Emerald City S1E06 “Beautiful Wickedness” (Recap, Spoilers)

“Beautiful Wickedness,” opens with a Earth flashback, in which Frank–aka The Wizard–arrives to work at Vorcotec: Vortex Research Laboratory. Frank, who is a long-haired, clean shaven, version of The Wizard, grabs his Walkman and a book about Orson Welles from the front passenger seat of his car, and goes inside. When he tries to strike up a conversation with Jane (the mad doctor that fixed Jack in “Science and Magic”), she is on the phone and shoos him away.

“I know how much you’ve invested in us,” Jane says to whomever is on the other side of the phone, “and it’s paying off. We can generate enough wind to create clean and efficient energy…”

Frank enters a dim operations room with computers under the yellow glare of incandescent lamps. He enters keystrokes that he’s recorded in a dog-eared notebook, but when the security camera shows Jane and two other scientists about to enter the room, he stands from the terminal and puts away his notes.

“Morning, Dr. Chapman,” says Frank.

“Will you call me Karen, for goodness sake?”

“You’ve busted your butt all these years to earn that title, and I’m going to continue to address you like that. Here you go,” he says, helping her into the K. Chapman lab coat that Dorothy found between worlds in “Mistress–New Mistress.”

The third scientist jokes that Frank never helps him with his lab coat, and Karen asks if Frank would like his own coat. Frank says “yeah,” with the air of someone who knows he’s being patronized.

“Well, you do so much around here. I don’t see why not,” says Karen.

They turn on their vortex device, and Jane asks, “Frank? Are you taking notes?”

“Always,” answers Frank.

Jane is very cautious in activating the machine, advising her team that she only wants it running at full power for a few seconds. “Okay, let’s have some fun. Roberto?” When Roberto, the third scientist, shuts off the safety, smoke appears in the tube almost immediately, and they open vents to manage it.

“It’s consistent with the last trial,” says Jane, “creating energy out of thin air…too much.”

Jane discovers that she is locked out from the system, and the vortex quickly escalates into a full blown funnel cloud spinning from Varcotec’s smoke stacks.

Despite the protestations of Jane and Karen, Roberto enters the vortex room to shut it down manually. The temperature is 120 degrees and climbing.

“Maybe I can help,” says Frank weakly, “Let me get on the computer. I’m sure I can help.”

A pipe bursts in the vortex room, a fragment strikes Roberto in the head, and he falls to the floor under a blasting jet of vapor. Jane and Karen run from the operations room, and when Jane tells him not to touch the terminals, Frank follows.

“Oh my god, override’s not working,” says Jane, as Karen kneels beside Roberto, who has blood on his forehead. The containment tube glass is splintering, and Frank puts his hand on it in a hard to read gesture: is this Frank feeling responsibility, embracing the possibility of death, or is he knowingly trying to break into another world with this out of control vortex?

Just a quick note on the significance of the vortex: in Baum’s original books, the gateway device is called a cyclone; in The Wizard of Oz, it’s called a tornado; here, in Emerald City, it’s a corporation called Varcotec and their Vortex Research Laboratory.

The cracks spread, and then we cut to The Wizard, in his robes and beard, recalling that day.

“Answer me,” says Dorothy. “How do you know my name?”

“I’ve known you since the day you were born. Here. In Oz. I would never hurt you.”

“You’ve been trying to kill me since I got here.”

“Yes, but how could I know it was you, that you were no threat?”

“And what makes you think I’m not?”

“Is that why you’re here, to kill me, to take me back home? Your mother wouldn’t approve…I loved your mother very much.”

“You loved her.”

“And she loved me.”

In a torture chamber, Eamonn asks Lucas, “For what purpose did you butcher my men? Where did the tunnel in Nimbo lead?”

“I told you, the memory of it is lost to me…I believe this is what I deserve.”

Eamonn replies, “I too did terrible things when I was a young man, a different man, but I wasn’t tortured for my sins. I was rewarded for them. My punishment is that I remember, as will you.”

Anna enters, and puts on Lucas’s head an odd ocular device that resembles a cross between the winged monkey video projector and a steampunk Viewmaster. Anna slides into place a succession of lenses like an optician, as if she was measuring the strength of his prescription, gasps, and stands back from Lucas.

Dorothy asks The Wizard, “What else can you tell me about my mother?”

