Emerald City S1E03 “Mistress – New Mistress” (Recap, Spoilers)

Emerald City episode three, “Mistress – New Mistress,” begins as Dorothy, using Toto as a pillow, wakes up to the sound of a gunshot. “Lucas,” she calls out, and as they head for the beach, the dog kicks up dust and sand. Lucas stands bare-chested in front of the ebbing and rolling surf; he is the picture of health, despite being crucified with barbed wire, shot, and poisoned in episodes one and two.

“You shouldn’t have that,” says Dorothy, to which Lucas rebuts, “I don’t think anyone should…when you kill someone with a sword, at least you got to work at it.”

Dorothy’s answer, “some of us,” indicates she harbors misgivings about the bloodthirsty way Lucas saved her life in “Prison of the Abject.”

“That woman was going to kill you, so I acted on instinct,” Lucas answers. “And that’s what scares me,” Dorothy retorts. Lucas continues, “…when all is laid bare, I’m just one man with a sword; I’m sure there are thousands like me, and no one of us more dangerous than the next, but none of us are as terrifying as you with this.” Then he returns the handgun to Dorothy.

They continue their journey, and pass a caravan. One carriage has a lion crashing against its cage, and another has a sign that reads “Circus of Oz.” Their journey is hastened as they ride with the performers, not speaking to each other.

“What is that?” asks Dorothy, indicating a castle with a funnel cloud spinning above it, like an ice cream cone upside down.

“That’s the witch of the East’s keep, the mistress of the eastern wood, most merciful and stern,” says one of the circus performers, but he is corrected by an elderly woman garbed like a gypsy that finishes for him, “she is dead. She controlled the weather, and now it mourns for her.”

Lucas asks, “how’d she die,” though he knows full well, having witnessed her death at the end of “The Beast Forever.” When the old lady says, “murdered!”, Dorothy’s inward look may be a realization that she’s just as bad as Lucas is, as each of them killed a witch in the final arcs of the previous two episodes. (Well, Mombi may still live.)

In the wooded setting of Jack and Tip’s camp, Tip looks mournfully at his empty medicine bottle. Jack asks Tip what they should do, to which Tip responds, “what, you mean about waking up a girl? I don’t know if there’s something I can do. If there is, please, tell me.” Jack suggests that they could turn around and go home–the boys do not know about Mombi’s fate–and Tip shouts “No!”

Jack’s conclusion is that they should go to Ev, where they’ll find Tip’s medicine. “We’ll fix it. We’ll turn you back to you.”

The carriage has stopped, and Dorothy and Lucas see that Aemon and the Wizard’s Guard have blocked the road. Everyone exits the carriage except Dorothy and Lucas, who grabs his sword hilt. At Dorothy’s disapproving glance and her request that he not butcher anyone, Lucas responds that they might be looking for him. He pleads with her to go with him, and she refuses, saying that “the Wizard’s guard can take me to Emerald City.” They say good-bye, and Lucas leaves.

However, when one of the performers rats them out, and Aemon draws his sword and heads toward Dorothy’s carriage, Lucas returns to pull an unwilling Dorothy away from the caravan.

When Aemon passes the roaring lion, he scowls back, and brandishes his sword at the beast.  The Wizard’s Guard run into the carriage with drawn swords, and Aemon yells “find the girl! She must die! Now!.” Dorothy is in earshot of this, and knows that Lucas has saved her life.

Meanwhile, in Emerald City, Anna explains to The Wizard how three women climbed 200 feet, without ropes, to the knee of one of the stone giants. “Your people are assuming they flew,” she says. “Are they witches?” asks The Wizard, to which Anna answers “no, they’re possessed by magic,” and that it’s a form of ritual suicide. In front of the gathered citizens, soldiers, and councillors, the women levitate themselves off of the knee and fall, but before they hit the ground, magic arrests their fall with a crunching snap, as if they were each hung by an invisible noose.

Dorothy and Lucas, having lost their caravan seats, are walking and fighting. Dorothy wonders why The Wizard wants her dead, and Lucas speculates that she’s more dangerous than he is. Dorothy sarcastically retorts that “I really hope that when we figure out who you are, you’re one of those guys who say don’t worry about it, everything’s going to be ok all the time,” and Lucas sasses back “don’t worry about it, everything’s going to be ok…once we figure out where we’re going.”

When they see vast storm clouds funneling from a castle, Dorothy says, “I already have.”

“The witch of the east’s castle? Are you mad?” says Lucas, to which Dorothy responds that since The Wizard wants her dead, they can’t go to Emerald City, and since she arrived in a tornado, maybe she can return in one.

