Season 4, Episode 4
Marry, Fuck, Kill
Josh and Margo try to find a solution for his lycanthropy, Quentin deals with the death of his father, Julia and Penny search for divine help with her inability to do magic, and Alice plots to steal her book and those of her friends from the Library.Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Bait-and-Switch: In the opener, we see Josh apparently giving in to his violent/lustful urges with Margo, and he awakens to find himself in bed covered in blood. He pulls back the sheets to see...an eviscerated animal carcass.
- The Bus Came Back: Christopher Plover returns. With the Beast dead, he's managed to escape Fillory and is hiding out in the Library.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Not only did Helen not tell Josh she was giving him lycanthropy by sleeping with him, she staved off the Quickening by picking a guy off Tinder—presumably not telling him about it, either. That's basically committing rape by deceit, since it was hiding a potentially-fatal STD from partners who had assumed it was safe to have sex with her, yet the show treats it with humor. Imagine if the genders were switched.
- Driven to Suicide:
- A maenad plans to hang herself because of Bacchus's murder, but after she sees proof that Julia's still a goddess, she decides to worship Julia instead. The other maenads apparently drank all the poisoned wine before she could get any.
- A werewolf unable to mate, kill or both during the Quickening will gut themselves.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Josh plans to lock himself in a cage so The Quickening will cause him to tear himself apart rather than harm someone else, particularly Margo.
- Margo sleeps with Josh so the Quickening won't kill him, even though she'll contract lycanthropy by doing so. She reasons that she won't live long enough to deal with the Quickening herself when it comes around again in thirty years.
- It's All About Me: What we see of Quentin's mom seems to imply this. Highlights include planning to sell all of her dead ex-husband's stuff without consulting her son about it, and divorcing said ex-husband to begin with since she thought he was boring.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Although Helen is a professor in magical creatures, she spread lycanthropy to Josh by having unprotected sex with him while miserable from her divorce.
- Karma Houdini: Helen gets off scot-free for her irresponsible lycanthropy-spreading, in spite of it indirectly leading to the death of at least one person.
- Magic A Is Magic A: Margo notes that since Lycanthropy is only spread by penis-in-vagina sex, that leaves plenty of other options on the table.
- Mate or Die: During the Quickening, werewolves are driven to mate in order to spread the curse. If they don't willingly mate, their instincts will kick in and force them to rape and possibly kill someone to satisfy the urge. If they absolutely cannot mate with anyone, they'll kill themselves.
- Motivational Lie: The Monster claims Eliot's soul is dead to get Quentin to move on and help him.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Plover tries to invoke this with Alice, noting she must have done things she's regretted. She pointedly shoots back that she's not a child molester, though she does admit that he's right about her regrets. The difference is that Alice doesn't feel she's deserving of happiness because of them, while Plover is attempting to find an out-of-the-way world he can spend his the rest of his life on in peace.
- Percussive Therapy: The Monster convinces Quentin to work through his issues with his deceased father by smashing his father's model plane collection. Quentin admits it helped, if only a little.
- Pet the Dog: The Monster agrees to let Quentin sort out his father's stuff before getting back to hunting the gods and tries to make Quentin feel better about his loss.
- The Reveal: Though the Monster claims otherwise, Eliot's soul is still alive.
- Seers: Shoshanna the maenad performs a ritual in order to see if Julia is a goddess or not. The results are inconclusive, so they have to try something more complicated.
- Silver Bullet: Margo puts one in her gun in case Josh attacks her.
- Take That!: Plover tells Alice about a spell that allows a magician to create an entire narrative in hours simply by giving the spell a basic premise to start with. It's apparently quite popular in Hollywood, and Alice quips that such a spell explains Netflix.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: After the ritual to stave off Josh's Quickening fails, he starts hallucinating that Margo is coming on to him. We see this through his POV.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Plover gives Alice a lecture on how what she does and who she is are never going to match up, so she can do bad things without becoming a bad person. He's not really the best source for this.
- Your Days Are Numbered: According to Quentin's book, he'll be dead in a week.
- You Sexy Beast: According to Margo, the Quickening makes Josh a really good kisser. Possibly other things, too.
