#action against the fears and *succeeding* and since I think a lot of Jonah magnus’s less than ideal actions stemmed from his feelings of

[teamfortresstwo]

“Peter Lukas gets sent back to the regency era” “Jonathan Sims gets sent back to the regency era” valid points valid points but i raise you

Tim Stoker gets sent back to the regency era

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘The Architecture of Fear’ (S04E18) Analysis

ROBERT SMIRKE EPISODE! ROBERT SMIRKE STATEMENT!  My excitement knew no bounds heading into this episode about the side character I find the most intriguing of all the side characters, and the result was even better than I’d hoped.  Come on in to hear what I have to say about ‘The Architecture of Fear’.

Holy shit, we kicked it off hard with that conversation between Elias and Martin.  Elias confirmed that everything Peter was saying about the Extinction was ‘true’ (though I want to know the value of that truth, because the way he said it definitely seemed to imply a degree of equivocation), that Peter is trying to stop the end of the world, and that for some reason Elias can’t directly help.  Instead he gave Peter the Institute and Martin to use to stop it, which is … a lot.  Giving up the seat of his own Power’s influence to the Lonely in order to stop the Extinction’s emergence either means that Elias really does take the threat seriously and is helping as much as he can, or he wants to make the emergence take place in the tunnels for some reason.  My money is on the latter, as Elias plays too many games, and I can’t imagine his assistance to Peter wouldn’t come without a great big catch.  

He also confirmed that Peter does want Martin for the Lonely, and that Martin is the only one who can make that decision.  In fact, it’s such an important decision that Elias won’t even try to manipulate him (and I was very intrigued by his dig that Martin also loves manipulating people, either indicating that they’re more alike than Martin likes to admit, or that Martin still has some affiliation with the Web as well).  The weight of this one decision is clearly enormous, and I think there’s a third option that no one has mentioned, but might be the single most important option of them all.  I’ll get back to that, however, after I talk about the statement itself.

In the meantime, Elias and Martin’s conversation also seemed to imply that either Martin really did go into helping Peter fairly blind and came to Elias for help extricating himself (possible but disappointing), or it means that Martin does have alternative plans, and is trying to manipulate Elias as well.  Elias certainly implied as much, and honestly I would love Martin to be using Elias as a means of indirect communication with Jon, all while knowing that Elias would tell Peter, and further solidify Martin’s cover that he’s following Peter without any direction of his own.  But, unless Martin really is orchestrating a masterful manipulation, it seems very possible that he really is simply in over his head while trying to protect the others.  He hasn’t told Jon about the Extinction because he knows Jon’s penchant for suicide runs.  So he may well be making one of his own.  Again, I’m hoping it’s not so simple as that.  

And Elias, in spite of his inability to try to influence Martin on his choice regarding allegiance, was otherwise happy to try to manipulate right back.  I do believe Elias peppered useful information throughout the conversation, but couldn’t resist doing so in such a way that Martin would miss a great deal of it.  I do like that they’re far more on the same page about that these days, and that Martin has grown enough spine to tell him to fuck off, but Elias still needs that upper hand.  He needs to hoard his information, and dole it out in drips and drabs.  It makes me worried about what manipulations he’s running on Basira, who is working most closely with him at this point.

As much as I could go on about their conversation, the real meat of this episode was the statement itself. Because there are statement givers who know nothing about what happened to them, statement givers who know a little, and then there’s Robert Smirke:  perhaps the best authority on the powers in the last two centuries.  A man with such a breadth of knowledge and influence, he might have invented the rituals, or given them shape enough to let the powers try them.  

And apparently he wasn’t the only one with that sort of power.  He spent his life trying to get others to follow him on the path of neutrality, and I was very surprised to find out that the person who may have lasted the longest before he, too, fell to a power was none other than Jonah Magnus.

That’s a hell of a revelation!  Jonah Magnus has always been the original adherent of the Eye in London.  We know that Von Closen was the original Archivist of this era, but I had assumed that Magnus filled Elias’ role from the moment he acquired Von Closen’s books.  But apparently Magnus resisted that call for decades.  Despite founding the Institute in 1818, he was still an independent entity as of 1867, or at least very recently fallen to the Eye due to his own fear of death.  Both he and Smirke were courted for years by the Beholding, but both apparently resisted, even after whatever falling out they had (and I want to know a lot more about that).

