Season 2, Episode 4
The Flying Forest
While Quentin recovers from the battle with the Beast under the care of the centaurs, Eliot and Margo struggle to rule Fillory. Julia finds Kady to make a plan to deal with Reynard, which leads them back to Brakebills. Quentin and Penny come up with a plan to capture the White Lady, one of the seven Questing Creatures of Fillory, in order to receive wishes—Quentin wants Alice resurrected, while Penny wants his hands fixed.
Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Achilles in His Tent: Quentin goes back to Earth at the end of the episode. Considering what is happening in Fillory, this is very bad timing...
- An Arm and a Leg: Narrowly averted for Quentin; a large chunk of his shoulder has to be replace with magical wood, but his arm managed to remain attached. Penny gets Quentin to cut off his cursed hands, then has them regrown by the White Lady.
- Call-Back:
- When Margo finds Julia copying down a magic book, she instead gives her a blank magic book and tells her to let them mate, just like the book the hedge witches stole back in episode 3 of season 1.
- The "Margolem" made by one of Margo's exes is mentioned, and Margo uses his spell (combined with his living clay that she stole) to make a golem of Eliot. They then use a variant of Mayakovsky's mind control spell to let Eliot pilot it.
- Despair Event Horizon: Quentin spends most of the episode driven to desperate means by Alice's death, to the point where he asks the White Lady to send him back home once he discovers that resurrecting her is impossible.
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: Implied. When Marina is briefly brought back to life, she is terrified of dying again.Marina: You don't know where I was. I don't wanna go back there! I don't wanna go back there!
- Loophole Abuse: Due to his Fillorian marriage, Eliot cannot leave Fillory or have sex with anyone else. Margo constructs a golem that he is able to pilot, which goes to Earth and is able to have sex normally.
- Mushroom Samba: "The Flying Forest" is actually named after the drug-fog that fills the place. Quentin and Penny spend hours in an amnesiac loop, walking the same path who knows how many times after forgetting their own names.
- Necromancy: Marina carved the registry number of a Brakebills spellbook into her arm before she died, which turns out to be a necromancy book that contains a spell to bring someone back from the dead for a few minutes. She manages to pass on a vital clue before expiring again.
- Pull The Trigger Provocation: Quentin is very reluctant to cut Penny's hands off, until the latter goads him into a sudden rage.
- Remote Body: Margo is able to modify Mayakovsky's mi/nd control spell to allow Eliot to pilot his golem while his real body is asleep. Unfortunately it seems someone forgot to tell Fen, and when she wakes up Eliot's real body he finds himself aware of both at the same time.
- Screw Yourself: Eliot calls having sex with your own golem "AP-level masturbation."
