Season 2, Episode 12
Ramifications
Quentin and Julia restore Alice her shade and her humanity, but Alice is desperate to hold onto her fading niffin knowledge. John is worried that Renard will turn him into a monster, so he forces Kady to kill him and harvest his power. Quentin and Eliot look for a way to Fillory, and discover that without Umber, the world is doomed—it was never designed to last beyond Ember's entertainment.
Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Back from the Dead: Alice is brought back from being a niffin.
- Broken Pedestal: Umber and Ember both suck, though Ember gets hit with this a lot harder - he is actively malevolent, while Umber merely ran away.
- Character Development: Eliot. He now wants to save Fillory and rule properly, whereas before he just wanted to party and not really rule.
- Chickification: In-Universe. Umber shows Quentin a failed movie script for the Fillory books that involved, among other terrible ideas, turning Jane into a meek and frail girl who would never have been able to grow up to be the Watcherwoman.
- Closest Thing We Got: As the only child of Earth currently in Fillory, Josh gets to be High King by default.
- Eskimos Aren't Real: Umber is building a cube-shaped world, and is surprised to learn that "Cuba" is already a place.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Reynard is genuinely upset to hear that John has died.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Ember is the reason for all of the chaos in recent events.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- John uses his powers to force Kady to go through with the ritual to kill him and harvest his power. Julia is able to turn this into a single god-killing bullet.
- Sylvia makes Penny leave the Poison Room without her, saying it's the only way he'll survive.
- Karmic Jackpot: After Julia lets Persephone take Renard, Persephone gives Julia her shade back.
- Mushroom Samba: Josh's first act as High King is to get the entire castle high as kites. When the Lorians invade, looking for their king, he does it again, this time with a spell to make the smoke seek people out. All the Lorians are down in minutes.
- Order Versus Chaos: Fillory was built by a collaboration of Umber, god of Order, and Ember, god of Entropy. Umber gets to build a world, while Ember gets to see it all fall apart.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Inverted. John uses his powers to make Kady kill him.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- Quentin delivers one to Umber about his abandonment of Fillory.
- Quentin also gives one to Mayakovsky, mentioning his affair with Emily and consequent role in the death of Alice's brother.
- The Reveal: Fillory is little more than a magical reality show for Ember's entertainment; Eliot was banished because his work as High King was too boring.
- Saying Too Much: Quentin and Eliot meet the man who bought the Fillory clock, and has hundreds of other pieces of Fillory memorabilia. He notes that the chickified Jane in the failed movie script could never have become the Watcherwoman. Quentin points out that the books never revealed the Watcherwoman's identity. While the man tries to pass it off as just being Genre Savvy that anyone in a hood has to be a known character, Quentin realizes that he's been to Fillory—but even in Fillory, that's not common knowledge. Eliot uses a spell to see his true nature, noting that he has horns. Then the man reveals himself to be Umber, the second god of Fillory, thought killed by the Beast.
- Shout-Out: When workshopping ideas for his new world, Umber asks how Quentin and Eliot feel about turtles, and how they'd feel if their world was balanced on the back of one.
- The Sociopath: Subverted; without her shade, Julia is able to look at the situation objectively and decide that it is better to let Persephone take Reynard rather than pissing her off and suffering the vague "consequences" for killing a god. Kady is livid, because she's still hurting from everything Reynard has done.
- Stealth Pun: Josh puts the "high" in High King.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Played with. Alice does act like this to Quentin for resurrecting her. However, she was just traveling and learning the secrets of the universe. Now, she is forgetting them and having feelings as a normal human. Being forced to become human again the way she did would throw off anyone.
