Fridge / The Magnus Archives

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Fridge Brilliance:

Rivalries between the Powers

• Why does the Distortion dislike the Flesh Hive besides it being "always rash"? Because the Distortion's main thing is Gaslighting people, using their own minds to trap them and drive them insane—and a hive mind must be almost impossible to attack that way, being many and one at once. Gaslighting relies heavily on isolation (if your friend can tell you that yes, the gaslights are flickering, then you'll probably feel better about your state of mind), and a hive mind is its own best friend and endless reserve of backup. It can always reinforce its own perceptions and know that it's not crazy, or realize what parts of it actually have gone crazy and correct itself.
• The Spider and the Desolation hate each other so bitterly because the Desolation is all about chaos and random destruction, while the Spider is all about entrapment and control. As the Stranger expresses a desire to terrify and murder as it pleases, this is probably the reason the Spider doesn't get along with it, either.
• It's not a stretch to believe the Lonely and the Corruption despise one another. The Lonely is all about isolation, while at least half of the statements featuring The Corruption show that those who serve it see themselves as possessing some twisted form of The Power of Love, usually in the form of an Assimilation Plot.
  • Building on this, the Corruption makes further sense as a rival to the Beholding; after all, what use is it to know all of someone's thoughts and secrets if they're part of one big hive mind where individual thoughts or past secrets don't really matter? And if you're sharing a mind with hundreds or thousands of other individuals, are you going to be that concerned about being watched anymore?

Alliances between the Powers

• The Beholding is concerned only with observing and both Jonah Magnus and Gertrude Robinson have used and discarded other people without a thought. Hence it makes perfect sense why they are such good friends with the Lukas family, who serve the Lonely.
  • Theoretically, the Lonely should be opposed to the Beholding; the Lonely fosters the fear of being totally alone, while the Beholding fosters the fear of always being watched. To the extent that they are, the Lukas family may be supporting the Institute under the "keep your enemies closer" theory. Certainly the Lukas family has demonstrated the ability to prevent the Institute from further investigating matters that the Lukas family would prefer to keep under the radar. However, loneliness is more than just being alone. It's a lack of mutual connection, and being around people who can't or won't connect with you can be worse than not being around others at all. The Eye might watch you, but it doesn't care about you - and it's certainly not going to share anything with you. Moreover, in "The Last", Jon suggested that the Eye and the Lonely both have some predilections towards voyeurism ("What good is it being lonely if you don't know how alone you are?"). The episode also hinted that the Lonely and the Beholding both have the potential of being second-hand fears. The Magnus Institute, a bastion of the Beholding, collects stories of trauma caused by the Powers and the Beholding, as well as the Archivist, feed on the pain of the victims. Similarly, Elias would tip off Peter Lukas about people who had left statements so he could feed them to the Lonely, playing on how traumatic experiences can be isolating for the victims, especially ones they can't explain or know nobody will believe.
  • The Hunt, by a stretch, can be considered a sensible ally for the Beholding. After all, the Hunt has been known to attract people committed to the search of mystical, unattainable things, such as the explorers searching for lost cities and geographical oddities from Episode 133 ("Dead Horse"); this relentless pursuit of discoveries should be fairly compatible with the Beholding's endless seeking of knowledge, even when those people also fear that discovering the truths they seek might destroy them. Also, if you feel like you're being watched, it doesn't take a huge leap to also worry that the ones watching you are also hunting you, and the Hunt's tendency to pursue its victims for some perceived wrongdoing should pair well with the Eye's fear of being judged.
• The Beholding and the Spider both like things to be in order—the Beholding wants things in neat narrative structures, and the Spider wants them trapped in its web.
  • The way the Magnus Institute operates, drawing victims of the Powers in with promises of easing their burden and then feeding on their nightmares and trauma, certainly calls to mind a spider in a web feeding on whatever smaller creatures just happen to get stuck in it. Similarly, Episode 123 ("Web Design") suggested that the Web also has some interest in collecting stories of trauma, doing so through the Chelicerae forum.
  • Additionally, their respective fears can easily overlap since manipulation and control to some degree rely on watching the victim, following their movements and knowing their weaknesses.
  • Episode 172 ("Strung Out") introduced a possibility that the Web and the Eye are connected by the act of deriving enjoyment from watching people suffer. Part of the Beholding, as described by Gerard Keay, is the fear that someone out there is making you suffer just so it can watch. "Strung Out" featured a victim of the Web's theater domain being puppeted around on a stage and having their past traumas (Abusive Parents, a manipulative lover, drug problems) played back to them as the theater audience watches it all and laughs at it.
• The Daedalus Space Station was funded by individuals ultimately devoted to the Dark, the Lonely, and the Vast, suggesting some mutual cooperation among all three Powers. This makes sense, as all three fears play very well into each other in Space Isolation Horror, with the Vast covering the sheer size of outer space, the Lonely covering the lack of common social interaction with many people when in an outer-space environment, and the Dark covering the large absence of light in space, only illuminated by small lights from faraway stars.
  • Confirmed in Episode 151 in regards to the latter two: as Simon Fairchild and Martin put it, vast spaces can make anyone feel isolated while isolation can make spaces seem far bigger than they are, so the two Powers complement each other quite well.
  • Earlier, in Episode 91 ("The Coming Storm"), Michael Crew suggested that the Eye and the Vast (not referred to by their names in that instance) have some overlap, since you can really only fear a great height if you really know the full scale of it. Similarly, a fear of your own irrelevance in the greater universe is only really effective if you know just how small you are in it.
• Episode 136 ("The Puppeteer") mentions that Neil Lagorio, a special effects maestro and apparent associate of the Web, split from his "partner", identified as "Gabe", in The '70s and that sculpting lost its appeal after that. While the episode doesn't comment on it, it's fully possible that this was an allusion to Gabriel, a.k.a. The Worker in Clay, who is a prominent associate of the Spiral who uses clay sculpting as a medium for his mind-twisting. If it was, some friendliness between the Web and the Spiral could make sense, since the Web's paranoia of being controlled or manipulated can easily overlap with the Spiral making people doubt their perception of reality, and a fear that you're suffering from some mental illness will lead to being robbed of your control over your own life.
• In Episode 164 ("The Sick Village"), the Corruption's fear of disease and infection is given a more xenophobic spin in the form of a fear of society being taken over by something unknown bringing in diseases. In that sense, they could potentially connect with the Stranger, a literal fear of the unknown and unfamiliar. Because of this, it kind of makes sense that both Powers serve as arc villains to the Beholding for the first three seasons, even if they may not be direct allies.