In Emerald City, The Wizard and the Councillors discuss the omens that weigh on everyone’s mind: The Beast Forever, the tear in the sky, and the death of Mistress East. Elizabeth says that they must “determine when it will arrive and what form it will take before it lays waste to all of us,” to which The Wizard retorts “what about these portents who committed magical suicide in front of me and half the city? Who are they?” Elizabeth respons enigmatically, that they are “always separating wheat from chaff,” which provkes an angry outburst from The Wizard that “these women are not chaff!” Elizabeth diplomatically changes the subject by suggesting that, based on some field patterns, The Beast Forever will take the form of fire when the two moons become one, only eight days from then.

At this point, Anna asks to borrow The Wizard’s ear for a few minutes, and the two retreat to the laboratory where the three dead women are on tables, and under sheets. In this relatively discreet location, Anna denies Elizabeth’s analysis of the field patterns. She says, “Elizabeth is wrong. The death of mistress east leaves the weather in chaos. The field is heavy with dewfrost. It’s going to snow tonight; that’s all it means.”

The Wizard laughs at her effrontery. “You’re here for a few days–you’re contradicting my most talented council woman.” But The Wizard may have met his egotistical match, as Anna’s answer to this is “second most talented, and there’s no need for an autopsy to determine where these women came from.” And Anna shows The Wizard markings on the women that indicate they worked in West’s brothel.

West is drinking tea when she receives her summons from The Wizard’s council.

In Dorothy and Lucas’s final approach to the castle, we see tha the colossal wind-spout spins from the central tower. Dorothy says:

When I was 12, my mom sat me down. She told me she wasn’t my mom, and my dad wasn’t my dad. My real mom’s name was Karen Chapman. My whole life, I imagined what it would be like, and the moment I did finally meet her, I was taken here.

To this, Lucas responds that Dorothy can’t control a tornado, because it’s not a dog, and she’s not the witch of the East. “What if it kills you?” he asks.

“Lucas, I’d rather die trying than never get a chance to see her again,” she answers.

At the door, a man, clad in gold-embroidered red fabric robes and turban, holds a drawn scimitar. This guard assumes they have come to loot and steal, and that their “lives I must take in my mistress stead, faith and fealty to the end.” When Dorothy raises her hands, and says “no, please,” East’s gauntlets stand revealed.

“You wear the elements…my mistress’ gauntlets,” says the guard, and lowers his blade. “Are you my new mistress?” he asks, and Dorothy, who possibly learned how to answer questions like this from watching the 1984 Ghostbusters film, says “yes I am. I am your new mistress,” and East’s faithful servant kneels.

Jack and Tip arrive at Ev, a steampunk wonderland with elevated monorails, news agents, other street vendors (“F. Schemetter Grinder: Will Sharpen All Tools”), a pennant advertising balloon rides, and bicycles. You get the idea that Ev is as high tech a city could have been with 19th century technology, if all of the branches of science could be brought together by one polymath genius (we’ll meet this person later).

In a cafe, Jack drinks a beer as big as his head, and Tip pokes at her stew. “What, you don’t like it?” says Jack. “You’ve eaten the same food your whole life. It’s going to be different. Everything is.”

Tip drills murder into him with her stare, and says, “Everything IS! I just want to get the medicine and get back to normal! I feel like I’m wearing someone else’s skin,”

When Jack leaves to ask about local herbalists that could fill Tip’s prescription, a waitress offers unsolicited advise to Tip: “unless you’re planning on making money off of them, you might want to stop advertising,” with a meaningful look at Tip’s cleavage and the men in the cafe. Tip pulls her shirt up, stands up, and walks into a hallway, where she isn’t sure if she should use the men’s or the women’s room. In the women’s room, she looks into the mirror, washes her face, and cries. She runs out of the restroom crying.

In East’s castle, the witch’s servant introduces himself. “Name’s Sullivan, keeper of the house. This one,” he said, indicating a slain servant, “cleaned the chambers, stoked the fire, but running off as he did is a blood crime, mistress…new mistress. Mistress never spoke of you, but I heard whispers of an acolyte….Did mistress pass peacefully, were you there?”

“I wasn’t,” lied Dorothy, “but I was told she passed very peacefully.”

“It lifts my heart to hear, mistress…new mistress.”

“How about just mistress?” replies Dorothy.

