The Magicians S2E09 Lesser Evils (Review, Spoilers)

Warning: this contains spoilers.

As season 2 of The Magicians reaches episode 9 of 13, you’d expect a lot to be happening and Lesser Evils doesn’t disappoint. Lesser Evils is not just a clever name as every choice the characters have is either bad or very bad.

Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer may have had a brief flashback to season 6 episode 7 (Once More, with Feeling) when watching Lesser Evils, the latest episode of The Magicians. As Eliot (Hale Appleman) prepared to fight, Margo (Summer Bishil) used magic to stage a song and dance routine of One Day More from Les Miserables. Eliot was very nervous, and a brief spell as Jean Valjean did wonders for his mood.

The episode benefited from this short spell of light relief. The Magicians has always been a series that’s prepared to take on some difficult subjects, and on first glances this may be seen as one of the lighter episodes. Probe a bit deeper and things aren’t quite so bright. Eliot continues to find his way as a leader, choosing the benevolent path of potentially sacrificing himself to avoid defeat of his dwindling armies which are getting smaller by the day thanks to Julia (Stella Maeve) killing the talking trees. Eliot’s wife Fen helps him by giving him a magic sword forged by her grandfather. Fen’s reward for this is her husband agreeing to polygamously King Idri and Margo (Summer Bishil) tricking her into giving away her baby in exchange for fairies fixing the wellspring. Margo has a rare moment of conscience arranging this deal, which somewhat backfired on her when Eliot managed to negotiate a peaceful ending. Q (Jason Ralph) continued to try to protect Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) before finally setting her free. He’s hoping she’ll live peacefully performing beautiful magic – we’ll have to see how that one turns out. Thanks to Reynard’s baby, Julia (Stella Maeve) has no moral compass which resulted in her risking Q’s life to fight Reynard, which sees Kady (Jade Tailor) finally giving up on her and trapping her in a cell where no magic can be performed. 

Penny (Arjun Gupta) continues to gain purpose with Kady and Julia. When the characters split into broad groups, Penny was largely on his own so it’s good to see him having more of a role. Stella Maeve and Jason Ralph got to flex their acting muscles playing “evil Julia” and “Niffin Alice” throughout the episode. Summer Bishil jumps between ruthless Margo and a Margo who is rapidly realising how big a sacrifice she made by negotiating with the fairies. Well, she was warned. Being a hothead when if comes to negotiations is not the ideal approach, which Margo may finally have learnt after her latest diplomatic incident. She’s given away Fen and Eliot’s baby. That has to test their relationship. 

Senator Gaines (Christopher Gorham) could be an interesting character. As Reynard’s son, he’s blessed with great magic but was completely oblivious to it until Penny, Julia and Kady burst into his office. He always assumed his success was from hard work and occasional good fortune, but it was magic pouring out of him. Will he be the good guy or be seduced to the dark side by Darth Reynard. Surely a politician would never do anything bad. Fans of trivia and old SciFi may remember Christopher Gorham as Jake Foley series Jake 2.0, also starring Keegan Connor Tracy (Professor Lipson in The Magicians). Gorham had special abilities in Jake 2.0 (thanks to an accidental injection of nanobots) and Tracy played the doctor responsible for programming those nanobots. Jake 2.0 was cancelled during the first season which, at the time, left four episodes unaired in the US. Let’s hope The Magicians doesn’t suffer the same fate.