bag. Ahhhh, sweet justice… although he still deserves far worse.

They go back to his hole in the wall, a studio that still looks too similar to my apartment for me to not to question my own state of “adulting.”

Julia taunts him with her power and newfound confidence, but still in a prideful manner.

He gives in and tells them the nature of the castle at the end of the world. Basically, it’s a trash bin of all the mistakes the Gods made before they constructed lower level gods and humans. Reynard pulls a gun on Julia in a poor diversion, but Julia freezes him with a flick of her fingers and takes the god-killing weapon. Against Penny 23’s urging, they spare his life and leave with the only weapon that has a chance of protecting them from the abominations that may come.

Bestiality for the win.

Never thought I’d say that, but this moment calls for it. Eliot lost the election. But, you know who else lost the election? Tick. Margo, the destroyer, managed to win the election as a write-in because earlier she spoke with a big figure in the animal community. Allow me to briefly explain Fillory’s demographics and how that ties into their political structure. Over a million talking animals = human votes mean nothing.

But I gotta give it to my boy Eliot, he took it in stride and swore his loyalty with pride.

King Margo invites Tick to her political cabinet because of his understanding of boring, political matters.

The Fairy Queen gives Margo the whole, “I was tough on you because I knew you were capable of more” speech. She also promises to surrender the key when all of the fairies have been moved to their new neutral home in Fillory. She even gives Margo a new eye, a fairy one capable of seeing way more than a human eye can.

Waste not, want not.

The unity key finally starts transmitting and Kady gets through to Penny. Sadly, the key replaced Kady’s Penny with Penny 23. I guess this is goodbye to our Penny, but he made the choice when he chose to stay in the underworld.

Let’s save magic! …After I get permission from my dad.

Quentin goes to see his dad, not to ask permission, but to tell his father that he’s bringing magic back even though it could kill his father. 

From a shadeless shell of a person to a pure and gracious mother Teresa of godly power, Julia has had possibly the most transformation during this series. She has a destiny far more significant than the others and we’re inching closer to it with her. Who knows? With the next episode being the season finale, maybe we’ll be lucky enough to find out then. Are you just as giddy with anticipation as we are? Leave a comment below and let us know, we’d love to hear it and respond.