Sullivan leads them through the pillared corridors to the cyclone above the castlee. Sullivan adds that “the weather must be settled or it will devour this castle whole. That is why you’ve come to settle the weather.” At this point, it seems that Sullivan is feeding Dorothy lines like a good stage mother, but the location is so incredibly beautiful, with flowers, shrubs, ornate arches, and open air interiors, with fountains as the centerpieces of adjoined verandas.

Sullivan tells Dorothy that she must received the rituals of purification and then dress for the ceremony of elements. When he insists that Lucas yield his sword and find his place in the servant quarters, Lucas nearly balks, but Dorothy persuades Lucas to give up his sword.

In West’s brothel, The Wizard harangues West, but the witch is not taking it seriously.

The Wizard says, “Three dead girls. Your girls! Hanging in the square!”

West’s reply is “Tragic I know; I’ll need a minute to find replacements. If you’re looking for a career change” she adds, pointing to Anna, and leaving it at that.

The Wizard threatens to awaken his giants to make an example of West, who denies any involvement in the ritual suicide, and when The Wizard says that his councilwomens’ investigation will prove her guilty or innocent, West laughs, and says:

You picked the right one for the job. You don’t know! Whee! How amusing…[To Anna] Your mother worked here before you were born, and after,but she wanted a better life for you, so she sent you far far away, only to have you return. I bet under that robe, you’re just as succulent as she was. She was succulent; tasted her myself–so did he. [To The Wizard] Don’t worry, she’s not yours, you can taste her too.

Dorothy purifies herself in the ritual bath, and then selects from East’s wardrobe a red dress that so impresses Lucas that he stammers, “you look like…” only to have his simile interrupted by Sullivan, who finishes for him matter-of-factly: “like the mistress of the eastern wood, most merciful and stern.”

In the open-roofed central tower, the funnel cloud’s source spins only about six feet above a stone dais; lightning flashes and thunder echoes on the tiled walls. Sullivan cries out over the raging storm, “surely old mistress showed you the lake and the sharpness?” When Lucas spies something slithering in the water that circles the dais, he says, “I’m guessing that’s the sharpness.” Dorothy closes her eyes, walks on the surface of the water, and East’s gauntlets appear on her hands. She stands on the dais, standing under the funnel, and the soundtrack breaks into an high pitched aria. When she reaches into the cloud, it disappears, but so does Dorothy.

Anna sits on a public bench, reflecting on West’s offensive revelations. In the course of this episode she’s gone from believing herself to be the smartest councilwoman to knowing herself to be the unwanted daughter of a prostitute. The Wizard finds her, and what follows is one of The Wizard’s best character moments, so here is the dialogue verbatim:

The Wizard: My name is Frank Morgan. Do you think my mother christened me the Wizard of Oz? I was a man before I was a wizard.

Anna: You harnessed the lightning and control giants.

W: Anna. (sitting next to her) Before I came to Emerald City, I had no such power, not for lack of trying, I studied hard, I worked harder, I desperately wanted to be noticed. I just wasn’t noticeable, not like you.

A: Why are you telling me this?

W: Because that was my past. Because I took my past and obliterated it. People called me The Wizard of Oz because I demanded it. Crushed anyone who denied me the name. Your past does not define you. Your mother does not define you. All that matters is who you wish to be. And how hard you are willing to fight for it.

A: What did she look like, my mother?

W: I don’t remember.

A: Good.

At the herbalist’s, Tip asks for more of his ‘bad blood’ medicine, and when the herbalist presses them for more information about Tip’s guardian, Jack spins a colorful tale that she “died of old age, almost a hundred years old. Oh, she would have loved to see today, but without her my friend has no more medicine.” The herbalist doesn’t like his chances at brewing their ‘country remedy,’ but says that he’ll give it a try.

Dorothy finds herself in a wintry river clogged with flotsam from both worlds, such as a baby doll, and K. Chapman’s work uniform, which Dorothy grabs from the stream.

Anna’s investigations into West take an unusual turn when she confronts the prostitutes about their drug habits and the character of the suicidal women. One of the prostitutes says that the women who jumped were just like the rest, except they liked “old men, men who couldn’t raise the flag, if you get my meaning.” At the same time, The Wizard confronts West, and tells her that while it is up to Anna to follow her investigation, West’s punishment will be decided by The Wizard.

West tells The Wizard that though she’s “the last of her kind…[and]…I have powers you can’t even fathom…own a run down brothel…” that she hates “magic even more than you….I’m glad you banned it. I’m glad not to use it. Magic was a drug even worse than the poppy. Lot of good it did us against the beast forever, all those powerful witches, and their powerful spells…drowned by the beast and me useless to stop it. Where’s the magic in that?”