Predilections of the Powers

• Why does the Beholding like London so much? Check out all those CCTV cameras!
  • Jossed as of the events of Season 4; the Magnus Institute was relocated to London in the 1800s after Jonah Magnus' attempt at The Watcher's Crown resulted in the prison he used in the ritual sinking into the ground, leading him to have the new Institute built on top of the prison so he would have access to its panopticon, which extended his seeing powers. That said, London's many cameras no doubt still make it a serendipitous piece of real estate for the Beholding.
  • It's also probable that the reason London has so many security cameras is specifically because the Eye has its headquarters there, given how the Magnus Insitute was established there before security cameras.
• The Spider seems to make a habit of going after children. This makes perfect sense, because children, generally, are almost completely under the control of adults in their life, and don't have a lot of ways out if those adults don't turn out to be worthy of that kind of power.
• It seems strange at first that the Spider should be Mother of Puppets when that seems more like the Stranger's thing, given "Strange Music" and Nikola's...well, whole self. But they're actually coming at the idea from opposite directions. With the Stranger, puppets can turn into people, but with the Spider, it's the other way around—the Stranger is all about conferring autonomy where it shouldn't be, and the Spider takes it away.
• Some of the Powers has a sub-theme to them that makes sense, given their base fear.
  • Several statements involving The Slaughter feature a reference to or use of Magic Music (particularly The Piper, Grifter's Bone and Nemesis). Martial Music was an important part of warfare prior to and during the early 1900s. The Brown Note played by Grifter's Bone may be a reference to incidents such as the Altamont Free Concert and other violent events which occurred at music venues.
  • The Vast's influence over meteorological phenomena brings to mind the "Finger of God" comment from Twister: weather has the potential to cause great destruction, is often unpredictable, and completely out of human control. It's as Vast as one can get on a terrestrial scale.
  • The Hunt has some influence over crime— police like Daisy, who succumb to the Hunt in an effort to hunt criminals, only to be disappointed when the chase ends. There's also those like Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert, who (allegedly) only hunt supernatural beings, but are basically serial killers nonetheless. Even the True Crime Club from Thrill of the Chase evokes this theme: there's a stereotype among critics of the true crime community that the "fans" don't care about whether or not the criminal gets found, so much as they care about a good mystery.
  • A lot of statements that involve The Lonely deal with characters traveling to an unfamiliar place before being attacked— being in a foreign country where you don't speak the language fluently (if at all) can be a frightening experience, so it makes sense that they'd have power here.
  • One could be forgiven for thinking that The Stranger should be called The Clown, because Nikola and the Circus Of The Other is what we mostly see of it. But given that a large part of coulrophobia is due to clowns falling in the Uncanny Valley, and the Stranger is an inhabitant of it, it makes sense that they'd factor into the fear in the modern day.
  • Between the Gnostic church and Father Burroughs, The Flesh has a clear predilection for the Christian faith. This makes sense, as members of many Christian denominations symbolically—and, for Catholics, literally—consume the flesh and blood of Jesus through the Eucharist. A component of what makes body horror work is also the desecration of the body - something we deem sacred. And that isn't even scratching the surface of the possibilities found in combining the Flesh's predilection for perfectionism and self-improvement with some good old-fashioned Catholic guilt.
  • Some stories involving the Buried prominently involves money, such as a victim being burdened by large debts (Episode 129: "Submerged") or, like the "worms" in Episode 166 ("The Worms"), having worked in finance. Their last known ritual in Episode 97 ("We All Ignore The Pit") even took place in North America during the 2007-2008 recession. After all, financial debt can potentially put a lot of pressure on people and is a way people can feel smothered without even setting foot in a crammed space. Tellingly, avatars of the Buried's polar opposite, the Vast, that have been seen have all been economically well-off; Simon Fairchild is very wealthy and Michael Crew had the money and resources to hunt for books related to the Powers.