The Wizard replies, “You can ask me anything you want. Just give me the gun, and I’ll answer all of your questions.” When Dorothy tells him no, he pleas for just one bullet as a gesture of trust. She reluctantly gives him the bullet, and he tells her that this is how he will earn her trust.

When Eamonn bursts in, The Wizard yells “Stay back! She’s no threat…she’s my guest.”

“I have a hole in my shoulder that speaks otherwise,” retorts Eamonn, “please reconsider.” He continues to tell The Wizard that she is close to the captured soldier.

When Dorothy replies that Lucas was the one who was hurt in Nimbo, by Eamonn’s men, Eamonn says that it is not true, and they will soon be able to prove it because Lucas’s memory is intact but protected by magic.

The Wizard allows Dorothy to see Lucas in his cell, where she kisses Lucas, and begs him to lie to The Wizard, but Lucas says, “No…I need to know the truth, and they have a way of getting it….they can break the magic that keeps me from knowing myself.”

West enters the cell, and jokes that ” no one told me it would be a threesome.”

Elizabeth complains that The Wizard should let them read Dorothy as well, as she is “the first true sign of The Beast Forever.”

The Wizard replies, “Dorothy is not a problem. The soldier with magic upon his head is a problem. Ev not building our weapons is a problem. If you want to be of service to me, then you’ll solve one of my real problems.”

When Elizabeth walks off, The Wizard says to Anna, “I was hoping that we’d have a moment alone. I want you to take over from Elizabeth as the head of the high council.”

“If that’s your wish,”starts Anna, but is interrupted by Eamonn, who tells The Wizard that Dorothy’s reunion with Lucas revealed nothing.

Eamonn asks what sway Dorothy has over The Wizard, and his answer is to walk away.

West tells Dorothy that she had such “grand plans for us,” commands Tip to make her tea, and adds “I’m about to exhaust myself.”

Dorothy says that she is protected by The Wizard, to which West’s rebuttal is “but he’s not. He’s protected by magic, and The Wizard hates magic.”

“Can you break it?” asks Lucas.

“I’ll obliterate it, but it won’t be pleasant.”

While West prepares for the ritual, Dorothy tells Lucas that she could stop it, and Lucas insists on having his memories restored. West insinuates that Dorothy wants to watch Lucas suffer.

“Let’s see what lowly witch has cast her spell on you,” says West, then sniffs the tendril of blue-white dust that floats out of Lucas. Lucas coughs, and West staggers, then says “that’s Glinda’s magic! What secrets is she hiding behind those pretty eyes of yours?”

When Tip carries West’s tea service on one side of a railed gallery hallway, and Jack bears Langwidere’s luggage on the other, the audience may rightly anticipate this certain meeting with suspense, as they have not met since episode three, the end of which showed Tip push Jack to his apparent death.

“Come along now, hurry up,” says Langwidere, but as Tip and Jack lock eyes, the former drops the tea service with a clatter, and Langwidere’s luggage falls from Jack’s hands.

“Jack? Jack, it’s me, it’s Tip. You’re alive!”

“No, no, no, don’t touch me!”, says Jack.

“I can’t believe it’s really you!”

“Why didn’t you help me?”, says Jack, finally finding his voice.

“I thought I’d killed you.”

“So you just got on with it and left me to die.”

“But you didn’t! I can fix everything now, please let me…”

Jack, however, has had quite enough of being fixed, and says “No, we can’t be fixed! I can’t be fixed.” He picks up Lady Ev’s bags.

“Jack, don’t go. I love you!”, says Tip.

“What does that mean?!” exclaims Jack.

“I don’t know! I don’t know what to say or how to say it right. All I know is, you’re my best friend.”

“I was your only friend!”

“Who’s this, Jack?”, interrupts Langwidere.

“It’s no one,” says Jack.

However, Lady Ev leans in close to Tip, as if she’s looking for flaws, and asks, “Are you a no one, girl? You don’t look like a no one.” Langwidere caresses Tip’s face and adds, “What is your name, little someone?”

“Tip.”

“And how do you know my Jack.”

“We grew up together. We were best friends.”

“Is this the one who killed you?,” Lady Ev asks Jack. “Did you tell her what you are now?” 

“I don’t want to,” Jack responds.

“You have to,” insists Lady Ev. “Children can’t be corrected if they don’t know what they’ve done wrong. Show her. Show her what she did to you.”

When Jack opens his doublet and coat to show Tip the clockwork heart, she gasps and steps back.

“The old Jack,” says Langwidere with a note of victory in her voice, “may have been your friend, but the new Jack is mine. Come on Jack.”

