The Magicians Episode 5×11 Review: “Be The Hyman”

The Magicians’ eleventh episode of its final season, ‘Be The Hyman’, steers the characters toward a path of villainy! 

This episode was a bit slow for my liking, considering how great the past two episodes were. I’ve been counting on action to keep my mind off of the fact that The Magicians’ series finale is right around the corner and unfortunately this episode didn’t have that much action to count on for a distraction. That’s not to say it was a bad episode… it was just slow.

‘Be The Hyman’ split up the cast of characters and shoved them off in different directions for different stories. On one hand, you had Team Fen, Margo, Eliot, and Josh, who got saddled with the task of finding one of Umber’s hidden pocket dimensions. Team Alice and Kady saw the two working together again in an effort to find The Couple. And Team Penny-23 and Julia tackled relationship issues. 

Fen, Margo, Eliot, and Josh are summoned to an astral realm meeting with the long-dead Ember and Umber (the Gods of Fillory) where they’re told about the apocalypse that is on the horizon. It was revealed in last episode that The Dark King’s attempt to rescue his dead lover from The Underworld will unintentionally open the portal between the dead and the living, unleashing the dead upon Fillory. And as Hades warned, this kind of thing will destroy Fillory.

So, Margo, Eliot, and Josh’s idea on how to save Fillory is to transfer all of the Fillorian people to a pocket dimension and then blow up the real Fillory, thus saving the day. It was revealed back in season 2 that Umber was working on creating pocket dimensions, but he was killed off before anything could be done with them. And while this crazy plan seems like it is the only option, Fen is not okay with it. After all, Fillory is her home. Saving the people and blowing up the planet won’t save the history, the traditions, and the other things that make Fillory what it is. 

This difference in opinion creates a momentary rift between Fen and the others, which leads to one of the best scenes of this week’s episode. Eliot sits down with Fen and talks about how she feels regarding the plan. We get to see Fen explain how she feels about being left out of the decision, despite being the only Fillorian among the group, and we get to see Eilot and Fen level for a moment before determining that there might not be any other options. 

My favorite scenes of ‘Be The Hyman’ were the ones that revolved around Alice and Kady, which I feel has been a fairly common occurrence this season. I really just love Alice’s character and I love the whole Kady/Alice detective duo thing we’ve been getting to see play out. While everybody else is off searching for a spare pocket dimension, Kady and Alice need to find The Couple. And as we find out, the only person who knows where they are is Marina. 

However, as soon as Alice and Kady find Marina, we get to know that Marina has willingly put herself through some kind of magical therapy to make herself nice… instead of being the typical manipulative and vengeful Marina we’ve known since season 1. As the episode plays out, we also find out that the real reason Marina even bothered to put herself through therapy is because she didn’t want to hurt her girlfriend anymore with lies. 

Marina’s sudden nice-streak throws a wrench in Kady and Alice’s plan, which consists of finding The Couple and getting back the page on how to use the World Seed. After all, the World Seed can be used to grow anything, including a new world. And this is exactly what Alice and Kady are determined to use as a new world for the potentially soon-to-be displaced Fillorians. 

However, in order to be able to find The Couple and successfully get back the page, they need Marina’s “Heist Book”, which includes all of the information necessary to successfully infiltrate where The Couple is staying. The only problem is that the heist book is with Marina’s ex-girlfriend and Marina’s newfound magical “goodness” prevents her from lying and manipulating her ex into handing over the book. 

This pushes Alice and Kady into doing a not so nice thing—they remove Marina’s magical therapy so that she can lie to her ex, thus getting them the heist book. Personally, I liked this whole exchange because it parallels nicely with what Team Fen, Margo, Eliot, and Josh are doing. Both “Teams” are doing bad things in the name of good… and it’ll definitely come back to bite them!

My least favorite scenes in this episode were the ones that involved Penny-23 and Julia. A few episodes ago it was revealed that Julia was pregnant with Penny-23’s baby and while Julia was locked away in Castle Whitespire’s dungeons, Fillory accelerated her pregnancy. In the last episode it was revealed that since Julia is pregnant with a half-human/half-traveler offspring, she is able to tap into the baby’s superhuman abilities. And while those abilities were helpful last episode, Penny-23 makes it clear in this week’s episode that danger is lurking around the corner. 

As it turns out, Penny’s mother went “crazy” after being pregnant with him due to the fact he was half-human/half-traveler. And since a lot of the symptoms that Julia is experiencing with her pregnancy seem to mimic what Penny’s own mother went through, Penny is worried about what will happen with Julia. The two characters share a heart-to-heart about how much they care about one another, but it didn’t add that much to the overall episode. 

I will say, however, that there is one moment where Julia breaks away from Penny-23 and encounters the sexist Fillorian pig man we met back in the premiere of this season. The Pig warns Julia about the apocalypse that is soon to sweep across Fillory. He tells her that the ones who’ll cause the apocalypse will “come from a distant land” and ultimately destroy Fillory… sound familiar?

This ends up being the episode’s big twist. It turns out that the ones that’ll “come from a distant land” to destroy Fillory are the same people who are trying to “save it”—Julia, Penny, Margo, Josh, Eliot, Kady, and Alice. They all come from a distant land (Earth) and plan to blow up Fillory in the name of saving it from The Dark King. But now, Julia has to make a decision as to whether or not to stop her friends’ plan or go through with it. 

All in all, I thought that ‘Be The Hyman’ was a good episode. Although, it was a bit slow. There wasn’t a lot of action. This episode was much more focused on close heart-to-heart moments, with much less humor. 

But what did you guys think about this episode?

Let us know in the comments down below! 

Author: Rodney

Rodney has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. Aspiring to one day write television shows and novels, he’s an avid slash-shipper and enthusiast for all things gay. Rodney’s especially a lover of magic, mystery, and superheroes—holding Harry Potter, the X-Men, and Scooby-Doo close as his own personal favorites. But when he’s not fantasizing about how cool it would be to have magic, he’s busy writing fanfiction and re-watching old TV shows.

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