• Given how the Powers are so closely connected to one another while still being separate, it makes sense that the Dark is one of the oldest and deepest (as described by Gerard Keay in Episode 111); after all, darkness in and of itself can easily feed into most of the other powers. A fear of the unknown in the dark can feed the Stranger; imagining the surroundings as either very crammed or infinitely wide can lead into the Buried or the Vast respectively; a fear that something in the dark sees you can feed the Beholding; etc.
• The End doesn't seem to pick its victims or avatars with any particular discrimination or preference; instead, avatars are typically completely average people who serve it out of fear for their lives (Justin Gough and Tova McHugh) or just don't feel like they have any way to not serve it (Antonio Blake/Oliver Banks). This makes sense when you consider that death is the one thing that just about everyone comes to fear at some point; you can go your whole life without feeling any intense, lasting terror for bugs, spiders, great heights, crammed spaces, etc., but the cessation of their existence as they know it and the uncertainty of what comes after is something everyone will be confronted with eventually.
  • The End's passivity (compared to the other powers) also makes sense with this in mind; after all, everyone dies eventually and anything done to bring that moment closer would probably just feed into one of the other powers, so the End can best savor the fear of its victims by presenting them with the inevitability of their death rather focus on the specifics.
  • It can also be said that all of the fears ultimately feed into the End. What is really at the base of all the fears? You don't just fear getting sick from bugs or viruses or rot or what have you simply because its icky, you fear and avoid it because exposure to them could kill you. You fear pain and violence because the things that hurt you may bring your end. Even fearing strangers and what you don't understand is largely due to not knowing if they could bring you harm or kill you. All fears ultimately have a base in, and feed into, the fear of Death.

• Multiple characters comment that Gertrude Robinson is unusual for an Archivist, in that she does not seem particularly driven by the desire for knowledge. The Eye is not just the fear of knowing too much; it is also the fear stemming from Determinator-like obsession. Gertrude began to suspect that the rituals were all doomed to fail under their own strain, and in 2015 allowed the Ritual of the Extinguished Sun to go completely uninterrupted and with absolutely no interference whatsoever... just to see if she was right. Similarly, MAG 160 (the Eye Opens) reveals that Jonah Magnus, another Avatar of the Eye, was aware that she had planned not to interfere, and likewise decided not to do anything despite mentioning earlier in the Statement that one of his fears was that someone else would complete a ritual and damn him to an eternity of torment. It is a testament to both Magnus and Robinson's ties to their patron that they were both willing to risk the apocalypse for no other reason than to test a theory.

• How is Martin able to deceive Peter Lukas so easily and effectively? Peter has spent his whole life intentionally isolating himself from others. It stands to reason that he would be bad at reading people.

• The only rule we're informed of regarding acceptable statement subjects is that dreams and similar experiences aren't allowed. This makes perfect sense — Gertrude Robinson didn't need her time wasted with statements from subjects she personally interviewed who now see her in their dreams nightly. It's no wonder she likely never read the prediction of her death.

• The fact that the tapes are able to appear in the old Institute tunnels, both before and after the Change, when they are shown to interfere with Jon and Jonah's powers of seeing and knowing foreshadows that they aren't really tied to the Eye, but to another Power, which was revealed in MAG 196 (This Old House) to be the Web, with it's massive web over the crack on Hill Top Road used to escape the post-Change world being made out of tape recorders.