West tells Dorothy and Lucas that “Glinda’s spell is cardinal magic, magic that can’t be broken…I can’t break it but I can work around it, if I had a conduit: someone close to you, someone special, to slip past your defenses…think of it as a backdoor to the mind through the heart.”

Dorothy agrees to do it despite Lucas’s objections. West warns her that “If your attachment isn’t strong enough, you’ll both lose your minds.”

The Wizard presents Lady Ev with a bullet, and says, “Charcoal, saltpeter, and brimstone: it can pierce hardened steel. It’s called a bullet. With your infrastructure, you can produce thousands of these, and the guns that fire them. You take half to fortify your defenses, and i take half to defeat The Beast Forever.”

Langwidere answers, “Where were these 20 years ago, when The Beast rained down on my kingdom, when they could have saved my mother from being swallowed alive?”

The Wizard explains that then The Beast was made of water, and bullets were no match for him, but The Beast that is coming is flesh and blood, and “a bullet is the fastest way to stop a beating heart.”

When King Ev interrupts, asking frantically about his dog, Randall, Langwidere explains, somewhat impatiently, that Randall died when she was a child. King Ev despondently insists, and Langwidere has a change of heart and says that she will help him.

As she leaves, The Wizard asks if he has her commitment.

Langwidere snaps, “Bring me the gun and we’ll talk.”

West chants while Tip pours a steamy broth over West, Dorothy, and Lucas’s heads, and though the brew roils as it collects in a bowl below them, they are not scalded when it rains down on them.

West guides them through the magically protected memory, and the audience is rewarded by Lucas’s out of focus flashback of the events that led to his crucifixion in Nimbo. We see only Lucas’s hands, and what Lucas sees, in this recollection, as it is entirely from his point of view.

Lucas, holding the reins to a wagon, pulls over at the sight of armed Wizard’s Guards blocking the road.

“What’s in the wagon?” asks one of the soldiers, and repeats it when Lucas does not answer.

At a droning noise like locusts behind him, Lucas turns his head and sees Sylvie holding hands with around a dozen other witch children, their eyes blacked by magic and humming the insect-like tones.

When the Wizard’s Guard draws his sword, Lucas says, “I suggest you let me pass.”

“Show me now, or I’ll cut you down, I swear,” says the Wizard’s Guardsman, then claps his hand to his eye and yells.

While some clap hands to their eyes, others rush Lucas, who slays them with his sword, until one of them stabs Lucas exactly like the soldier related in the previous episode.

Lucas looks at his bloody hand and hears one call, “Don’t kill him. Let’s string him up.”

“Girls! Run!”, yells Lucas, then removes a pill from a secret compartment on his ring.

“What’s he got?” “Don’t let him swallow it!” After a gulping noise, Lucas falls, and West breaks the spell.

“It can’t be!” she shouts.

In The Wizard’s quarters, The Wizard pours a drink for Eamonn, who says that he could just take the gun that he needs from Dorothy. The Wizard explains that he could have killed Eamonn, but gave him a new purpose instead and made an ally. “Perhaps the same is true for Dorothy.”

West crosses a footbridge into The Wizard’s sitting room, shouting, “The Mother Witch! She lives, and is breeding witches for Glinda. She hid my own mother from me…I saw young witches. Only she can make them, and the spell that held the secret was Glinda’s!”

The Wizard interjects, “But Glinda saw them get slaughtered by The Beast. What use would they be?”

“Sober up, you fool!” shouts West. “She’s not going to use them against The Beast, she’s going to use them against you! What did you think Glinda would do? You imprisoned every witch who practiced magic and repressed the ones who didn’t. Now they’re going to take Emerald City from you. They’re going to take Oz from you.”

“Which side will you be on?” asks Eamonn.

“You’ll be the first to know,” says West.

“Enough,” commands The Wizard. ” I let her in. She put spies under my roof. Why, the high council–anna–they’ve all betrayed me.”

“I should return the high council in pieces, the little errand boy too,” snarls West.

The Wizard tells Eamonn to put all the soldiers on the hunt for the little girl.

In his cell, Lucas mourns the lives he took, but Dorothy assures him that he was only protecting the girls.

Elizabeth opens the door, and tells them both that “He was sworn to Glinda, as am I.” She unlocks his manacles, and tells him a wagon is waiting that will take them to Calcedon, Glinda’s castle.