And that makes the Institute even more interesting.  It houses the Avatar of the Eye, the Archivist, but it’s possible that the Institute itself was established to be an independent force.  Whether that’s still true is debatable.  I think that, given both Elias’ words and actions, he is very much a high priest of the Beholding.  He definitely seems like he wants the Watcher’s Crown to succeed.  He wants the Archivist to fulfill his role. His actions are far more trustworthy than his words, and he has always been very Beholding.  Is it possible that’s a lie, and he’s more independent than he wants to let on?  Absolutely, but I think it’s telling that he murdered Leitner almost as soon as he found him, even though Leitner was the only other person who actively succeeded in staying neutral.

So the Institute was founded to be neutral ground, but it was taken over by the Beholding at some point, whether during Magnus’ life or after.  That’s why it was built on or near Millbank.  It was an extension of that neutrality.  Is that why Peter thinks he can use the Millbank tunnels to stop the emergence of the Extinction?  Jon thinks he mapped those tunnels fairly thoroughly, but I get the feeling those tunnels shift, and that they can hide themselves as needed.  Jon saw what he needed to see, and they might be totally different now.

And speaking of Jon, isn’t it interesting that Smirke experienced all the powers in his dreams? While it’s possible that power is granted by something outside the Eye, I have to wonder if Smirke wasn’t a fledgling Archivist.  But instead of embracing that role, Smirke turned his visions and dreams to neutrality. He used his head for architecture to try to balance all the powers against one another, and it seems like he may well have succeeded for quite some time.

But there was, apparently, a side effect.  By detailing the powers, creating his taxonomy, and explaining them in a way that apparently no one had before, Smirke might have given form to the rituals in a way that made them performable as they never had been before.  His extrapolations, based on the words of Maxwell Rayner, created the architecture by which the powers could become ascendant. His balance was a double-edged sword. Even as his building could contain the powers, they could also concentrate them.  The Avatars of those powers were either repurposed, or new avatars emerged specifically made to enact the rituals.  The Dancer, I would think, didn’t exist before the Unknowing existed.  And even now the Dancer is crafted when the Unknowing draws near, using the life of another avatar as the fuel for its emergence.

This is probably why there’s been such an acceleration since the 1800s of attempts at rituals.  I had wondered how, throughout all the history of humanity, no one had managed a successful ritual.  It seems as though it’s because they either didn’t exist or hadn’t been given form before Robert Smirke.

Robert Smirke tried to save the world with balance, and instead gave every power the means of destroying balance forever.  There’s a real tragedy in that, which is probably why I love his character so much, despite barely ever seeing him.  

And as for Jonah Magnus, it turns out he was terrified of dying.  Which, again, bolsters the notion that he might have, in the end, abandoned the road that he and Smirke walked together in order to save his own life, after a fashion. If he did give himself to the Eye, creating an immortal being that assumed the identities of others … well, I really don’t think it’s coincidence that Elias was in this episode.  And I think that the ‘Elias is Jonah Magnus’ theory just got a great big boost.  And if he was Magnus, and Magnus fell to the Eye at the end of his life, it makes sense that he would also fall to the temptation to use the Eye to prolong his own existence.  And the longer he lived, the more and more tempted he would be to finally don the Watcher’s Crown.  I had thought for a time that Jon would have to be the one to wear it, but now I’m almost certain it will be Elias.

But unfortunately, Jon doesn’t have this information, Martin does.  And Martin is in a unique position.  He’s apparently being used to try to stop the emergence of the Extinction, and is collating his information on it to pass on to Jon as a backup in case he can’t prevent the emergence of the Extinction (or if he himself is supposed to be the sacrifice) alone.  He also has a better grasp on the nature of emergences, and on neutrality, even if he dismissed it at this time.  

And that finally leads me to that third option I mentioned earlier.  The Beholding and the Lonely and Web are all pulling at him, but can’t coerce him.  For some reason, Martin’s choice needs to be totally his own, and I have to wonder if that isn’t because there is an unspoken and even more powerful option available to him: reject them all.  Follow not Magnus or Lukas or the Web, but follow Smirke and Leitner.  He’s one of the only characters we know to be actively courted by multiple powers.  Despite being at the Institute for over a decade, he’s never fallen to the Eye. Despite being isolated by Peter, he’s, if anything, even more resistant to the Lonely.  He’s had the Web hovering in his periphery for years, and has never given in.