• When Breekon shows up at the Archive, Basira tells Jon to get Melanie, despite knowing of the bad blood between them. She remembers that last time the Archives was attacked by a muscular avatar, Melanie was the only one who managed to hurt him.

• Episode 178, The Processing Line, reveals that most of the people seen in that particular Flesh domain see aren't actual human beings, but rather props manifested by the Fears as the scale of the environment is part of the horror for those real people trapped in it. This is almost certainly the case for many other domains given the sheer scale they're described with, such as the Trench or the Merry-Go-Round, and especially the Great Beast. While there are upwards of seven and a half billion humans on the planet, the reality is that we don't actually take up that much space. The Great Beast alone, from the scale implied in it's statement, is likely larger than if you piled all seven billion of us up together.

• The few episodes of Georgie's podcast show that she is rather awkward about it, often interrupting the ominous narration with goofy catchphrases and generally not being all that scary. Which makes perfect sense since she can't feel fear, meaning that she has only a theoretical understanding of what would scare an average listener.

Fridge Comedy

The Magnus Archives is like the polar opposite of the shows and stories that are meant to be lighthearted but if you do any amount of thinking about the implications of their worldbuilding it quickly becomes utterly horrifying. A physical manifestation of fear let a guy live for like a solid week because he thought that hiding under a blanket would protect him and the fear entity decided to respect that as long as he was sufficiently worried about the situation. A group of things pretending to be human are forced to take an anatomy course, presumably because they were doing such a bad job at it.

Tumblr user raptortooth

• MAG 87, Uncanny Valley, is a scary episode, but upon further plot inspection is about a plumber who is particularly unobservant, to the point where an evil clown mannequin wearing human skin hires him to clean out a drain full of human flesh and he remains oblivious. Not especially funny, until you learn that the monster finds this so funny that she invites her friend Jude Perry to come show her. After he is introduced to a shed full of desecrated corpses, he runs away and Jude opens his car door for him and lets him leave.
  • "Megan" seemed so utterly frustrated with the man's obliviousness that she called him back the next day in order to actually point his head at the creepy stuff he missed before. It's dark comedy at its finest.
• As much as the body horror and references to dysphoria are horrific, MAG 90, Body Builder is fundamentally about The Boneturner, a giant multi-limbed Humanoid Abomination serial killer and powerful servant of the literal god of Body Horror...sewing himself a personalized tracksuit and setting up a gym.
• Jon's connection the the Slaughter, the entity that personifies mindless violence and wrath, is Melanie King, a youtuber he has an academic rivalry with.

Fridge Horror:

• Gertrude's method of stopping the Buried's ritual was to throw a Vast-touched person into it. She chose Jan Kilbride, who'd had a worldview-shattering experience with the Vast on the Daedalus mission. As a mercy she killed him and cut up his body to throw piece by piece into the Buried, except somehow, Jan wasn't dead when she did this and once in the Buried, he still couldn't die.
• In episode 100, I Guess You Had to be There, a man comes to give a statement, saying he is stalked by hundreds of spiders that only go away if someone else is there. At the end of the episode, Peter Lukas shows up, and sends him into the Lonely for no reason at all. When you remember that the Lonely is a dimension where you can never see or interact with another person again, and the spiders only go away when someone else is there...
• In Cul-De-Sac (MAG 150), Herman finds Yotunde Uthman, a woman who apparently shoved her head through a mirror and died. He notes that she looks recently deceased, and the description mentioning fresh blood would seem to indicate this is true. When he gets back to our reality, he learns Yotunde went missing over a year ago. It's likely that the place kept her alive for a year, then probably killed her (or compelled her into suicide) as soon as Herman arrived in the alternate dimension. After all, two people wouldn't be lonely. Plus, Herman gets to realize his only chance at human interaction was dead and gone before he could even meet her. Ouch.
  • Alternatively, it's just as likely that the reason she died so recently is because the Lonely was waiting for her to kill herself before selecting a new victim. It was probably able to just wait her out, feeding on the fear and isolation day by day, as it knew that in isolated suburbs there was no shortage of lonely people to prey upon. Who knows how many people that cul-de-sac consumed the same way, eating the most isolated people one by one by one, savoring the slow fall to despair in each.
• It's generally assumed the Not!Them's victims are dead. Certainly they're irreversibly gone. However, when Jon was forcing it to feel its victim's suffering, he mentioned their constant agony, not just a one-time moment. Does this mean that people replaced by the Not!Them — including Sasha — are still alive in there?
• Jonny tends to use puns in episode titles. MAG 159, The Last, manages a three-in-one: a general reference to loneliness, an indication that it's the last episode before the Eyepocalypse, and Jon's final mark — the Lonely is the last entity Jonah Magnus needs on his human bingo card.