At Lucas’s protests that he needs to find Sylvie, Elizabeth tells him The Wizard will lock the gates, and that there’s no time. Dorothy says she will find her, and that she’s not on anybody’s side.

“Then you’d better choose,” says Elizabeth, “War is coming to Oz.”

As Dorothy leaves the jail, Eamonn accosts her, and after a little banter, he tells her to follow him, and he will take her to Sylvie.

The Wizard glared down at his councilors, who are examining Emerald City’s problems at a stone table. Anna smiles up at him, but The Wizard flashbacks to his arrival in Oz.

Jane, Karen, and Frank trudge through the woods when spear-armed Munja’kins surround them. Jane says “We mean no harm or disrespect…I’m Dr. Jane Andrews. I’m the leader of this group.”

In the present day, Elizabeth and Anna avert their eyes from The Wizard.

At Eamonn’s house, Toto runs up to Dorothy and whines, and Eamonn hands the sleeping Sylvie to Dorothy. “Why are you helping me?”

“Not you,” says Eamonn.

“I’ll bring her safely to Glinda’s,” she assures him.

“If you can get past my guards,” he warns.

Dorothy escorts Sylvie to the wagon, where Elizabeth is having a few words with the far too many guards that have surrounded it. Dorothy tells Sylvie to stay in hiding, and tells Toto to keep her safe, then Dorothy leaves to get help.

King Ev is tottering around, speaking to the ghost of his dead dog, “When you come home, I’ll build you a big fire,” he promises, “and we can go hunting again like in the old days, just you and me, ha ha ha.”

Jack runs after King Ev, until he is stopped by Langwidere.

“Jack, I asked you to find my father, yet I don’t see my father. Were my instructions not clear?”

“He’s gone. He must have wandered. I can’t find him anywhere.”

Dorothy approaches The Wizard, who meditates on his past and future. “Frank,” she says, and when he does not respond, she says again, “Frank.”

He laughs. “I almost didn’t recognize my own name.”

“I need your help.”

“and I need yours. There’s still a lot you don’t know about me.”

“Are you my father?”

Frank flashbacks to a Munja’kin hut. Karen and Frank are wearing furs, and Frank is trying to comfort a tired baby.

“Let’s try this,” says Karen, carrying a bowl.

“Little Dorothy,” coos Frank.

Jane enters, asking if the baby is ok.

“So, was she a witch?” asks Frank.

“Most merciful and stern of the Eastern Wood? Yes! Real witch.”

“Can she help us?” asks Karen.

“She prefers to kill us. When we tore into this world, we caused a ripple effect. Something bad is coming to these people because of us, and the only way to stop it is for us to leave.” She laughs. “She’s gonna send us home.”

“How?”

“She controls the weather. She can summon her own tornado.”

“So we’re going home?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re going home!”

“I’m not leaving,” says Frank.

“We all are,” says Jane.

“No, you can’t decide things here,” says Frank. “Not for me. I decide.”

“We all have to leave. That’s the deal.”

“Well, I’m not leaving. I brought us here,” he says.

“It was. ..it was a mistake,” says Jane. “My computer malfunctioned.”

“No,” says Frank. “I locked you out, to destroy your machine.”

“Frank,” says Karen in a hushed voice.

“What? You treated me like I was nothing, you treated me like I was stupid. I’m not stupid. I can do things. I’m smart. You know. I found this new world here! Didn’t I? Me! I’m not leaving it. What? I did. I did this.”

“Roberto? What about him? You killed him, Frank!” shouts Karen.

The Wizard’s reverie over, he finally responds to Dorothy.

“His name was Roberto,” says The Wizard. “Your father. He was a smart mind, a kind man. He died in the accident that brought us here. I’m sorry, Dorothy. I tried to save him.”

“I don’t trust you. Look ar you. I mean the way you dress, the way you act, that wig, you’re just lying to everyone.”

“I could say the same about you,” says Frank. “”We do what we need to survive. Which is why I need to ask you, where’s the little witch?”

“I can’t tell you that,” says Dorothy. “But if you let her go back to the North, she’ll be safe, and so will you.”

“Come,” says The Wizard, striding away. “I have a proposition for you.”

King Ev is still strolling the palace grounds looking for Randall. “Where are you,” he mutters. “You’re somewhere, I know you are. I’m going to find you, and you won’t go running away again. Where are you boy, where are you.” He stumbles upon Sylvie and Toto’s hiding place, and Hearing Toto bark, and seeing the dog, he at first believes it to be Randall. When King Ev appears to grow angry, Sylvie starts shaking, and King Ev whimpers, “Randall.”

