The Magicians Review: ‘Lost, Found, F**ked’ S04E02

After the positive start last week to season 4 of The Magicians, it continues its new twist with ‘Lost, Found, F**ked’.  As usual, there are some SPOILERS ahead!

The inherent ‘reboot’ for the characters over the season break has given the story an interesting change, and created some good opportunities for character exploration, as well as the reappearance of some fan favourites.  The placing of Marina (Kacey Rohl) front and centre in the narrative for instance is a very welcome bonus!

This episode continues from the last with the Monster/Eliot (Hale Appleman) leading Brian/Quentin (Jason Ralph) around the globe on his revenge tour.  It is intriguing to see how Hale Appleman plays this, and he does a highly effective job of displaying the childlike nature of the Monster within the shell of Eliot, while keeping them distinct, but obviously connected; especially as his is the only dual role where the dominant personality is fully aware of the other.  There are similarly good performances throughout this cast, as they each have dual roles to show, which isn’t that surprising given the strength of the actors.

Each of them is well catered for in the episode, despite the disparate storylines which have yet to fully meet.  The main group including Sam/Kady (Jade Tailor), Hansel/Penny (Arjun Gupta), Isaac/Josh (Trevor Einhorn), and now Marina, are trying to work their way through the problem with the help of the comic book, which allows quite a lot of typically great dialogue to come out.

Away from Earth, Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) is her snarky tortured self, with some nice plot developments and unexpected characters in her story typical of The Magicians, while Janet/Margo (Summer Bishil) is fantastically sassy and belligerent as she copes with Fillory.  It will be interesting to see what they do with Alice in future episodes, as to a degree there is a probably a limit to what they can do with her being locked up all the time.  Obviously, part of her story that we have seen will lead to some form of escape, and there will then be potential for some intriguing conflict or resolution with the rest of the characters.

The main protagonist in this episode though is Kim/Julia (Stella Maeve) who has been kept on at Brakebills by Dean Fogg (Rick Worthy) despite her apparently not having any talent.  She displays the kind of doggedness we’d expect of Julia and becomes the main driver behind finding a solution to everyone’s primary issue; even coincidentally for Dean Fogg, who has spent part of the show in a reflective mood due to Marina’s efforts, and only briefly gets his comeuppance.  In this thread of the show it’s nice to see Todd (Adam DiMarco) getting some screen time, and it does seem like this season will be quite open, with a broader palette, which will be interesting; there are no small parts as they say!

If I had a criticism of this episode though, it is that there seemed to be much more to explore with the alternative characters and the comic book written about them.  The whole setup seems to have been abandoned very quickly, while there was still drama to be extracted.  It may well be the case that there is a whole load of great story to fit in this season and that this element needed to be truncated, but I do feel that it is an opportunity lost.

One intriguing aspect of this season that occurred to me, when comparing it to the start of the whole show, is how they have developed the characters and how their relative moral positions have changed.  Some have had to make some questionable choices, while others have taken more of a high ground than we could have originally thought.  It is interesting to note how that some of the ‘discarded’ people from Brakebills have ended up more righteous than the hierarchy.  Dean Fogg is the obvious example and he has been clearly flawed over the seasons, but it looks like a lot of these characters will be challenged more often, which could lead to some interesting drama.

Overall, this was another great episode, but I’m not entirely sure where they are going with the plot from here, having discarded some potential options.  In some ways this is probably for the best and they will be pulling a remarkable rabbit out of the hat, like they usually do.