With Jack out of earshot, the herbalist speaks to Tip privately, saying

I can’t make you your medicine, love, which is to say I won’t, no one will,not anywhere, and you shouldn’t ask again…because you could hang for it. It’s a black elixir. It’s magic. It disturbs your true nature…What you are right now, what’s under those clothes, that’s not a side effect of the medicine wearing off, that’s what happens when the medicine itself wears off.

Tip shakes her head, and says, “I’m a boy, I’ve always been a boy,” to which the herbalist replies, “yeah, someone may have wanted that, and they gave you this to make it so, but it’s not how you were born, this is how you were born.”

The Wizard looks down at his giants from his tower window as Anna tells The Wizard that while Elizabeth was right that The Beast Forever would come when the two moons become one, she was wrong that it would take the form of fire. “It will be far far worse. Those girls who leapt to their deaths, their magic did not come from mistress West, it came from the beast itself. This is a beast who knows you…exploits your greatest fears, exploits your greatest weakness.”

The Wizard retorts, “I have no weakness,” to which Anna says, “Except that you’ve lost control of your giants, haven’t you? The beast chose those women because of the men they served, men that were impotent. Just like the eternal warrior. The beast knows everything.”

The Wizard scoffs at her. “Well, you also thought that it would snow during sun season…snow!

Perhaps incited by this, Anna oversteps, and says, “I don’t think you ever controlled the giants. I think their power is locked inside the Prison of the Abject, and that is why you want it opened. I’m saying this for your benefit, and for the benefit of Oz. I will tell no one, not even Glinda.” However, The Wizard both confirms her suspcions and ensures her silence by throwing her into a cell.

Dorothy and the storm reappear in East’s castle, and when she asks Sullivan “how did this get here?”, and holds up Kay Chapman’s uniform, he answers, “You went to the wrong place, you picked the wrong object, mistress. The remnants will not settle the weather. Those objects belong to interlopers who never belonged in Oz.” When Dorothy confesses that this person is her mother, Sullivan says, “then you are no mistress, you are interloper too,” and draws his sword. Lucas grapples him, and Dorothy runs, until Sullivan holds his blade to Lucas’s throat, and says “Stop! or swordsman dies!”

“Is this what you did to my mistress?”, Sullivan asks, to which Dorothy confesses, “”She killed herself! I lied!”

“It wasn’t peaceful!” bemoans Sullivan. Dorothy admits, “No, no it wasn’t. That’s why I have the gauntlets. There is no acolyte. The weather will not be settled. It’s over. I’m really sorry, now please don’t hurt him.”

Sullivan drops the sword, and Lucas and Dorothy flee. The castle shakes and shudders until the funnel cloud dissipates into the sky.

“I am far more dangerous than you are,” Dorothy admits, then says, “My mother was in Oz Lucas. My mom was in Oz…my answers were here, and now they’re gone because of me.” Lucas tells her that they can still get her answers from The Wizard, despite that he wants her dead. “How much are those answers worth?” he asks, and Dorothy’s answer is to walk away. “Where are you going?” he asks, and she answers, “to see The Wizard.”

Elizabeth appeals to The Wizard that “…there is no doubt that the wizard will reveal itself as a hailstorm of fire. It will blaze through Oz until it obliterates that which fell from the sky and everything else that stands in its path, and only your eternal warriors can stop it–an army of stone which fire cannot consume.” When she advises him to animate the giants before Oz burns, it begins to snow, and The Wizard realizes that Anna was right.

In another sweeping scene of Ev’s picturesque steampunk aesthetic, we get another shot of the elevated monorail, above where Tip mopes on a fenced-in balcony. Jack says, “Tip, why did you run off like that? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Tip laments that, “It’s a joke: everything, my whole life, me. Everything…This is me–this, these [clutching her chest]. I’ve always been this. I was born this.”

Jack reassures Tip, that “you’re still Tip…it’s going to be ok,” to which Tip yells, “stop doing that! It’s not ok! It’s not gonna be ok! Someone took me, someone stole me, and the worst part is I’m still here.” Then Jack rummages in his bag to reveal that he has the dagger that he stole from Mombi’s. Jack insists that “I stole it for us. We can sell the emeralds. We can stay together no matter what,” and then kisses Tip. Tip yells, “what are you doing!” and hits, then shoves, Jack. “You don’t do that, you of all people…this isn’t me!” Jack tries to apologize, but when Tip shoves him, Jack stumbles, backpedals, breaks the balcony rail, and falls to the street. Tip looks down at the body of her best friend. Blood stains the snow, and the credits roll.

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