The Wizard shows Dorothy into a room that looks similar to the vortex chamber at Vorcotec. There’s a large cylinder in it, just like the one on Earth that shattered and carried Frank, Jane, and Karen to Oz.

“What is this?”

“All the power in Emerald City is generated from underneath us. I was brought to Oz in a vortex chamber. This one here can send you home. I just have one thing to ask you first.”

“I’ll do anything.

“You were born in Oz. Oz brought you back. Have you even asked yourself why? Destiny. Your destiny. Just like mine, a long time ago. You were brought back to Oz to save us all.”

“I’m no savior.”

“Then what are you? Are you just a girl from Kansas, just a girl that misses her mother? Or are you more?” Dorothy nods. “More than just the things that you’ve lost.”

“What do you want me to do”

“Stop Glinda. Stop this war,” he tells her.

She tells him to use his giants, and he says their power is locked in The Prison of the Abject.

“How can I kill a witch?” she asks.

“With a gun. You’ve already proven that.”

“I’m not going to kill someone just so I can go home.”

“Are you sure?”

At the sound of screams outside, The Wizard goes to investigate, and Dorothy folllows after. King Ev has been turned into a statue, and the sight has gathered a crowd of councillors.

The scene cuts to the next morning, where Lady Ev and Jack, and a contingent of Ev’s guards, stare at King Ev. While you can’t see through the metal mask, Langwidere’s grief is betrayed as her body shakes with emotion.

Dorothy, walking through Emerald City, finds Lucas, who has already moved Sylvie to the back of a wagon. As Lucas readies the wagon for departure, Elizabeth approaches and tells Dorothy that she’s not going with them. Lucas balks at this, saying that if Dorothy stays, so does he, and he doesn’t care what Glinda thinks. Reluctantly, Elizabeth gives Lucas directions to Calcedon, telling him first the location of an abandoned farmhouse at the halfway point where they can spend the night.

After the wagon leaves, Anna happens upon Elizabeth. “Is that her? The witch?” asks Anna.

“The less you know, the better.”

“What did Glinda do.”

“She chose to fight back,” says Elizabeth.

“Was I never meant to help The Wizard?”

“You were here to learn his secrets.”

“And once they were known?”, asks Anna.

“Then we wouldn’t need a Wizard, anymore.”

Anna leaves, and Elizabeth follows.

On a balcony above, The Wizard tells Eamonn, “You see! They’re all working against me.”

“They cleared the guards. The wagon will pass without being stopped, and no one will follow them. Clever plan.”

“It was Dorothy’s,” admits The Wizard. “When she gets to Glinda, she’ll stop this war before it even starts.”

“You place too much trust in her.”

“Yet she trusts me even more,” brags The Wizard, revealing the pistol, which Dorothy has given to him.

“But she gave you the only weapon that could have killed The Witch?”

“Not the only one,” says The Wizard. “Glinda’s always been cold as stone. Now she’ll be dead like one.” The scene quickly cuts to the wagon, where Dorothy holds Sylvie tight, and the implication is that Dorothy will use the young witch and her gift for petrification as the murder weapon.

In a flashback, Frank impresses some Munja’kin children by building a battery out of pennies. “This is electricity. It’s going to change your lives. Not magic, it’s science.”

Nahara (Ojo’s wife, mentioned in “The Beast Forever”) approaches, and sings a spell that animates stones into a miniature automaton. “Magic,” she says smugly.

“Yes,” says Frank, not looking happy about it.  

Lady Ev and Jack stand in front of a four horse carriage, and across from her in the courtyard the councilors are gathered, as if to be an audience, and descending steps to greet them are The Wizard and his soldiers.

“Lady Ev,” begins The Wizard, “whatever you wish…”

“I wish to leave this place forever! Now, I will return with all the sodiers of Ev, and we will turn the streets of Emerald City red with blood.”

“Your call for vengeance is just,” says The Wizard. “But we are not your enemy. For it was Glinda who claimed your father. and it is Glinda who should feel your wrath, with this.” He pulls out the pistol. “Strong enough to kill a witch. Strong enough to kill The Beast Forever. A demonstration.” The Wizard turns, and shoots Anna in the heart.

“Make these guns,” he says. “We take them to war. A war on magic, for the very soul of Oz.”

Roll credits.