Could this statement, given to him by Peter to show him that the emergence of the Extinction was possible, actually have a double, perhaps unintended meaning?  Robert Smirke had power.  Ridiculous amounts of it, really.  He potentially CREATED the rituals.  He used human architecture to harness the powers and establish a balance of them in London during his lifetime.  It may have been fleeting, but that’s insane power.  And all done because he refused the siren call of any individual power, relying instead on his own ingenuity.

Could Martin do that? He’s not Smirke, with his architect’s brain, or Leitner with his collection.  The only thing Martin has in that abundance is compassion and—though he wouldn’t quite say it at the end of the episode—love.  He’s driven by the need to protect those around him, and driven by his awkward, unspoken love for the Archivist.  

Is that enough for balance? Is balance even a possibility?  Martin seems skeptical at this point, but both Smirke and Leitner have shown that it can be done.  Both of them seem to have died in the balance, even if they were killed by agents of a power.  And isn’t it interesting that in both cases, it was the Eye that killed them, even though they were both allied strongly with agents of the Eye?  Makes me worried that Elias is pushing Martin toward neutrality because neutrality is a necessary component of the Watcher’s Crown. Certainly it seems like Smirke’s death was a component of Magnus’ attempt at it (if indeed he did attempt it, and wasn’t simply using Smirke as a means of prolonging his own life, as Smirke also implied.  

Conclusions

We were given a lot to mull over this week.  A lot of confirmations about what Robert Smirke did and who he was, as well as implications about Jonah Magnus, the Watcher’s Crown, Elias, and the nature of neutrality.  Martin is both maneuvering and being maneuvered, and seems to be avoiding Jon to protect him from himself.  Which is both stupid and exactly what Jon did throughout season 3.  The role reversal is aggravating, because you’d think that Martin of all people would have figured out that communication, or a lack thereof, was what caused so many catastrophes for them before.  

I still don’t trust Peter, or his plan.  I don’t trust Elias, either, and though I trust Elias to tell more truths than Peter, I also trust him to phrase them in such a way that people constantly get the wrong impression.  Especially if he’s really Jonah Magnus having succeeded, at least in some way, at making himself immortal, then he’s been running a very long game.  His complicated relationship with the apocalypse is likely because he needs some component of the Extinction’s emergence to power the Watcher’s Crown.  He needs aspects of all the powers to subsume them.  And he’s been waiting centuries for all of these things to line up just right.

And, perhaps, he needs another neutral party.  Maybe Leitner was too dangerous, but Martin might just fit the bill.  Elias could not tell Martin what to do, wouldn’t even try to manipulate him on that front.  And I think that speaks to the nature of free will and choice in this universe, which has become a more and more prominent part of the story.  Martin really does have to make the choice to fall to a power or retain his neutrality on his own for it to mean anything.  He has to be willing.  Whatever Peter and Elias and every other power under the sun have planned for Martin, they can only nudge.  Peter has isolated him, but cannot simply claim him the way he’s claimed others.  Elias will spin his stories and manipulate Martin on every other count, but on the choice, he has to remain silent.  Even the Web, though it clearly appeals to Martin’s more manipulative side, has made no overt overtures to him.  I’d be very interested to see what a conversation between himself and Annabel Caine would look like, because I think she would both understand him very well, and also need to remain silent on his alignment.

A true-neutral Martin is something I’ve thought about before, and this episode simply confirms how much I want to see it.  I want to see him reject all the powers, and gain both independence (a huge thing his character needs for his arc) and strength through it.  But, of course, his own neutrality may secretly play into Elias’ own plans regarding the Watcher’s Crown, positioning them both for season 5.

I haven’t been this excited about an episode in quite some time, and I’m very glad to have the old passion for this show back.  The writing was top-notch, the two performances were fabulous (I really also like how Martin’s gone from terrified defiance to almost equal footing with Elias, and neither of them indicate that they notice the shift in their relationship). We’re only two episodes away from the mid-season finale, and I have absolutely no idea what it’s going to be about.

I suppose we’ll see in the next two weeks.